We always find it astounding when discovering cultural differences. Most of us grow up in our national bubble little realising the amazing quirks other nations have. For instance did you know that on New Years Eve in Spain they eat a grape on every dong at midnight? That's 12 seeded grapes in your mouth! It's hilarious and way better than Auld Lang Syne. These cultural quirks are seen in all art forms, one of the things that makes humanity so wonderful. History obviously plays a huge part in each nation, World War 2 has spawned hundreds of games mainly from the Allied perspective.
Only in the last few years are we seeing games from different wars but also from a non conflict standpoint. Behind the numbers of millions dead are countless human stories. Not just of victory but suffering, pain and death. I don’t want to dwell on this but point out how the perspective and culture plays a huge part in game development. History is told by the winners, or in this case the ones in charge.
One reason for this wondering is that I began writing this from a rooftop in Marrakesh with the sun setting, wondering how else the world sees gaming? I walked past the the grimiest arcade you have ever seen in the streets but bar that gaming culture was not very apparent.
Below I want to talk about as many countries as I can, to shine a light on some of the titles they make and how they game. As for the bigger more established gaming countries I will have a look at their history, as there some really interesting things we may have missed. To sum it all up, what is gaming around the world like?
China
Over the last few years one of the most interesting aspects of Cinema and in particularly Hollywood has been the growing influence of China. With dedicated scenes, actors and whole movies now being created for this huge market, it’s influence is growing. Now we are beginning to see the same in Video Games.
There has been a complicated history with the Communist Government outright banning video game consoles for 15 years beginning in 2000. The argument was that these devices were having ‘a negative effect on the mental and physical development of children’. Eventually production was allowed in Shanghai to be sold across the rest of the country after ‘cultural inspections’. With China’s less than stringent copyright implementation led to a proliferation of knock off consoles and games which will obviously hurt sales. It’s a huge market but a tough one to crack.
Since then China has changed its licensing rules causing a collapse in the number of games released. In fact there was a total freeze of new approvals during 2018 leading to a huge backlog of titles. This turbulence could cause financial issues for games companies but hopefully they are astute enough to not blow the bank on breaking China.
In fact the latest rule changes as of this week have been a ban on blood of any colour in a game, poker and anything that touches upon imperial history. We can safely say these won’t be the last changes of what’s acceptable in the country.
Although this may not sound like it’s important to you Chinese censorship could lead to huge changes from titles not made there. Just look at the Rainbow Six Siege where Ubisoft removed a lot of the blood, gambling and sexual content due to Chinese censorship. They didn’t just apply it to China but worldwide so it was basically cheaper to keep updating. After a backlash they put all the content back but I think this is just the beginning of censorship issues.
Some games have been outright banned such as Hearts of Iron for ‘distorting history and damaging China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity; and Battlefield 4 for ‘smearing the image of China and endangering national security’.
So now to production of games in China. The biggest company Tencent is a massive conglomerate that is involved in everything from social media to film production to AI. Part of the company is Tencent Gaming who holds massively influence over the Chinese market. It began in 2003 focusing on online gaming and began producing some games for social media. In 2011 they bought Rio Games, creators of League of Legends which is huge over there. It also partly owns Fortnite and PUBG which is obviously huge.
They even made their own console in 2017, the TGP (Tencent Gaming Platform) but its biggest move has been the creation of WeGame, an online gaming platform to host games, content and services. This is massive as it is aiming to bring many more games to China such as Stardew Valley and Minecraft. WIth a big consumer base in Asia the company is looking west for more customers. As of March this year they are now the biggest games company in the world. Expect to hear far more about these guys.
Australia
You would assume that the localisation process (changing the language, tone and making it culturally appropriate) would only really apply to games going to a completely different region. Say a Polish game such as the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt going to Korea. Weirdly one of the hardest countries to release in is Australia. English speaking with strong ties to Europe and America you would have thought it would be easy to ship and release a title. But no.
Most games come out much later than in other regions, they cost a lot more and worse of all they need to go through the Australian Classification Board. Much like the BBFC in the UK they are meant to go through games to give them an age rating and take it upon themselves to take out anything they find 'inappropriate´. Kind of why we have a rating system but whatever. I assume they will shit themselves when they find out the internet exists.
A lot of games have fallen foul of them, the most well known is the South Park game, Stick of Truth. The TV show is notorious for pushing the envelope in what is acceptable and obviously did this with the game. Unfortunately whole scenes were removed and replaced with written descriptions as it fell foul of the rules. This happened elsewhere like the UK but not to the degree it did there. You are paying more for less of a game. The phrase Artist Expression springs to mind yet they don’t see it that way. On top of this games and consoles often come out much later and at a higher price. Pity our poor Australian cousins.
Gamewise I have one title for you. Hollow Knight. The insanely fantastic metroidvania style title from Team Cherry out of Adelaide. They indie devs have set the bar very high and look to continue that with Hollow Knight: Silksong. Cannot wait!
UK
As most readers will reside in the UK most will know that the industry is massive here, with about 13,000 people actively working in games development. The variety of games is astounding with series like Worms, Football Manager, Little Big Planet and GTA all made in this country. It’s said there are over 2000 games companies, with the likes of Rocksteady just down the road of my flat!
As you can see it’s going very well but that could start to change. I hate to bring up Brexit but a large number of employees come from Europe. Any future barriers to free movement will cause issues which would be a huge blow to the industry. Let’s hope the likes of Creative Assembly and Traveller’s Tales game can still turn out the quality titles we expect.
USA
If Japan has been a constant on the gaming scene the United States has been more of a rollercoaster. There have been many recent highs and one almighty low. But this is in fact where Video games came from. We can thank the nuclear physicist Edward Condon for in 1940 he created the first computer capable of playing the classic game Nim. Thousands played this new creation but the computer won 90% of the time!
Fast forward to 1960s when Atari would create the first arcade game called Computer Space. Going to Arcades would become a huge part of American youths, especially in the 70’s and 80’s. The golden age was kicked off by the release of Space Invaders with Donkey Kong, Centipede and of course Pac Man becoming all time classics. You can see the appeal, a place that people could meet up to hang out at but the downside was hoovering up all your pocket money!
If TV killed the radio star, home consoles killed the arcade. Back in 1972 the first home console was the Magnavox Odyssey. Nope me neither! (Great to know for a proper nerdy pub quiz). It only took a few years for the development of cartridges so that players could buy and play new titles without needing a new console. Things grew and grew with plenty of companies pilling in with their own machines and tweaked versions of popular games.
Things looked great and could go on the same way forever. Alas that was not true and the Video Game Crash of 1983 lives on as a huge black mark. The culprit? ET of all things. Well that’s not entirely true, oversaturation of the market alongside peoples growing preference for a home computer that can do stuff as well as play games played a big part. But Atari's ET game of which they produced more than 12 million copies was hoped to be a blockbuster for the company after the films huge success.
The game was rushed and frankly rubbish so it tanked. With so many unsold and returned copies meant it basically killed Atari. Most of those copies ended up being buried in the desert only to have been dug up just a few years ago. The market crashed and it took the Japanese NES coming out in 1985 to help bring home console popularity.
The 1990’s were huge for video games but on the machine front the USA was very quiet. The main release was the Atari Jaguar but who owned one of those? We saw the release of the N64, Playstation and even Dreamcast all from Japan. It was such a huge task to succeed it took Microsoft of all companies to jump in with the Xbox in 2001. It had the first internal hard disk and launched Xbox Live for multiplayer which lives on to this day.
Though a decent number of sales at 22 million it was the Xbox 360 follow up that was a huge success. Probably one of the best consoles of all time in my opinion. Xbox seemed to lose it ways a little, with some strategies prior to Xbox One handing Sony a huge advantage in the ‘console wars’. Thankfully over the last 18 months everything seems to be back on track, with Microsoft concentrating on making more games for a machine that is first and foremost for games.
It’s obviously not all about consoles, games are the most important aspect and there are now loads of huge gaming companies in the states. EA, Bethesda and Epic Games to name just a few. The one that’s probably had the most influence? Valve. Starting out with making games, the first Half Life was huge. It would become renowned for the quality of its titles over the years with the brilliant Portal, Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead series. In recent years they have stepped away from making games to selling them.
Starting in 2003, Steam is the biggest online platform for buying PC games. Its vast collection has something for everyone and with its sales makes a lot of older games very cheap. You only have to look at the 443 games in my Steam library to know how prevalent it is. They have pushed into hardware with a controller and TV link but there are rumours of a move into VR, with numerous games being produced. The company is so huge it is not going anywhere but there are lots of issues. With how it curates the store, little in the way of updates and review bombing culture that it is finally trying to sort out. For all of the technological advances and changing consumer patterns the US is not going anywhere on the gaming front.
Germany
Although we may not think of Germany as a big gaming country some of the biggest series started here. Far Cry was the original creation of Crytek, better known for their Crysis series. Even though Far Cry was brought up by Ubisoft their new Berlin studio from last year now has a huge role in the series. Yager Development made the critically successful Spec Ops: The Line and another studio Blue Byte was picked up again by Ubisoft. They have released the potentially huge city building Anno 1800 on the 16th April which is one to keep an eye on.
For the lack of development compared to other countries this is actually a huge market, even bigger than the UK. An odd quirk is that Vehicle simulators are some of the most popular titles!
South Korea
Arguably the biggest gaming nation in terms of passion must be South Korea, just with the sheer amount that gaming is embedded into the culture. So much in fact that its thought that at the beginning of 1993, one in four homes had a console which is astounding for a hobby that is not cheap. Though this number is now reduced the passion is now shown in their love and dominance in esports.
There are numerous competitions and a bunch of teams competing with broadcasts being watched by millions of people. It sounds very alien to most people but in fact this is no different from watching sports on TV. If you want to know what is doing well, just see what companies sponsor. Microsoft. Samsung. SK Telecom. Huge companies flocking to be associated with the various teams based here. These competitions earn billions and thus the competitors can get paid big money. The two most popular titles in the country are StarCraft 2 and League of Legends.
Even the government has encouraged this industry, creating the World Cyber Games in 2000, seen as the Olympics of the video games world. This ran until 2013 when it all fell apart due to difficulties working with the organisation and its CEO, the whole thing was closed down. Pleasingly since then the name has been acquired by another company and the tournament is going again this summer in China.
As it is obviously so huge in the country the media does a great deal of reporting on it, with the biggest recurring scare stories are those of Video Game Addiction. As recently classified by the World Health Organisation (WHO), Gaming disorder is were someone prioritises gaming over anything else even after numerous negative effects to their own health, family and friendships.
There are still question marks over the validity of the studies but at least it is being taken seriously. With it being regularly thrown up in the media the Korean Government has taken steps to combat since 2011 including the ‘Cinderella’ law, which prohibits any under the age of 16 from playing games online between 10pm and 6am. One of the stories that alledley has occurred across multiple countries was someone dying from cardiac arrest. In this case it was meant to be after a 50 hour stint of StarCraft in an internet cafe back in 2005.
Although this seems all doom and gloom I don’t think it is all as bad as its made out. There are numerous issues and thought the government is trying to tackle them it seems a little heavy handed. It's still a relatively new media with the introduction of the internet created whole new formats that we couldn't imagine. One thing to look out for is Korea winning the Gold medal at the Olympics if they introduce video games as a new event.
South America
As one of the biggest markets for video games, Brazil has had an interesting history. Games were not allowed to be imported until the 1990s and even then were heavily taxed. Obviously this led to a black market of pirated games. Companies have struggled to gain a foothold, with even Nintendo leaving the country for a couple of years. The most well known game produced here is Behold Studios turn based RPG ‘Knights of Pen & Paper’.
As for Columbia, gaming has been hugely popular since the 1980’s helped in thanks as games and consoles are typically released at the same time as those in the USA. Development there was basically nonexistent until the current decade when the school system started producing huge numbers of engineers. Though there has not been any mainstream hits it must be only a matter of time for something to take the world by storm.
One of the most impressive achievements of recent years was Ecuadorian Paul Ruiz who won the Masters division of the Pokemon World Championship. This is normally the preserve of American or Japanese winners which shows in just a few short years how far South American competitive gaming has come, winning the biggest prize in competitive Pokemon.
Japan
Unlike the USA, Japan has had a continuous involvement in games development for the past 60 odd years. Sega released Periscope in 1966, a submarine simulator which was a huge hit. This arcade machine was the beginning of many, creating a whole new sub culture in Japan in the 1970s with the first blockbuster being Space Invaders. These ‘corner arcades’ could be found in bars, restaurants, even grocery stores! It was so popular that there was even an urban myth that there was a national shortage of 100 yen coins due to the machines.
There was a decline in popularity during the 1980’s only for a resurgence attributed to Capcom's classic Street Fighter II. This popularised the fighting game genre and can still be seen in the sheer variety of tournaments held. Arcades to this day are still hugely popular, with more money spent on them than either home consoles or mobile gaming.
As for console gaming, step forward Nintendo. The definition of family friendly gaming, the company is amazingly 129 years old! It began as playing card company before moving into new areas in the 1970s with several devices but the better known one was the Game & Watch. Simple devices with a single game on them, now seen as collector items. It was a great attempt at handheld gaming. Nintendo's real big move came with the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) or Famicom as it was known which not only introduced some of the biggest game series in the world also saved home consoles in the USA.
My first gaming love was the Game Boy, bringing the likes of Pokemon, Kirby and Mario to so many fans. The 1990’s probably began what was known as the console wars as Nintendo’s SNES went up against Sega Mega Drive. In the end Sega flopped with the Dream Cast and stepped away from making hard ware to be a successful developer and publisher of games.
Weird as it is to say now, the new kids on the block were Sony with the PlayStation, the first proper disk based console. Crash Bandicoot, Gran Turismo, GTA! Nintendo would stick with the cartridge on the N64 before catching up on the GameCube. Sega sunk a lot into the Dreamcast only for it to crash badly. A lot of the features were well ahead of the curve yet the world wasn't ready for them and so they stepped away to create and publish games for other consoles and PC.
When Nintendo released the Wii (one of the most popular consoles of all time) it was just beginning to slip behind the other two main players in Sony and Microsoft. This endures to this day, with what seems like they only really release a huge hit or miss consolewise. The Wii U was abject but the Switch has been absolutely brilliant. Sure it’s massively under powered compared to the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X but Nintendo have found their niche, not trying to compete purely on power giving players unique games to play on the go or on their TVs.
After slip ups with the PS3, Sony smashed it with the PS4 with over 90 million of them sold. It’s weird to talk about the ‘console wars’ and who is winning, as inevitable one will be more popular only for the other to catch up by the end. I am sure it will be the same in the next generation in a year or two.
It’s actually looking like a very healthy situation for gaming in Japan. Both major companies are prospering with their finest games and consoles in a long time. Even Sega seem to be doing pretty well.
It’s going to be an interesting couple of years ahead of us. Nintendo combining the handheld and home consoles should mean many more games coming from them over the next 24 months. Could this be the year of another Pokemon craze? Or will the ‘PS5’ reveal blow everything out of the water? We will just have to wait and see!
Poland
One of the most impressive turnarounds of games development can be found in Poland. Since the fall of the Soviet Union the games market was limited to, well, just that. Flea Markets. In the mid 90’s players could turn and up buy various sorts of hardware and software. Still years away from widespread internet usage this was the main way to get new games. Fast forward 20 years and the landscape couldn’t be more different. There are now two huge companies producing some of the best AAA titles out there.
Techland, creators of the very popular Dead Island and Dying Light series. And of course Projekt CD Red with their massive Witcher series. Originally starting out as a localisation company it would begin to grow and produce its own games. The Witcher 3 has been a game changer in terms of how the company is seen and what gamer's should expect from big open world RPGs. Not only the level of detail of the world but the writing and just how good the quests are. There is very little of the filler or fetch quests you see in say the Assassin's Creed series.
Next up for them is the hugely ambitious Cyberpunk 2077, which is said to be coming this generation. Set in a futurist California this RPG will is said to be the Sci Fi version of the Witcher. I really think it's going to be huge, even more so than the Witcher. Coming to this generation of consoles hopefully soon.
One other area that the company has expanded into was a digital games distribution GOG.com, aiming to preserve old games to keep access to them for all players. Since then it has grown to offer all the latest releases but in recent months has shed some of its staff. There are obviously some issues but hopefully they can keep going. It’s great that they cater to those who still love old PC titles.
Gaming production in Poland looks strong and hopefully will continue to grow.
New Zealand
In 2016 the New Zealand Game Developers Association did a survey that turned up some astounding stats. The average daily use is 88 minutes. 43% of people aged 65 or over play video games. And that 71% of non gamer's agree that they create culture. These are amazing, it sounds like from the consumer side of things New Zealanders are a mature lot. One stat that should not surprise us is that 48% of gamer's are female. Who knew??
As for the commercial side there is a thriving indie scene with the absolute fantastic Mini Metro by Dinosaur Polo Club, a perfect title for tablets. Inspired by the London Tube Map players have to connect shapes (stations) with tube lines to allow people to get around. Any major blockage causes you to fail. It’s a brilliant little title, probably one of the best from 2015. There was also Poly Bridge by Dry Cactus, a smart bridge building puzzle game and I look forward to what is next to come from these guys.
South Africa
In recent years video games sales have overtaken those of music and film in the country. There is strong infrastructure in the major cities allowing a proliferation of people playing online. Indie devs are slowing growing with Free Lives ‘Broforce’ and the fun ‘Semblance’ by Nyamakop being major releases from the region. I really liked Semblance and loved their take on altering the world to help you get around. Great little platformer.
As you can see there is far more to gaming than from just the Japanese / USA fair. I would guess that the prevalence of the internet and the availability of guides and software on there means pretty much anyone can start making games. It also means that the teams can be based anywhere like Ubisoft Kiev. In fact, the team don’t even have to be working in the same building. Alongside this the rise of smartphones and tablets has meant a huge new potential audience, in particular places like China where most people use mobiles rather computers to get online. With growth there development may shift from consoles to these devices. Hell even Nintendo are now making mobile versions of their main titles. The main thing I have taken away from this is the amount of times I found out a game I have played and enjoyed is made far from the gaming epicentres. Half the games I have mentioned I had no idea where they are from. And that’s great. It shouldn't matter but we should celebrate.
It is so heartening to see more voices in the industry. We don’t want the same American COD clones, white guy shoots the world to safety. Give us new ideas and thoughts, it will be amazing to see if new genres are created, let alone fresh game play ideas and characters. Of course many of these titles are indies but with breakthrough hits if the money is there they can hire to get a bigger team to make bigger games. Not many companies started with AAA in mind, they had to go by being successful. Aside from the obvious China maybe New Zealand or Brazil could bring us the next Bethesda!
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