The Bus

GDC: The Localization of Counter-Strike in Japan

When Namco project manager Kouichirou Taninami stepped up to the microphone, the majority of his potential audience was still piling out of Satoru Iwata's keynote address, fresh new copies of Brain Training in hand and Revolution on the brain. Though his lecture hall was enormous, the bodies littering it were the curious few. As it turned out, the lecture's focus was different somewhat from the features listed on the box; in place of the obvious assumption, a lecture about the changes made to Counter-Strike, Taninami's speech was as a whole to detail the way Counter-Strike aided Taninami in his mission to construct a working network gaming system for the famously persnickety Japanese market.

Taninami, a thirteen-year veteran of Namco's arcade division, was assigned five years ago to find a solution to the Japanese "network game problem". Whereas the US has enjoyed about thirty-five years of network connectivity, online games have never really caught on in Japan; for some time, received wisdom placed the blame on a nonexistent or comparably obscure architecture. And yet, now that broadband is prevalent, the market still barely exists.

So why is that, Taninami asked. Flipping the question around, he then asked what makes network games fun. He concluded that pleasure comes in part from the game itself – provided it's a good game – and in part from the company the player keeps. He called this situation a "relationship of multiplication": if the opponent fails to play fairly, then the game fails to be enjoyable. As far as Taninami was concerned, that social angle was the biggest problem.

As Taninami had a limited budget, he figured there was no point in wasting resources on development, when there are already so many well-made games available; instead, he poured all of his attention into the network aspect, conducting reams on ridiculous reams of research on how to ensure a fun level of competition. For the game, he selected Counter-Strike, due to its popularity elsewhere in the world. He asked Valve for a license to promote the game in Japan; they said okay and everything was in order. Almost.

Asian Eyes

Another crucial feature – the one this lecture seemed like it might have been about – was the way Counter-Strike looked. Its whole presentation screams "Western PC game", which in turn causes the average Japanese gamer to scream "Eek". The characters are gritty, burly, and not particularly appealing – so Namco got an artist to anime them up a little, replacing sweaty gringos with guys in primary-colored spandex and PVC shoulderpads, and hairy guys in fatigues and ski masks with antigravity-busted women in three square inches of purple nylon.

Similarly, Taninami decided that Japanese gamers would freak at the game's anti-terrorism angle – especially if the terrorists win a match – so he changed the scenario to a struggle between two opposing factions: the CSF and the NEO (leading to the game's new appellation, "Counter-Strike NEO"). And of course, because PC games have virtually no presence in Japan outside of porn and obscure doujin soft (amateur freeware), the keyboard-and-mouse controls had to be finessed a little. CS NEO uses a custom-built keyboard, with all the controls and hotkeys specially labeled.

There's also the issue that basically all people do in Counter-Strike is shoot each other – which should get boring after a while – so Taninami added a suite of single-person missions and mini-games; completing these modes gives a player special prizes. There are also a number of in-game events timed to various holidays and seasons, such as cherry blossoms that cascade in the spring. As for the game content itself, "we didn't want to change it; we didn't want to ruin it."

Bang and Blame

So. Again Taninami asks, how can you make competition fun? Here, Taninami paused, as if waiting for an answer. Who do we like to play network games with: friends, brothers, neighbors? He asks where we go to play: do we go home? Somewhere we can see the other people? To study PC game culture, Taninami spent some time attending LAN parties. At length he concluded that these parties are the environment "that lets games sell one million copies".

Although clearly there is no analog to LAN parties in Japan, Taninami made a comparison to Internet cafes – not the coffee bars with WiFi access you might see in downtown San Francisco; the distinctly Asian phenomenon of an immense, climate-controlled complex of cubicles: pay by the hour, do whatever you want. Free drinks. Even sleep in the overstuffed chairs, if you want; it's cheaper than a hotel. People live in these places. And in places like Taipei, Hong Kong, and Korea, they are the hotspots of PC game culture.

The benefits of a cafe are multifold: if you get bored with the game, you have friends nearby to chum with. And for get-togethers online multiplayer is better than, say, a Game Boy link cable in that if your friend gets bored and drops connection, you can still hook up and play. Besides, Taninami says, linking together a couple of Game Boys looks kind of awkward when you're an adult.

What might be the closest Japanese parallel, though, is the fabled beast known as the video arcade – and the phenomenon of "versus cabs", most frequently used for one-on-one fighting games. Taninami explained how, when Street Fighter II was released, rival players stood or sat side-by-side on the same cabinet. This arrangement was all right if the competitors were friends; otherwise, sometimes it was a a bit too close. With the versus cab, two interfaces are placed back-to-back, putting the length of one double-deep machine between the players – a comfortable distance, for the outgroup-adverse. And yet players are still close enough to discourage cheating – as if you try to pull anything, your opponent can just step right over and kick your ass.

Arcade-based card and mahjong games work the same way, and they pull in 100 billion yen a year – exactly the same figure as the Korean network game market. Kind of makes you think. Sort of.

Go Away From Me, Just Go Away

Taninami jumped to the side a bit, to discuss the phenomenon of Japanese Go parlors; how there is a tutorial service for beginners, and a certain mode of etiquette against opponents. Players are given ranks (out of thirty-five) according to their skill levels, tracked on index cards, and maintained by the parlor. When players arrive, they wait in a room to be matched with another player of their level. Highly-trained hosts sort through the available opponents and use the data at hand and their own judgment to match two players. This is known as a matching service. The hosts call out the players, and hand them their cards. The players who are matched are moved to what is called a "massive server".

This setup and terminology should be familiar to anyone who has played online fighting games in Japan, such as Vampire Chronicle for Matching Service for the Sega Dreamcast. It should also sound familiar to anyone wondering about this "Nintendo Go" thing and what it has to do with the Revolution. To Taninami, it was just the cultural template he was looking for. Of course; this is how a network game must work. And thus he built his own Go parlor. Sort of.

[Continue "GDC: The Localization of Counter-Strike in Japan"]

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This might be one of the more interesting and astute articles on gaming i've read in years; that says more about the state of gaming articles in general than this specific one. If you have some time, read through it all.

Joe Molotov

Japanese gamers suck. I mean, we play all their fruity games, the least they can do is play our FPS's without adding cherry blossoms, minigames, anime characters, hairy guys in fatigues (?), and etiquette that includes special treatment for newbies (WTF???).

Breakfast with Girls

So, in conclusion, turn Counter-Strike into a different game and take it out of the home and into an arcade-style place.

Derrich

I dont get it. We eat up all the crazy loony anime thats shipped over here, but heaven forbid Japanese gamers have to endure a character with hairy arms.

D

Giantrobo

I love how the same culture that gives us some of the most disgusting degrading porn can't handle American video games without cute characters, corny music, and pretty colors.

I'm sure the usual, "American Games Suck!" crowd will chime in soon...

kakihara1

That's funny and it couldn't be more true.

But still the Japanese know how to make great games...........and super filthy porn

I hadn't really thought about it but true to my username I watch a shitload of Asian movies and Takashi Miike is one of my favorite directors anyone who's seen his films know that not only is there porn industry disturbing but with the likes of Visitor Q, Ichi the Killer, and Audition, their whole film industry is pretty fucked up as well.........so they can handle the ultraviolent films but not the games eh? Oh well let us make the ultraviolent games and they can continue to make films and super cool games.

dugan

While we're at it, there's another really good article on localizing videogames here:

MultiLingual Computing Inc - Games Localization: Production and Testing

Like the article we're discussing, it also brings up a lot of points that I had never considered before reading it.

Josh H

That's pretty lame.

I don't like games like Counterstrike because of the gameplay. I couldn't give a shit less what the characters look like.

Similarly, I don't like the japanese games I love because of the characters either, but because I like the style of gameplay.

Pretty silly to change all that up. If it won't sell over there, don't release it over there. Just like we don't get the dating sims and other "too odd" japanese games over here.

kvrdave

Culture is a curious thing. While most Japanese games are a little too weird for me, I don't like most of the counter strike genre either, so it isn't difficult to imagine that there is a culture that it doesn't really appeal to.

I always figured that because of Japan's huge population density, people liked to escape other people when engaging in recreational pursuits. I would.

tor_greg

I understand putting head-to-head machines in arcades, though. Over there arcades are HUGE, the PC market being tiny.

kakihara1

Good Read

greydt

Wow, I shouldn't be surprised by the amount of ignorant knee-jerk reactions to the article, but I guess it surprises me that even professed gamers can still act like the "Ugly American".

I'm getting a sense from people like Giantrobo, Joe Molotov, Derrich, etc. that it isn't even about the changes made to Counter-Strike, but a "Rah Rah USA! USA!" mode of thought. First of all, none of this affects how we play Counter-Strike here in the US. Second, it's an interesting article on how someone is attempting to localize a game popular elsewhere but not locally: whether it works is questionable, but the presumed cultural difference is interesting to see nonethless.

Seeing that I'm a "American Game" PC Gamer, I guess I'm outside of Giantrobo's "crowd" to chime in how incorrect he is

Draven

I think the overriding point is that American gamers, for the most part, seem to be able to accept a Japanese-style game without a lot of stylechanges (I know a lot of gamers don't like that style, but it's more of a "either you like it or you don't" mindset.) But it seems that in order for a Western-style game to be accepted, it has to be "Japanesed-up" first.

So it comes across that Japanese gamers are only interested in Japanese-styled games, whereas American gamers seem to be more accepting of Japan's way of doing things. Not trying to be ignorant or racist or anything, just the way that it appears to me.

kakihara1

Dude What??! I didn't read that as Rah Rah anything just pointing out that Japanese Culture doesn't deem ultraviolence or the otherwise extreme on film as being anything to scoff at but western style games which in contrast would be considered tame do. /ignorant knee-jerk reaction

fujishig

I don't think this generalization can be made. Sure, FPS's aren't huge in Japan, as they were mainly developed for computers in the US. But you can't really say that Americans are more "accepting." For one thing, American gamers for the most part grew up on Japanese-style games, be it Mario or Final Fantasy, so it's not a foreign concept to them. For another, we don't get half of the funky games that the Japanese enjoy... sure, recently we've gotten stuff like Katamari Damacy and Phoenix Wright, but EGM does a whole feature every month on quirky Japanese games that will never come out here.

Though the changes were smaller than the ones done to Counterstrike, let's look at DragonQuest VIII, where the developers felt they needed to add voices and make a graphical (instead of pure text) menu system for the US release.

Ah, they are two totally different markets, and companies have to cater to that. If this takes off, Microsoft should be very excited. Let's see how this localization goes. What's interesting is that we have a group of gamers in the states who hate any changes localization teams make... somehow I doubt there are many similar fans in Japan.

Joe Molotov

Please, save you righteous indignation. I'm just amused at the fact that American games have been eating up Japanese games for decades, but yet Japanese gamers flat out refuse to buy American games (or American gaming consoles) unless, according to this article anyway, it get's animied up for them. I'll gladly retract my amusement if you can present some hard evidence to prove that this is not true.

Josh H

The Japanese just have good taste in games, like us American gamers that prefer japanese developed games.

Derrich

It's not that Japanese games are better. Some are, some arent. But at least we get to choose. Japanese gamers refuse to even consider that a US made game(or console) can be good. For the most part, when a Japanese game comes to the US it gets new voices and translations, and maybe a tweak in the difficulty. But from the article, it seems that for an american game to be accepted in Japan, it has to be completly de-americanized to the point where it's not really identifiable.

D

Giantrobo

Ah man spare me the bullshit. We were just having fun you baby.

I thought the article was funny, informative, and very typical of the Japanese. I say that having been a HUGE fan of Japanese culture/games/toys/ Sci fi and other stuff since the mid 70's ,when many here were still shittin' their diapers, and having married a Japanese woman.

Also Girlfriend, It's not about "Rah Rah America" or anything like that. Hell, most things get "localized" for different countries when they get sent from America and it's no big deal.

Giantrobo

That's fine and it's cool that you guys have found your "thing". No one cares. Just don't look down on the rest of us for feeling differently or being able to have a wider range of tastes in games .

PixyJunket

I think it's important to note that, while they may be adding an "anime" element to this game, that's certainly not the main detractor in the graphical style of this game. There are plenty of Japanese games that have a more realistic look to them.. the difference is, of course, there's some fucking design behind them. Most, but certainly not all, American made games are ugly as shit.. soulless visuals that appear to have been generated completely via computer algorithms with zero human design. Do American companies (other than Blizzard) have art departments? Does somebody actually sit down and design the generic soldiers in your typical FPS game or do they simple call pre-defined functions from their development kits: draw_solider(), draw_tree()..? Neither would surprise me.

Don't get me wrong, this isn't a "fanboy" slant or attack or anything like that (I just bought Midnight Club 3!).. it's just my observation being in the world of gaming for 20+ years. Discarding the notion of gameplay, from a visual standpoint Japanese developers seem to be FAR more vested in video/computer gaming as a means of creating fantasy worlds while American developers seem to be obsessed with emulating reality. I don't think it's unfair to suggest that because of this difference in regards to design, it's common to see a lot of Japanese games remain in people's hearts and minds because of their characters and worlds while a lot of American games seem to be forgotten once the newest game comes out boasting a higher poly-count, poop-mapping or gyro-lighting.

Josh H

Exactly. Besides gameplay, that's the reason I prefer Japanese developed games. As I've said countless times, I play games to escape from the world for a bit. As such, games in a well designed fantasy setting work much better than the typical western game that is just trying to recreate the real world as accurately as possible.

mmconhea

that kind of stuff I do for a living.
Converting US games to Japanese games is really so difficult, a lot of US companies don't even try.
this specific game makes for a great case study, because a lot of thought was put into it. But I would consider it a net loss because there is no way this game is going to make it in that market. The social climate in Japan for network games is really not action-oriented- it's turn-based. There would have to be a revolution for CS to be a hit. It would be like an on-line Japanese version of GO making it big here.

thanks for the article- Gamasutra does have a lot of other great localization articles on it.
Localizing games really is tough work compared to other material.

Josh H

It was a joke. I'm not going to really look down on somone for the type of games they like or don't like. To each his own.

Hell I play games only a couple hours a week, so why should I care.

Gallant Pig

I think the Japanese culture, aside from Hollywood and weird little fetish things they aquire from other places (chihuahaus), is pretty closed to the outside world. I doubt you'd see Fords or Chevy's if you went there.