Culture in games

Sup everybody! My favorite article and the one that found to be most interesting was “The Place of Games In Culture”. I like how this article really showed the importance of culture in video games. How different cultures are displayed in video games has always been something that I paid close attention to, I’m an artist and like details. So I look at the scenery and character design and take note of the customs that the NPCs practice in the video game. By NPC I am referring to Non-playable characters. One of the things that Daniel Johnson mentioned in his article was how the video game industry is practically dominated by America and Japan. Which is absolutely true and I am completely disappointed by this fact. People now days act like if a game was not made by an American or Japanese game development company then the game is not going to be good. With the world stuck in this type of mentality companies like Quantic Dream have no hope of ever becoming widely known outside of France. It is really sad since Japan is not doing that great with their video games anymore and America has never done a good job when it comes down to creativity and story, and now they are slacking more than ever. It seems that we have fallen into this cycle of western games that takes place in the east and eastern games that take place in the west. And to make it worst it appears that they have been made by people who have not actually been to the country they are trying to portray and the only thing that they know about the culture that they are using for the game is what they read in books or saw in movies. I guess I look for a little too much realism from the games I play as well as something new and unique. Instead of copying a culture you know nothing about or boring your consumers with the same regurgitated game concepts, why not try coming up with something a little more unique the way Nintendo did for the Legend of Zelda.