Hideo Kojima and the Japanese Obsession with Overseas Success

[badgenome]

Linkasf said:

badgenome said:

NoCtiS_NoX said:

"To put it in an extreme fashion, Americans like games where you have a gun and you're shooting at space aliens," he said. "If you don't understand why that's fun, then you shouldn't be making games for the world market; you don't need to. I mean, Japanese people might say 'Why space aliens?', but Americans will counter with 'What's with these games featuring these feminine-looking boys fighting in Japan with these huge swords?'

I take back everything bad I've ever said about this long-winded douchenozzle great man.

Not all Americans like shooting space aliens... I mean , you don't see that in Call of Duty right? It's about shooting other people, humans.

Well, yeah. But you're taking his words a bit too literally. He made a really brilliant point. You can't just assume that Americans see a game and go, "Derp! Guns! I buy this!" It's like if Epic made a game about sexually confused teenagers who wield gigantic swords on the basis that such a thing will automatically sell like hotcakes in Japan. The reason people like shooters (or more generally, action games) is because of things like easy accessibility, intense action, and competitive multiplayer. If you can't capture that, you'll fail.

For example, look at Warriors: Legends of Troy. What a total flop and all because Koei decided to, in their own words, make "a Dynasty Warriors for people who hate Dynasty Warriors". Such a game has no audience at all, and the sales show it. It would have been far better to have just made another successful musou game for Japan.