Saturday, November 22, 2008

BIG IN JAPAN - GAMING CULTURE


While I was in Japan I had the feeling that their culture is far more game-based than ours. At least more than the spanish, that's for sure. Here in Spain gamers have been traditionally been considered as semi-autistic. If you played some hours per day, you surely had problems.

Things in Japan seem to be different. They play games on a regular basis. Pachinko arcades are everywhere. Videogame arcades are also common, and they seem to be still acceptably populated by youngsters, something we've lost here in the West. There were some unique arcade machines that I had never seen such as a virtual horse racing bet simulator, games based on cards or tokens and fishing games.

I was told that many people went to play regularly just as soon as they left their workplaces. I'm not gonna recommend that for our society, but it gives you a good hint about why they like all those really hardcore games that force you to play over and over until you defeat that insanely difficulty final boss, and endless RPGs that keep them busy for weeks. Someone told me that Japanese people NEED to feel busy with something, and videogames are there.

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