OKAY! I am totally hating myself for updating this blog even though I'm supposed to update it every Friday, but...but....I just got this sudden inspiration! I felt like I just HAD to rant about this particular thing, and I figured that this blog would be the perfect place to do just that! :O So here I am, ranting in the night.
Well, it's nothing important, really. Just, you know, it's about video games. See, I really like to play video games, and most of my favorite video games come from the Land of the Rising Sun (that means Japan, in case you didn't know). However, the fact of the matter remains that the last century has undeniably been the American Century, where people of the United States of America dominate almost all forms of information and communication technology (I'm talking about the Internet).
While I have nothing against Americans personally, there IS something that's bothering me. To no end. And not just people of the USA in particular, but people of the West in general. Now, understand that Japan produces an unbelievable amount of successful video game franchises (such as the Super Mario Bros., Final Fantasy, and my personal favorite, Pokémon). Of course, if a country develops something, it goes without saying that some of its values, its traditions, its stereotypes, will go into their work, consciously or not.
Alright, that's enough background. On to the main point of my blabbering! See, what bothers me is this: when a certain video game franchise becomes famous, it almost always gets exported to other countries, for various reasons. And when that franchise proves to be successful in other countries as well, that franchise has gone global. In other words, it becomes an internationally-recognized franchise, and further development of said franchise will no doubt incorporate this fact in mind.
Designers, programmers and developers alike will then try to create new games, but with the international audience in mind. And so they will most likely tone down the cultural influences in later games, so that those games can be accepted easier by people from outside the developers' home countries, who might not be aware of the commonness or importance of those influences. This is usually the point where franchises start to change, and rather drastically after a while.
What do I mean by "change"? To put it simply, the later games the developers' make will no doubt be different to the earlier games, because the earlier games are usually developed with only the national consumers in mind. But when you have people from all over the world you need to think about, the end result of future games will be quite different indeed. And when that difference becomes so large that it's unignorable/unneglectable (intermezzo: those are not real words), what happens then?
That's right! The stinking, blasted international community, whose cultural sensibilities were being considered carefully by the game developers as to not offend them by clashing cultures, complains about the dramatic change! Really? REALLY?!
...Sorry. I just had to let that out of my chest. Ahem. Continuing on, what I'm trying to say is basically this: you know, if a video game you really like changes over time, and you find yourself in a dilemma because you despise those changes, stop and think about the game developers for a moment. Those developers are working their butts off just to make sure they could produce high-quality games that are innovative and entertaining while at the same time acceptable by most, if not all, peoples in all nations and cultures. IT IS NOT EASY DOING THAT! It is very, very difficult indeed to create something that remains fresh and true to its roots when its roots are difficult to understand by people from other cultures, you know.
*sigh* I'm sorry. Maybe those of you reading this post couldn't care less about what I had to say, but I just had to say it, okay? These consumers, these members of the global audience the game developers are trying so hard to satisfy......how spoiled and unappreciative can you get? I'm not saying you don't have the right to dislike the newer games, no; by all means, to each their own and we all have our rights to like and/or dislike something. Taste is relative, after all. However, I'm just suggesting that, if you want to blame the developers for changing the franchise you hold so dearly, don't be so hard on them. It's hard to create things - works of art, if you will - that can be accepted by the international community.
Remember: they grew up in different cultures and hold different values, and those cultural values will no doubt find their way to be incarnated in the developers' works. The developers work so hard just to minimize these incarnations in order to create a bridge of understanding between differing cultures, to make their works understandable, enjoyable and acceptable to as many people as they can be, and I for one say that, if nothing else, we should at the very least respect them for that :)
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