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Why Are FPS Games So Unpopular In Japan?

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5 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

True, and I hear that they are reintroducing third-person view for Village in the upcoming DLC, but still, it does not change the fact that Capcom designed two (successful) first-person shooters in a row.

 

True, but that's a weird thing to say; I wasn't trying to change any facts, merely making sure you were more informed. As much as the first-person aspect was appreciated, so was 7's VR gameplay. I'm also under the impression that's something Village we'll be getting with PSVR 2.

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15 minutes ago, Eurisko said:

I wouldn't say Resident Evil 7 is an FPS at all. I'd say it's First person survival horror

I disagree. There are many subgenres to the first-person shooter genre. 

 

As far as I am concerned, if you play a game from the first-person perspective and shoot guns as part of the gameplay, then it is a first-person shooter.

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8 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

I disagree. There are many subgenres to the first-person shooter genre. 

 

As far as I am concerned, if you play a game from the first-person perspective and shoot guns as part of the gameplay, then it is a first-person shooter.

 

Good to know Metal Gear Solid is a First-Person Shooter

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1 hour ago, Paf said:

For a second I thought that was gonna be a search button again

Sometimes im nice.

 

Sometimes.

1 hour ago, Kinsie said:

This thread mostly just feels like a collection of weird half-understood stereotypes. Kind of gross, TBH.

Aye. The Japanese like their shooters aswell - they just approach it differently.

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1 hour ago, Kinsie said:

This thread mostly just feels like a collection of weird half-understood stereotypes. Kind of gross, TBH.

I think the main reason for that is due to the amount of people who think they actually have any grip whatsoever on Japanese culture because they watch anime and played some Japanese games. Double points if you watch your anime dubbed, then you can consider yourself a master. I studied Japanese filmmaking for years, I've seen probably 400 or more Japanese films, documentaries, etc. and I still have no idea what their culture is really like because I don't live there. I know nothing even when it comes to most of their musical culture. People all over the world make this mistake. I live in Florida and the amount of people who honestly think that living in FL, USA means you are constantly in fear of getting shot at by meth addicts or getting attack by the Angry Bath Salt Man is astounding. I don't really think (most of it) is necessarily gross, just down to naivety.

 

Also, Japanese don't have some fear of guns in entertainment, there are thousands of yakuza films, many of them with levels of gun violence that would make your average American horror fan vomit on the person next to them. I dig it. The yakuza/crime genre is right up there with samurai films in terms of how many of them were made. But foreigners are only familiar with the whole samurai thing, because they're Asian which automatically makes them swordfighting karate masters.

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I have several Japanese friends, some that live in Japan and others that immigrated to my country that love the FPS genre. Most of them got their interest in the genre through Duke Nukem or Quake. None of them seemed to have noticed or cared that the genre is unpopular there by mainstream audiences. 

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4 hours ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

FPS games tend to lean more toward realism or at least grit, the Japanese tend to like more colorful or visual games. Ironically they're way more into hardcore violence than Americans (well, you know that, you've seen Japanese movies), but I think the reason for their violence being more extreme is because it's usually less realistic. A lot of them perfer games that don't rely so much on reaction time, like Final Fantasy or Dragon quest, with Dragon Quest in particular nicknamed "Japan's Favorite Franchise". When you look at that game, it's the epitome of what they like most in video games: colorful graphics, menu-based combat, a focus on characters over plot, length, humor, and a feeling of adventure. Plus, I would think the ratio of PC:console gamers is quite different over there - FPS games have always been more of a PC staple than a console one.

 

Japan loves fast-paced action games. Who do you think plays the most fighters? Shmups are still (somewhat) popular over there despite having all but died out internationally long ago. There's no preference to real-time or turn-based gameplay among Japanese gamers simply by looking at what games they play more.
 

1 hour ago, Kinsie said:

This thread mostly just feels like a collection of weird half-understood stereotypes. Kind of gross, TBH.

 

It really is -- and I think it can be avoided by some thoughtfulness and an actual understanding of the landscape. Here's why I (disclaimer: a white guy who knows a pretty decent amount of gaming history) think the FPS isn't quite as popular over in Japan compared to the US:

- Different hardware. When the seminal FPS games Wolfenstein 3D and Doom released, the IBM-Compatible PC was not the totally dominant architecture for the home computer like it became in the late 90s. Especially in Japan, there were several competing architectures at the time including the Sharp X68000, NEC PC-98, Fujitsu FM Towns, and the MSX. Due to the specific needs of rendering crisp Japanese text, many of these computers opted for higher resolution displays at the expense of draw speed, though this became less and less relevant as time marched on and systems were able to draw graphics faster. However, Wolf 3D and Doom were heavily optimized for Intel 8086-based chips and IBM-Compatible hardware which made porting to other architecture (mostly Motorola 68k-based hardware, though the PC-98 platform did have 8086-based hardware) difficult. Doom eventually got a PC-98 port in 1994 but it didn't run very good.

 

- Different platforms. Most gaming in Japan is done at arcades and on home consoles. Gaming on home computers wasn't really a thing outside of doujinsoft (i.e. indie) titles, most notably Touhou, Yume Nikki, and Cave Story, but there's plenty of others. In fact, given the somewhat infamous reputation that Japanese home computer platforms have for eroge, it's sometimes assumed that anyone talking about computer games over there is a pervert.

 

- Different focus. The FPS saw the biggest push onto consoles during the 7th generation (Wii/360/PS3), which is incidentally right when the Japanese gaming industry made a huge pivot toward mobage.

 

It should be noted that while historically it's been the case that Japanese gamers don't care too much about the FPS, this is absolutely changing. Games like Player Unknown's Battlegrounds have seen widespread popularity especially across East Asian countries. More recently market trends are seeing the PS5 lose a lot of footing, and since Xbox never had much of a hold in Japan to begin with, gamers are migrating to Nintendo and PC. This dovetails with the recent release of the Steam Deck, which is proving to be a huge hit as an entry point for PC gaming in Japan. With more and more Japanese gamers taking to the PC for gaming, we can expect more and more Japanese FPS players.

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I heard that japanese people are more prone to motion sickness in FPS games, but i'm not sure about the veracity of that

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55 minutes ago, segfault said:

Japan loves fast-paced action games. Who do you think plays the most fighters? Shmups are still (somewhat) popular.......

 

 

There's no preference to real-time or turn-based gameplay among Japanese gamers simply by looking at what games they play more.

Every country on the planet loves fast-paced action games. It doesn't change the fact that franchises like Pokemon, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, etc. are a firm part of their culture, much more so than in the west. This is why why have a whole genre called JRPG. According to this research (from 2020, mind you) the most popular genre in Japan is RPG. The problem is that such data won't help much, because RPG could mean anything from Disco Elysium to Tales of Arise to Dark Souls:

 

https://medium.com/@deephavendatalabs/analyzing-video-game-genre-popularity-around-the-world-9a0dfece3884

 

Another interesting part of this is that it shows that shooters didn't rank as high in popularity in Japan compared to the rest of the world.

 

Now, granted, you could look at yearly sales, franchise worth, blah blah blah, but I'd say action games and RPGs are both about on par in terms of popularity, considering the fact that they also blessed us with Mario and cursed us with Sonic. And I'd further venture to say that even if they love action games as much as some kid from Ohio, the Japanese still have more of a preferance for turn based games than westerners. Therefore, I'd say it's still a huge part of their gaming culture, and if someone asked me to describe gaming in Japan, obviously half of the biggest franchises I would discuss would be turn based JRPGs.

 

I'd attribute their love of fighting games more to their arcade culture than anything related to home gaming. In terms of shumps, I find it hard to believe that their popularity "died out internationally" based on the fact that I can hardly read any gaming forum without coming across hordes of TooHoo avatars. In fact, I see more and more of them everyday, as to where five years ago I had no idea what a TooHoo was.

 

Quote

In fact, given the somewhat infamous reputation that Japanese home computer platforms have for eroge, it's sometimes assumed that anyone talking about computer games over there is a pervert.

 

I'm pretty sure the whole "people who own a PC in Japan get shit on for being Otaku virgins" stigma has been on a decline for a while, since nearly half of the country's teenagers now self-identify as Otaku. I highly doubt that "oh no I can't buy a PC because they'll make fun of me" plays a huge factor. I'd like to have enough faith that most folks over there are reasonable and intelligent enough not to start running to the hills just because one of their friends told them they own a PC:

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otaku

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4 hours ago, GarrettChan said:

The other one could be, Japanese are not very good at English. As a Chinese, it's somewhat affected by this as well. For most of the Chinese when I'm young, they tend to play Japanese games because at least they can read a few kanji and understand something, while English games are harder to digest in general. (Not for me because I learn English from playing games, so I have no problem with them, but almost none of my friends/classmates play western games)

Me stuck playing Strife when I was kid because I didn't understand the plot be like:

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Just now, Rykz said:

Me stuck playing Strife when I was kid because I didn't understand the plot be like:

Are you Japanese or Chinese?

 

Well, pure speculation to those. At least me, I'm stuck with all the FPS, so I had no friend during my childhood :P

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5 minutes ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

I can hardly read any gaming forum without coming across hordes of TooHoo avatars. In fact, I see more and more of them everyday, as to where five years ago I had no idea what a TooHoo was.

Sorry, not directly related to the topic at hand, but "TooHoo" really made me laugh XD Yeah, people with TooHoo avatars are very common online. Isn't @Remilia Scarlet's one of those? I don't know anything about the games, the little gameplay I've seen honestly just let me immensely surprised and wondering how the hell people are able to play that kind of stuff. But well, I guess someone new to Doom would say the same about slaughter-maps, so in my ignorance I can't really complain.

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48 minutes ago, Drywtler said:

I heard that japanese people are more prone to motion sickness in FPS games, but i'm not sure about the veracity of that

Based on my understanding, this is one of the main reasons why many Japanese games do not allow the player to directly control the camera.

 

@DSC I feel the same way, I think I would stroke out due to the intensity of the visuals, audio, and difficulty in that stuff. My sphincter would never be the same.

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Be the same reason that visual novels and dating Sims are not popular in the West, different culture. I don't think think a lot of western games full stop are that popular, doubt Ubisoft make many sales of Assassins Creed games in Japan despite it being a third person action game, a genre they definitely enjoy. Are many western games even translated to Japanese? They make so many games themselves, we only see the tip of the iceberg in what's released in the west, guess they don't need our games, they already have a huge amount of titles tailored to their tastes.

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1 hour ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

I live in Florida and the amount of people who honestly think that living in FL, USA means you are constantly in fear of getting shot at by meth addicts or getting attack by the Angry Bath Salt Man is astounding. I don't really think (most of it) is necessarily gross, just down to naivety.

Wait, so you lot DON'T tell your kids to be behaved or else the Florida Man will come and beat them up?

 

Fascinating

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Just some speculation but FPS gained popularity with Doom and games inspired by it. This occurred during the IBM DOS years. DOS was fairly limited to western markets. Japanese PCs like the PC-88 didn't have DOS natively and games for them had heavier focus on other genres like RPGs. Many of those same genres seem very popular there today. This could be a matter of the games establishing popularity through cultural familiarity. 

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1 minute ago, GarrettChan said:

Are you Japanese or Chinese?

 

Well, pure speculation to those. At least me, I'm stuck with all the FPS, so I had no friend during my childhood :P

Indonesia.
But heh, I played Strife & Blood before I know any English vocabulary. I was around 4-5 around that time so I have no idea what's written on the mission briefing(whatever its called) and sometimes its just weird seeing the cutscene playing. IIRC, I already can read & write(though I still read more than write), though since I was 4-5 years old, it just makes no sense what's written on the screen until I got older. Another thing is that I get access to dictionary(electronic dictionary, though offline) quite late, when I was in middle-to-late elementary school.

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@Rykz I mean, I need to look up dictionary as well, but this depends on the attitude of playing a game, heh. Sometimes people would like to learn stuff from it, but sometimes people just want to relax, and they don't want to put effort into actually understanding those.

 

I also started as not knowing stuff, but eventually I tried everything, and learned in the mean time, heh. Maybe this contributes to how I like to try out different stuff nowadays.

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I've read a few opinion pieces that say Japanese prefer to see their protagonists as opposed to having a birds-eye view of the action themselves but I'm not sure that's entirely that's true. It's not like the market for FPSs is entirely nonexistent in Japan, but the main issue is that Japanese tend to prefer their own games by a large margin and due to them lacking a John Carmack-styled programmer who could make smooth and efficient 3D (just check out the mine-cart section of Final Fantasy VI for a seriously disastrous attempt at rendering). These days, they're certainly more capable but FPS don't quite have the same cultural cache and as such, they're not so popular. Exactly why is hard to pin down because it's not like Japan is necessarily less militarist than western Europe, regardless of what a casual view of popular anime might suggest.

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They can do as they please as long as JPCP2 comes out, like, yesterday. The couple of test maps they put out are proof that, what little is over there, is pure gold regardless. 

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2 hours ago, DSC said:

Sorry, not directly related to the topic at hand, but "TooHoo" really made me laugh XD Yeah, people with TooHoo avatars are very common online. Isn't @Remilia Scarlet's one of those? I don't know anything about the games, the little gameplay I've seen honestly just let me immensely surprised and wondering how the hell people are able to play that kind of stuff. But well, I guess someone new to Doom would say the same about slaughter-maps, so in my ignorance I can't really complain.

Yeah, Remilia Scarlet is a Touhou character. And my online (and sometimes irl)  name. My avatar is from some art by someone named Vile.

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6 hours ago, fai1025 said:

I guess Asia in general wasn't that into FPS, China will ban them, Japan not popular, Taiwan more into Japanese games, what else.

 

But.. crossfire though...

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Probably for the same reason JRPGs and Visual Novels aren't popular in America. The audience just isn't there.

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4 minutes ago, magicsofa said:

 

But.. crossfire though...

Ohhhhhhhh yeah I totally forgot Multiplayer FPS game existed

 

than I would say CS is quite popular in Asia

I mean i have a friend that play like a lot of CS, and than he doesn't know much except CS

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7 hours ago, taufan99 said:

Welp, Apex Legends is rather popular in Japan,

Can confirm. (I live in Japan and often talk with Japanese gamers. Apex Legends is huge over here.)

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30 minutes ago, invalidlain said:

Probably for the same reason JRPGs and Visual Novels aren't popular in America. The audience just isn't there.

What are you talking about? Games like Final Fantasy make bank.

 

As for visual novels, they are a more niche genre, sure, but there is definitely a public for it.

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10 hours ago, ReaperAA said:
  • Japanese audience generally disliking guns (don't know the exact reason for this, but this is definitely true). Even in most of their shows and anime, the weapons used (especially by protagonists) are anything but standard modern day weapons or guns. And since FPS mostly revolve around guns, so they are not popular.

I wonder that gun logic maybe kinda weird to Japanese audience (because if my memory serves right, Japan doesn't allow firearms for civilians).
Imagine you can take out someone's life with pointing out a "L" shaped black stick.

4 hours ago, GarrettChan said:

@Rykz I mean, I need to look up dictionary as well, but this depends on the attitude of playing a game, heh. Sometimes people would like to learn stuff from it, but sometimes people just want to relax, and they don't want to put effort into actually understanding those.

 

I also started as not knowing stuff, but eventually I tried everything, and learned in the mean time, heh. Maybe this contributes to how I like to try out different stuff nowadays.

Voice-only plot (no subtitle) will ruin the day for people that has bad hearing and speaking compherison, like me lol

Edited by Rykz

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