Jul 12, 2008. Japanese and American RPG gamers We investiage the differences between two cultures and two countries to find common groud.

by John Caines.

US RPG gaming stared with Dungeons and Dragons. It was set in a world where the emphasis was to gain levels and defeat dragons. It was about exploring dungeons. Hence the name, Dungeons and Dragons.

Now the world of Dungeons and Dragons was more about self empowerment and exploration. The idea for many of the early teens who played this game was for them to live out a life they couldn't in real life because, let's face it, they were geeks and nerds. And more importantly, you couldn't cast spells and fights monsters in real life. Who would want to anyway?

The early PC game developers took the basic premise of the Dungeons and Dragons board games and translated them well into computer games. Games like Ultima, Wizardry, and The Bard's Tale had you exporing dungeons as a powerful warrior who must save a village or city from destruction.

Now Japanese RPGs started with the same idea with Final Fantasy and Phantay Star, but it very quickly developed to meet its audience of young teens.

The difference between these teens and American teens is that Japanese teens were used to reading Manga, or Japanese comics. And unlike American comics which concentrated more on battles than anything else, Japanese comics ran the gamut from romance to drama to comedy.

The popular ones usually involved a male lead and one or more females that developed feelings for the male. Today, it's simply known as Japanese angst and it seems to dominate gaming.

There's also the notion of the young burning heart, which is another major theme in Japanese youth. The idea is that there is passion in whatever they do and this passion should be expressed without remorse. Maybe it's the strict Japanese school system that restricts this in the life of real Japanese teens.

American teens never had any problem expressing their feelings. Thanks to that great American invention known as Rock n' Roll, American teens have the freedom of expression unmatched in other countries. So these feelings are not expressed in American RPGs. There's no need for them.

So that's why Japanese and American RPGs and RPG gamers are so different. It has nothing to do with food, how the games actually play, or how difficult the games should be in terms of technical details.