Videospiel-Kulturen

 Ich persoenlich habe schon sehr oft und sehr viel ueber die Geschichte der Videospiel-Industrie gelesen, sei es in Kurzform, ausfuehrlich, in Bezug auf einzelne Spiele wie Pac-Man oder Spiele-Serien wie Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid oder Grand Theft Auto, aus Sicht von Entwicklern und Lifestyle-Formern wie Nintendo oder anderen, und noch vieles mehr - aber was ich noch nicht gelesen habe, ist, wie sich die einzelnen Laender im Rahmen des Konsums und der Produktion von Videospielen und im Verlauf dieser unseren Geschichte wandelten, einander glichen und sich voneinander abgrenzten, und wie sie ueberhaupt untereinander und miteinander auskamen.

Tja, schade. Was mach ich nun? Da bin ich ja echt aufgeschmissen. Zum Glueck gibt es da einen Artikel auf GameWorldNetwork.com ;^)    [...]
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Crashing through the immense cultural barriers that separate the world’s gamers is something every developer has been trying to accomplish ever since Nintendo first used Donkey Kong to seduce America. But no matter how close they might get, and no matter how many games unexpectedly capture the attention on an unintended market, the complex parameters of cross-cultural appeal seem altogether too intricate to quantify.

Indeed, it ultimately seems that gamers are gamers no matter where they live, and playing trends have evolved not because of a cultural temperament (after all, there was no ancestral precedent in any country’s history for videogame preference) but simply due to good, bad, indifferent and available marketing of particular systems. People in general, it would seem, love to play computer and videogames; it’s just a matter of what they could get their thumbs on. So here we take a look at how gaming systems made their way across borders, and see how those early systems ingrained themselves into a country’s culture and shaped its gaming habits for the next three decades.

Pong - it all began here, and more individually developed Pong games were released across the world in five years than anyone could ever hope to count.

In the very beginning, Pong caused a smash sensation in America, the UK and across Europe, yet the country that would quickly take the lead in videogame design never really saw the appeal. In the late ‘70s, companies like Nintendo and Sega were experimenting with all manner of electronic games, such as submarine simulation games, lightgun clay pigeon shooting, electronic love testers (which actually worked on stray capacitance of the user’s clammy hands, rather than real love) and shooting ranges. None of these, however, could really be classed as videogames as we see them today.

This was also before the UK became an industrial dustbowl, and found itself in the perfect position (with many of the world’s leading technicians at its entertainment disposal) to get fully on board the electronic bat’n’ball bandwagon. Every company from corner store to powerful conglomerate began developing Pong derivatives to such an extent that the estimated number of individually developed systems neared the 500 mark; so prolific no one has yet managed to catalogue Britain’s impressive Pong clone history.

But the craze was short lived, and back in the Far East, the Japanese were switching onto videogames with a passion, despite its government making it incredibly difficult for importers to meet the demand. Subsequently, internal development began to spring up all across Japan, and with such a naturally dedicated workforce at its disposal, the technology progressed in leaps and bounds. By the time Space Invaders, Donkey Kong and Pacman had caused world coin shortages, videogames were fully considered the hard earned property of the Japanese, and gamers across the globe wanted to sample their wares.

Japanese coin shortages were first caused by Space Invaders, though it took a little while for the rest of the world to really appreciate this groundbreaking game.

This meant Japanese developers had a wealth of exportable code for most any country it chose to regionalize games for, and yet its own developers still had to cater specifically for local gamers. Once the Japanese public had embraced games it fully dedicated its time to them, naturally and very quickly becoming connoisseurs of the medium. The twitch shooters and violence packed games being developed by the US and other Western countries held little appeal to the Japanese gamer, who preferred a longer, more engrossing and realistic adventure to the hard hitting quick fix of many arcade titles.

Meanwhile, the Atari 2600 was creating a massive stir, introducing the Western player to the delights of ROM cartridge based games. Strong brands were already the cornerstone of US sales, and the new videogame era had opened up yet another avenue of licensing possibilities. The celebrity-enamored US devoured licensed games (with sales figures often contradicting the quality of such titles. Atari had cornered the US home market and, in all fairness, had no need to worry about exporting the machine and its games. There was some effort made, particularly toward English speaking countries where irksome translations weren’t necessary, but this didn’t change the fact that the rest of the world also wanted to make alternative use of their televisions.

South America quickly caught wind of this new entertainment phenomenon, but due to lackadaisical licensing or, to some extent, sales isolation, these countries were forced to forage for their games wherever they could find them. Unlicensed imports, hardware clones and rife piracy became incredibly popular around South America, and Brazil in particular – a country of passionate, if somewhat corporately ignored, gamers. Brazilians quickly developed an infatuation with consoles, and particularly quick, dynamic, succinct arcade games that, even if they weren’t translated or developed specifically for the Portuguese speaking locals, could be easily fathomed without instructions.

Central Europe noticed a similar difficulty in obtaining localized conversions of popular games, often importing from neighboring countries, the UK or US at considerable expense to themselves. One salvation for mainland Europe came from the Dutch electronics giant, Philips, who licensed the sequel to the first ever games console, the Magnavox Odyssey, for distribution outside of the US. While the Odyssey2 fared poorly in its country of origin (America), its Dutch licensed counterpart, known as the Philips Videopac G7000, was well marketed by the Holland based company and filled a gaping hole in the European market.

While not exactly replete with a long list of games, the G7000 was a perfect counterpart to the home computing craze blossoming in the UK. The American videogame market crash was in full effect, and while this didn’t have a huge impact on the rest of the world, it did stem the previously massive flow of US game developments. Without the deluge of ROM cartridge based games, affordable home computers such as the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64 immediately filled the void.

These cassette tape based titles worked a lot differently from the console specific games the British had been used to. The processing strength of these computers wasn’t geared specifically toward gaming, as the console’s hardware was, making fast, active arcade games difficult to achieve. A plethora of puzzle, adventure, exploration and role playing titles began to develop quite organically to play to the abilities of the systems in British homes – to the point where a twitch shooter of fast fighter struggled to meet the needs of gamers with expectations of an extended playing experience.

Across the channel, French gamers developed a very similar trend, adopting the Amstrad CPC as its weapon of choice. Unlike other countries, however, the French gamer refused to accept badly translated imports or shoddy licensing and software houses began to appear all across the country. Some of the strongest CPC titles to be developed in the computer’s celebrated history never even left the French shores, though gamers enjoyed a rich and varied abundance of titles from RPG to shoot-‘em-up; so long as it wasn’t a quickly translated afterthought, French gamers were happy to experience as much variance as possible.

The ZX Spectrum, while enjoying massive popularity in the UK, struggled to find a foothold elsewhere in the world. Officially, that is. Russia, like the UK, had a cornucopia of technical experts, all looking to expand their horizons. Because of the strict regulations on import and export, however, it was difficult for foreign businesses, like Sinclair Research (developers of the ZX Spectrum) to make inroads, and even more difficult for the enchanted Russian gamers to get their hands on the few computers which did actually cross the border.

This small taste of game playing delights spawned a host of Sinclair compatible hardware – some licensed, most not – to be developed within Russia. Obtaining games was equally difficult, and since all software had to be officially licensed by a state department, most came in the form of home brewed games distributed for free, by hand and word of mouth. Due to the nature of development, puzzle software based around all manner of traditional games was a natural choice for Russia’s back bedroom programmers, ultimately, of course, leading up to the most popular and played game of all time, Tetris.

The most played game of all time, the Russian made Tetris.

In the US, Nintendo was singlehandedly resurrecting the videogame market with its new NES console, though this new found power also led to something of a tyrannical rule when Nintendo came to (quite rightly) protecting its valuable intellectual property. Law suits and injunctions were rife, tying the hands of many third party and independent developers. To the north, Canada took this advantage to introduce its population to the joys of not only playing, but developing games. Much stricter in its allowance of rampant litigation, many difficulties in the American market were automatically negated by entry into Canada, and the country became something of a haven for beleaguered developers (to this very day), and the local gamers took full advantage.

In the East, many other Asian countries were slow to take up videogames as a dedicated pastime, though Taiwan and Korea were both early adopters of Japanese trends. The Taiwanese showed considerable support for Sega’s first foray into console gaming, the SG-1000 (forerunner and basis for the Master System), enjoying, particularly, the first party arcade ports of Sega’s increasing list of coin-op titles (as did the otherwise geographically isolated – and therefore last on the list for import licenses – New Zealand and Australia; two countries of thrill-seeking gamers, hooked on arcade adventure and high quality shooters). Korea, however, shared a very similar taste to the Japanese, preferring a character based adventure of slightly more epic proportions.

An unfortunate stumbling block for the Koreans (who, once the technology reached a high enough level, developed an overwhelming passion not only for playing videogames, but for developing them) was the country’s underlying incompatibility with Japanese culture. The long and turbulent history between the two countries meant that localizations were an absolute necessity; many Korean gamers refusing to play if a title was rife with Japanese writing, speech or iconography. This resulted in a lot of Japan specific titles never leaving their native shores due to the enormity of the conversion task, despite them being ideally suited to the Korean gamer. An issue also afflicting the British, though for a slightly different reason.

Korean's have always been avid gamers, with the country's highest scorers achieving the kind of celebrity status leading sportsmen get in other countries.

There was no animosity between the two countries – the British considering Japanese developments to be the pinnacle of worldwide game development – but the strict tax and import regulations of both countries, coupled with the relatively small and often corporately ignore console market in Britain (a problem compounded by the disappearance of American made games in the early ‘80s) meant that while the two countries were enjoying very similar gaming habits, most formats were simply not compatible. Ever since the internet appeared, a constant flow of two-way discovery between Japan and Britain has resulted in the two far removed cultures discovering a rich heritage of likeminded gaming habits, each enjoying the other’s rich tapestry of unknown games.

Further into Europe, Germany also felt something of an isolation from the world gaming community, despite being about as geographically central to the global industry as any other country. German’s had the distinct benefit of being able to quite easily import (or have specifically licensed) most any available gaming system; from the home computers popular in Britain and France, to the specialized consoles of the Far East. Having almost the perfect gaming situation, Germany developed a keen sense for quality software, basing their judgments on the game rather than the system. Therefore, the German’s enjoyed a particularly eclectic mix of the finest games the world had to offer; capable and willing to play titles developed for foreign language gamers, and deep enough of pocket to keep up with the best hardware.

Although not as severe as a lot of media would have us believe, violent imagery was (and is) quite strictly governed in Germany, prohibiting some of the more popular titles which developers regularly used to grab the interests of a new market from finding its way into German systems. This also stymied Germany’s software development industry - a matter which is only really correcting itself in recent years.

This historical, system specific introduction to games, which has shaped the world’s gaming habits into very strict regimes, is finally tumbling. The introduction of the internet as a powerful computer and videogame tool (which has only really come along since the widespread global use of high-speed connections) is the first gaming element to truly puncture cultural barriers the world over. Countries which never really developed an interest in early gaming, such as China, have suddenly risen up to control a major part of the industry, both in a gaming and developmental sense.

This late entry for the Chinese gaming delegation has meant the country has a far more expansive choice of system, and it seems the populace has chosen the internet itself as the weapon of choice. Online gaming, such as World of Warcraft and Everquest, is utterly dominated by the Chinese – to the extent that government imposed regulations regarding the amount of time a gamer can spend online have recently come into effect.

The Chinese have taken to online gaming with a passion, dominating titles like World of Warcraft.

Since the majority of the population can’t afford a PC equal to the task of playing these games (or even a net connection of suitable speed), internet café’s have become something of a haven for China’s gamers. This has also created a trend directly inverse to much of the rest of the world. While extended use of online games has isolated many gamers – who spend much of their time alone at the computer, only interacting with others through the game itself – the Chinese are gathering together in huge numbers at the cafes and access points, making gaming a considerable part of the Chinese social life.

Gaming on the go has also led the Chinese to adopt another, considerably different, system. Mobile gaming (not so much on handheld consoles as on mobile phones) is a massive business in China. With more mobile phones in circulation than any other country in the world, this seemingly limited gaming method has been thoroughly explored and expanded by Chinese developers, providing the rapidly increasing number of gamers with something to do while waiting to get online. The two systems are also seeing considerable crosspollination , with statistical access to events within virtual worlds becoming available through cellular networks.

Mobile phone games are every bit as big in China as online games, and the two systems are coming closer together every day.

Of course, internet gaming is more than just a tool; it’s becoming a necessity for any new game to have some form of online content. This has finally meant gamers have access to trends independent of licensing and developer interest. As country’s shed their game preference stereotypes, trends are shifting toward virtual barriers, rather than cultural or geographical ones. Whereas at one time, the Japanese and Korean gamer (for example) struggled with incompatible habits, now it’s the FPS fan who’s at loggerheads with the RGP player, or the fighter enthusiast who can’t see eye to eye with the shooter fanatic, regardless of which country they live in.

Individual, and highly singular, gaming cultures are still in full effect across the globe, but now gamers are choosing which culture they want to dedicate themselves to. As Wi-Fi becomes increasingly present in coffee shops, bars, schools and on the streets around the world, gamers are never far from their virtual country, and gaming trends have never been so prolific or vibrant since the cross-cultural barrier was brought crashing down once and for all.
Article by Spanner Spencer · Apr 29, 2007
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