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August 19, 2003
Cultural Game Design
I attended a <a href="http://www.siggraph.org/s2003/conference/courses/marcus.html">session on cross-cultural interface design</a> during SIGGRAPH. It was an excellent course, given by human-computer interaction expert <a href="http://www.amanda.com/">Aaron Marcus</a>. The main premise was that localization does not equal translation: there's a lot to factor when designing for different cultures. While the course focused mainly on web sites as visual examples, it is easy to see the relevance for games.
Too many games simply translate text and do not take into account such things as cultural metaphors, mental models, navigation, interaction, and appearance preferences. Even just scanning some news articles you get a sense of <a href="http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-german9jun09,1,6305242.story?coll=la-headlines-technology">German's extreme dislike of violence</a>, <a href="http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/930336.asp?0dm=c16kt">English fear of blood</a>, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/technology/free_forbes/2003/0721/092.html">Korea's connectedness</a>, <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/features/all/gamespotting/071103minusworld/8.html">the dark side of online gaming</a>, <a href="http://www.gamebunker.com/modpage.php?id=185">potential areas of racism</a>, and so on. Just to name a few areas of contention...
Certainly, developers need to be more aware of cultural differences in order to succeed in the ever-globalizing games business. To point, EA Europe's managing director states that the audience for games needs to triple in size, with <a href="http://www.indiemagazine.co.uk/cgi-bin/news.cgi?id=1588§ion=1">major growth coming from games with global appeal</a>.
We would all be wise to look into cross-cultural design. While each year at GDC, developers cram to <a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20030531/matsuura_01.shtml">hear from renowned Japanese designers</a> on how to make great games, there is a wealth of (non-games specific) information already out there just waiting to be leveraged.
My copy of "<a href="http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0070293074/">Cultures and Organizations</a>" is on order. The book was oft mentioned by Aaron as he uses its concepts to help better understand <a href="http://www.amanda.com/resources/hfweb2000/AMA_CultDim.pdf">cultural dimensions</a>. More on that later...
Posted by della at August 19, 2003 12:38 AM
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» Cultural Differences in Gaming from game girl advance
Game conferences are a tantalizing place to study cultural difference. With designers and publishers from around the world, you can [Read More]
Tracked on August 19, 2003 01:22 AM
» Cultural Differences in Game Design from game girl advance
Game conferences are a tantalizing place to study cultural difference. With designers and publishers from around the world, you can [Read More]
Tracked on August 19, 2003 01:25 AM
Comments
Here's one that most people don't know. 80% of the Japanese get motion sickness from FPS games (and other 3D games). It doubt that's the #1 reason why FPS games have never made it big in Japan. More likely that's because PC gaming never took off here. But, as for localization, Sony Japan tests foreign developed games for that problem and requires changes to camera motion etc until the motion sickness problem is less of an issue.
Another issue that was brought to my attention, no game in Korea can have any Japanese in it. What I mean is of course you would translate the text but you must also make sure there are no textures with Japanese etc. Korea's history with Japan can mean serious vandalization of arcade machines and other items if they find Japanese in the game. I'm sure that's changing slowly. That history is also one reason why Korea went straight to PCs with virutally no video game market. Until recently all video game machines were from Japan which is a no-no in Korea.
Posted by: GMan at August 19, 2003 06:48 AM
In Japan, a social problem about game may be happened by mass media in this year. Last year the wrong science theory of game brain was introduced many time. The mass media have prejudice for game.
GTA3 and Getaway will be released at September by Capcom. And online game addiction is paid attention from them. After I wrote long articles about online game, including with addiction, in a magazine, some TV media contacted.
I think Japanese developers need to cooperate more with Korean developers. Actually some developers and publishers start discussion.
And from a point of Japanese game, adult manga games make always trouble. Because usually they cannot export by taboo, this kind of news did not be known well. Japanese gamers think the expression of “Dead or Alive beach valley” or “BMX XXX” is light
Posted by: Kiyoshi Shin at August 19, 2003 11:55 AM
I stand for high quality in anything you do, so I believe we should consider cultural differences to make top-notch games.
Posted by: RPG at March 19, 2004 04:32 PM