For those unfamiliar with Monster Hunter, it's the most fun when you link up with 4 people over local WiFi and run around completing quests with really basic objectives; find a bunch of items in the environment, go kill X number of monsters or hunt a major monster. When you hunt, you can either kill the target or attempt to capture it alive which is easier said than done.
You have 2 "classes" gunner and blade master. Your "class" is determined by what weapon you equip. It's really really basic stuff. There's no storyline either. You are a hunter of monsters in Pokke Village. The rest is up to you.
Anyways, what really amazed me is the sheer variety of people that are playing this game and enjoying it. All my group members would be what your average American would call a "girly girl." Into make up, the occasional male pop idol and cute sparkling things. You can add Monster Hunter to that.
It's pretty remarkable how the conversations can switch between "which of these cute glittery stickers should I put on my PSP? Are the rhinestones too much?" to "so, what are we gonna kill next?" One girl wanted me to halt the quest departure since she had the wrong equipment set on. After she got her heat resistant armor and ice sword for the desert raid, we all noticed how she changed her hair color and accessories to match her new sword.
One girl, YK, makes these Monster Hunter gatherings feel like a pretty big deal at times, though the mood is quite relaxed and fun. She keeps things pretty small(4 or 6 people only, occasionally 8 to make sure that people can be divided into effective teams. Max per party is 4 players.) Everyone whose participated takes turns bringing some amazing treat. I brought some high end cream puffs, pictured above, along with our PSPs. That was 2 weeks ago, yesterday's gathering I made pasta and then we put all of your PSPs artfully into the pasta sauce pot after YK washed it and dried it. All the PSPs were visible in the photo and the one in front had the Monster Hunter 2nd G title screen.
These gatherings, while started with the purpose of playing Monster Hunter or Phantasy Star Portable, end up being something more. We also explore some new restaurants or foods, catch up on life, etc. I usually go shopping with YK and her sister before we sit down and play MH or to the ice skating center for some laps around the rink. I can't deny though, that I wouldn't have met some neat people or had these great experiences had I not ran out and grabbed Monster Hunter.
In contrast, back in the US, some female gamer friends of mine have said they get looked down upon or somehow "less hardcore" if they want to enjoy being a girl as opposed to a "grrl." We're not the Frag Dolls or PMS Clan, we're not interested in taking no prisoners then leaving no evidence in a shooter. We like hair accessories, we like putting inane bling on our PSPs, are fairly fashion conscious(budget permitting) and we also group up and take down giant frilly dragons that we all give really cute nicknames with matching long swords and gun lances. And deciding on what we're going to kill based on "I need a new pair of boots. It takes 2 pelts from Mr. Rumble-kins."
"Mr. Rumble-kins" is a big ape with pink skin and white fur whose gut rumbles before he farts out toxic clouds of gas at the party, only to perish from an explosive shell shot out of YK's heavy artillery.
A few things concerning my "Japanese Mythbusters" type column. I'm at the point where my personal well is dry and I need some user input to find more stuff to bust or ultimately prove true. When it comes to gaming, there are always exceptional exceptions like 78 year old Akira Kitajima who keeps his FPS gaming PC up to spec regularly plus writes Japanese language FAQs/Walkthroughs on his personal website. Hell, he's so die hard he uses an American Keyboard. Browsing his site, he seems like anything but a Japanese gamer geek, having traveled the world, played sports, etc. The stereotype being a Hikkikomori.
>Japan's entire attitude about gaming seems to be going in a
look-don't-touch direction, what with Japan's own games >advancing
mainly in aesthetics and storytelling and not really in gameplay.
For RPGs, sure. But for other genres? I'd hardly call anything of action and the subcategory thereof "look don't touch." Though don't touch is a very important principle in Danmaku Hell shooters. Touch a bullet, you're dead! But I know that's not what you're talking about.
>How popular are America's NBA, MLB, NFL, and NASCAR on Japanese TV?
Baseball is pretty popular since some major Japanese aces have been imported by American teams. Matsui, Ichiro, Daisuke, wow, I don't even like baseball but I know a few names. The rest might show up on some premium sports channel, but they're pretty much ignored in favor of home grown versions. Soccer is a close second behind baseball, and soccer hasn't caught on for squat in the USA. Really, America is a great big soccer island. I'm sure any European readers want to strangle me since I'm not calling it "football." And behind the real football according to the rest of the world is high school baseball. Yes, high school baseball gets on national TV. Arguably, sports is the ultimate war metaphor, so of course there's all kinds of unwarranted pride coursing through peoples and "their" teams.
>Could you write a post about the state of American software translation in Japan?
It's certainly on an upswing with Fallout 3, GTA4, just about every major release on 360 is getting localized to Japan. I wouldn't be surprised if the localization is done entirely in the USA. I mean translation, editing, any necessary programming or in-game artwork is all done here in the US for European releases(at least it was when I was at Lucas Arts.) Likewise, Japanese development teams are responsible for integrating English and other languages when their games get released elsewhere. For more on that specific nightmare, check JC's blog, he's had to wrestle with that far more than I have.
>I read interviews with the producers of Silent Hill and Lost Odyssey
who said that one of their problems is that they >want to use cutting
edge American tech like Unreal Engine 3, but that it has a ton of
documentation that gets late >and poor translation into Japanese, if at
all.
This is a huge problem. The overall statement of engine documentation has a lot of choice 4 letter words you can assign to it, but I'll just leave it as "poor." Unreal Engine has 1 master, namely it's creator; Epic Games.
Also, the amount of work required when you start taking an engine and deviating it from the type of game it originally was used to make, goes up exponentially as you deviate. Epic can't even adequately support star Western developers such as Bioware, so I can't even think of how poor they are to Japanese companies. Unreal killed my enjoyment of Mass Effect. Random framerate drops, random pauses to load, the scene going from a bland version of Killer 7 to realistic over the course of 3 seconds, etc. And this is Bioware. They have experience making engines like the Aurora Engine they used for the original Never Winter Nights and Knights of the Old Republic games. Bioware is a company with top tier talents working for them and they still struggle. That's telling.
Unreal relies on cutting edge hardware, which game consoles may not always keep up. I am not sure if normal mapping and all that dynamic lighting that Unreal has in their tech demo is hardware accelerated by consoles. It sure is on the PC they use to show off the tech to executive bean counters that just like the sounds of those buzzwords.
For those uncertain as to what normal mapping is, it's an "invisible" texture layer that just contains data on what the mathematical normal or "up vector" is for any given point on a model. It lets you add amazing amounts of detail to a model without actually having to sit there and actually push the polys. However, the normal map data is used by the shader so until the lighting kicks in, you won't see the detail. And yay, I just used that linear algebra I busted my brain on at the University. Woo hoo! To see how to make a really good normal map and what it can do, check this tutorial out at CGTextures. Scroll about 2/3s of the way down to see a rock texture rendered with a normal map. No modeling required. Pretty amazing tech no doubt, but it comes at a steep hardware cost.
Now, if Epic provides a complete manual, that places them miles ahead of just about every other game engine out there. A previous employer of mine used Torque Game Engine. The original version of that engine would just...die if you tried to make something other than a corridor shooter. Support consists of trolling Garage Games' forum and praying someone tried to do what you did. A lot of people are trying due to the low price and cross platform abilities that TGE boasts. Their scripting language is basically C# with some variables already set which is another very good thing going for it. C# is so easy, I've been able to use it.
Other middleware could be different. Havok's cloth physics is getting around for making character costumes behave in a life-like manner. Soul Calibur IV and Folklore use it, I'm sure there are plenty of others. Seeing how specialized this middleware is, they can really fine tune their interfaces and make their product easy to implement and properly support it.
To me, Unreal Engine on a console has become a scarlet letter/seal of disapproval and it decreases my interest in the product. I might go back and play all these Unreal engine games when I upgrade my PC when(maybe if) I move back to the USA, but by then I'm sure I'll have forgotten about them or decide not to ultimately buy them due to other PC gaming issues like DRM.
If there's one thing SquareEnix has demonstrated repeatedly in the past, it's that they know how to make something look good without bleeding edge tech.
FPS and Motion Sickness
As someone with severe motion sickness and being of Japanese descent, I can tell you that a majority of Japanese people engage in activities that would have me running for my barf bag in seconds. Reading books on a train sitting backwards, playing PSPs on the subway or in cars, all of these activities known for motion sickness are done by a great portion of Japanese people on a daily basis.
I'm not sure how selective motion sickness is, but I'm sure that these people wouldn't become suddenly ill if given a first person shooter. Granted, there does to be something disorienting about an FPS in ways. Always seeing your character means you can always measure distances between any object around him or her. Even if one doesn't get motion sick from doing so, a first person platforming game just doesn't sound like it would work.
The biggest hurdle that first person games have in Japan is hardware. First Person works really well with a mouse, not so much with a home console controller and even less so on a cell phone or hand held console. What's popular in Japan right now? The DS and PSP for sure. I know that cell phones are cutting edge and capable of pretty good 3D games. I've seen people play a 3D Gundam game on their phones and all. I still can't be sure how popular cell phone gaming really is over here.
The Wii has strong FPS potential but the Wii is a notoriously hard to read market. Yes, a lot of hardware has moved. No doubt all the publicity about Wii Sports being used to help kids cope with cancer, assist with physical rehab or whatever. There are a few good first person games on Wii. Metroid and Elebits. I quite liked Elebits though I did get a bit woozy after a while. Metroid is pretty smooth.
Motion sickness certainly isn't a really valid reason for first person games not doing well. Make em accessible, make them friendly to the platforms Japan loves(that's a super tall order outside of the Wii.)
Anime/Manga vs Realism.
You know, up until this current generation of consoles, getting realistic graphics was practically impossible. If you try to make something realistic and then for whatever technical reasons, have to start cutting a lot of corners like polygon counts and texture resolution and all of a sudden, what seemed quite realistic in 3D has become polygon mud.
During the 8 and 16 bit eras, stylization was mandatory. 8 bit, certainly. 16 bit, artists were certainly more ambitious as you started having still frames that looked like grainy photos but it was a stretch. I guess I should say, at 16 bit, people certainly tried.
The 32 bit era brought as many colors as the human eye is capable of recognizing. making it possible to load realistic photos and video.
Okay, enough beating around the bush with all this hardware history, it just looks better if things are stylized when technology can't deliver real. Even if technology can push more polys than the uncanny valley can shake an uncanny stick at, solid style will stand out above the crowd.
I can't quite recall where I heard it or what game it was about, but some game had a bunch of enemies chasing a character. JP Techno limitations could only show 4-5 enemies chasing, but due to creative camera angles, the player was given the illusion that a huge horde of guys was after him/her.
Of course, if they had some better tech, they could have actually shown a lot more enemies. But the creative camera angles worked. So does the technological limit really matter?
It is indeed true that manga has a lot more cultural acceptance in Japan than comics do in the US, but comic book publishers are mostly to blame for this, not American culture. There's manga for ANYONE, but comics? Not so much.
So, you have a look that's well accepted and low-tech friendly. Put two and two together and it's pretty dang obvious why stylized graphics are so in! While most home consoles and PCs have the ability to push the polygons and texture resolutions to fool people, there's still the widely popular DS and PSP. The Wii might be able to...Maybe...I suppose if developers really figure out some awesome tricks, we might get some high fidelity stuff outta a Wii but I'm not holding my breath, I don't really care either.
I suppose over in the West, you want to show off how impressive your poly-pushing techonogy is? Show off something realistic and people go ooh! wow! That's some amazing stuff there. But on the flip side, there's our friends at Pixar. Recognizable style, yes some stuff they do is amazingly realistic like the way fur moved in Monsters Inc, but even then, consider the fact that the super real Final Fantasy CG movie flopped(it was a mediocre bout of storytelling which Pixar doesn't do) but Pixar...Wow. Perhaps game developers can thank Pixar for conditioning Western audiences to appreciate stylized graphics. Anime master Hayao Miyazaki might too, as he gets a lot of praise and interest outside of Japan. And among anime, Miyazaki's art is undeniably unique.
In conclusion, style has the power to make something look amazing and great in spite of technology. It's something I wish developers would put to use more often, as the most notable Western dev to do this is Blizzard with World of Warcraft & platform scalability. Good art directors that can make every in-game object look consistent with a style are extremely important since if anything looks out of place, there goes the style.
Make use of style, it beats getting lost in the tide of realistic wanna-bes.
Japan and the West are so different! Or so everyone leads to believe, but I honestly think that the similarities are far more striking than many people make them out to be. I for one, have not changed my game design philosophies one bit. Of course, I've distilled my game design philosophy to just one sentence:
Don't make crap, make fun.
Crap is pretty universal, and so is fun. I mean, look at Nintendo. Loved by audiences worldwide, Nintendo's modus operandi is "make it fun and they will come." Actually, I should change my philosophy to don't design crap. If the programmers are being forced to use completely and utterly stinks, that can make a well designed game turn into crap to name one example. Anyways, here's what I've noticed.
Co-op Rocks!
Japanese and Westerners alike enjoy it. Everyone's rushing to add it. Plus, it can save a mediocre game plus spur some sales. "Hey Bob, I just got Mercenaries 2. We can both play it together over live and blow stuff up!" "Awesome, Jim! I'll go grab it and we can have us some good times lighting everything on fire!" Now, had this mediocre game been single player, the conversation would have likely gone like this: "Hey Bob, I just got Mercenaries 2. The AI sucks, the mission design sucks, it's pretty neat that you can blow everything all to heck and back, but eh, I can do that in other games." "Thanks for the heads up Jim, I'll skip this turkey." You can throw in Too Human among others into that conversation. Going from a crappy game to an experience you share with friends has incredible value. I've been playing crappy paper and pencil RPGs with friends for ages. Why did I keep doing it? It's my friends, I like spending time with them. Just them being there makes the whole experience enjoyable.
The major difference comes in how each side prefers to enjoy their co-op. Strangely enough, the Japanese are perfectly fine with playing co-op games with other individuals in the same room as they are. I am about to test their willingness to venture forth with strangers later this week. Namely, I will wander about the streets of Nagoya with my PSP and Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G hitting up various fast food joints to see if any random person will party with me.
As for the US, I don't know if I'd want to meet any of the people I play with over Xbox Live, PSN etc in real life. The notorious "chocolate milk" kid would probably be beaten alive if he tried to scream at people in real life like he did over the internet.
Minor considerations would need to be done for designing communication systems and all, but overall, co-op is co-op, it's fun being able to accomplish more together than you would alone.
Well, here's the order of things you need to do to get settled in. At least, this is the one I did.
1-Get an inkan or personal seal. I recommend securing this the DAY you arrive, if not earlier. This is your signature. You cannot open any kind of bank, phone, utility or rental account without one. Get it. Yesterday.
2-Dwellings. This is the nastiest, expensive thing to set up. If your are not planning to move over permanently, consider looking at a Leo Palace 21 furnished home.
3-Bank Account. Having an address helps with the bank account and everything else. I was able to get by using my company phone # for a while, since my bank account has proven WAY easier to get than a cell phone or internet service. Don't ask. Allegedly, JAL(yes, Japan Airlines) rents cell phones. Might be good to temp with one of those for starters. I set this up as quickly as I can since my only payment option at work is direct deposit. They wouldn't cut a regular pay check. I have heard that issuing and depositing checks in Japan incurrs wicked fees.
4-Set up automatic bill pay for key utilities.
There is a flip side to me starting the 1st of October instead of the 30th of September. I won't have taxes witheld for my first paycheck. Okay, no big.
Also, bonus.
5-Get a PSP and Monster Hunter. It's a phenomenon in Japan for sure that borders the WoW phenomenon in the USA. You can bond with your co-workers and make friends with random people at McDonalds.
The PSP is a deal considering that PSP+GPS unit is cheaper than most complete navigation unit packages. 16,000 yen for a used PSP, then 5,000 yen for the GPS unit and mappy software. Most car navis start at 25,000 yen and good ones tend to be 30,000 yen.
Plus, the PSP can guide you to various super markets and convenience stores. Before you accuse me of being some sort of shill for Sony, I am poor. I am not getting any money by saying this. I figured that a tip for a cheap means of finding your way around would not be a bad thing.
My cousin found his way to my new apartment thanks to his PSP and MAPLUS. I do not know if MAPLUS is region locked.
JC Barnett offers a great view of Japan from an artist's point of view as well as that of a pure gaijin jumping into Japan.
When most gaijin think of Japan and the game industry, Nagoya is probably the last place they think of. As far as I know, I think I'm at the only video game company in the city which is rather odd, it's a nice city. Fukuoka has Level 5, Alpha System and CyberConnect Corp. Osaka has Capcom. Kyoto has Nintendo and Cing(makers of Hotel Dusk Room 215. Great game, by the way!)
I would not go out to say that Nagoya is the greatest city ever but I feel nicer here than in Tokyo. Tokyo is a massive city of around 10 million while Nagoya weighs in at 2.2 million or so. Nagoya still has a lot as far as geek shops(every major nerd store in Akihabara is also in Kamimaezu, the town within Nagoya in which I work.) The population drop is quite noticable. Even during rush hour, I have managed to find seats on the subway. Train personell wave flags and herd disembarkers away from the train exits so people can get on faster but you won't be getting hand packed like a sardine.
Prices are about half of those of Tokyo as far as rents are concerned. I pay a little over 60,000 yen for a rather large 1 kitchen, 1 dining room 1 bedroom fancy apartment with a host of security features, satellite TV, etc. I would easily pay twice that in Tokyo, but I would not earn twice the salary. I initially freaked out after calculating my expenses. But, I have a reasonable amount of money to save or play with as I see fit. I don't know if I would have ANY of that in Tokyo.
I know some folks out there are avid readers of Outpost 9/Gaijin Smash. I am not a school teacher in Japan, I am a video game designer/planner. in Nagoya, you will NOT be the only foreigner in the city by a long shot. Numerous large, world reknowned Universities are attracting loads of foreigners here. Most signs are in Japanese and English. A lot of the signs in the subway are in English, Japanese, Chinese and Korean. Due to the influx of Brazilians working in to Toyota automotive manufacturing plants, I have seen advertisements and official materials in Portugese as well. Children won't flip out, you won't be the first gaijin that the average citizen here sees.
More to come!
And in 1 piece too. Plus all my stuff in tact, remarkable considering the sheer volume of stuff I've got.
It's 6:28pm here, but it feels like 1:28am to me. I'm tempted to just shower and call it a night. The humidity here is terrible relative to the west coast of the USA. Tomorrow I've got a lot of stuff to prepare for so I might as well go to bed sooner rather than later.
I don't know how up-to-date this list is, but it's an excellent start. If you have a 4 year degree, you can apply for JET. I don't think the requirements for the private institutions are nearly as strict as JET's but from what I understand, you're a lot more likely to have fun with the JET program.
Good luck to all!
The Japanese Embassy in San Francisco's homepage lists companies that hire English teachers from overseas.
Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program
This cultural exchange program, sponsored by the Japanese
government, invites young professionals from eleven countries to live
in local Japanese communities as either Assistant Language Teachers
(ALT) of Coordinators for International Relations (CIR).
Please click here to
go to the JET home page for more information.
|
 NOVA GroupSan Francisco Office 601 California Street, Suite 702, San Francisco, CA 94108 TEL: (415) 788-3717 FAX: (415) 788-3726 applications@nova-sf.com www.teachinjapan.com GEOS Language Corporation Vancouver Office 808 Nelson St., Ste. 618, Vancouver, BC V6Z 2H2 CANADA TEL: (604) 684-GEOS (4367) FAX: (604) 687-GEOS (4367) Toll-Free: 1-877-584-GEOS (4367) vancouver@geoscareer.com www.geoscareer.com Interac Co., Ltd. Recruiting Department (head office) Fujibo Building 2F, Fujimi 2-10-28, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-0071 JAPAN TEL: (03) 3234-7857 FAX: (03) 3234-6055 recruit@interac.co.jp www.interac.co.jp/recruit YMCA
of the USA International Office for Asia OSCY Program Administrator 909 4th Avenue, Seattle, WA 98104 (206) 382-5003 Teaching English in Japan, Institute for Education on Japan Earlham College Drawer 202, Richmond, IN 47374-4095 (317) 983-1324 or (888) 685-2726 Website: www.earlham.edu/~aet E-mail: sebener@earlham.edu AEON Intercultural Corporation 1960 East Grand Ave. #550 El Segundo, CA 90245 (310) 414-1515 Website: www.aeonet.com E-mail: aeonla@aeonet.com |
I imagine that there are very few companies that are familiar with the hair process of getting a visa in Japan that authorizes you to get employed over there. If you live in the US, here's a convenient map of all the Japanese embassies in the nation. Hopefully there is one not too far from you.
If you get a work authorization visa through one of the many Eikaiwa(English Conversational Schools) you can transfer that visa to another company, even if the field of employment is different. At least, this is what I've heard from friends and others out there on the web. You might want to call up your local Japanese embassy to verify this to make sure.
Processing the paperwork once you have it all together has been quite quick, but the gathering of said necessary paperwork on the other hand, hasn't been.
I've been using Apaman Shop for apartment searching over there. Japansmanship has outlined a few basic things to watch for as far as apartment shopping is concerned, but I can hurl a few words your way that should help, in Japanese. By the way, the Japanese use English abbreviations for rooms. Like K for kitchen, D for Dining Room.
A few more sites for searching apartments. Nissho and Minimini.
家賃 やちん Rent.
敷金 しききん Deposit money.
礼金 れいきん Gift money. Yes, it's a gift to the land lord and you won't ever see it again.
新築 しんちく New construction. Shows when the complex itself was built.
駅徒歩 えきとほ Walking distance to a station.
駐車場 ちゅうしゃじょう Car park. No, you really don't need one in Japan.
If you can't read the hiragana that tells you what the kanji to the left means, then please study that before you even think of going to Japan for any reason whatsoever.
Most company websites show maps along with the nearest train station and a few notable landmarks. When looking for housing, look up that train station. Which lines run through it? Look that up! Most companies offer to pay for all public transportation related commuting expenses, so I would strongly recommend choosing where you live around train stations. I'd also see how often service goes between the station near your prospective apartment and the station near your prospective workplace. Any express trains? How many stops for regular service? Express service? Are there any alternate routes?
Plus, gas prices are a little over 2x what you'd pay in America. Apartments rarely include parking spaces, a majority of highways in Japan are toll roads(they are payways, not freeways that charge by distance between exits that you use too!) Plus, as someone used to driving in the United States, I feel like I'm an accident waiting to happen. I'm sure my instinct will betray me. Now if you're from the UK or OZ, maybe driving in Japan won't be so scary to you. All you need to do is learn some new signs and laws, but you won't have some innate, awkward feeling that you're on the wrong side of the road at all times.
Will post more about this subject as soon as possible.
