I went to school from Rochester, NY. Nice area, but shitty for trying to find a job.
As for the article, I remember a while back Famitsu had solicited information from its audience as to why the Japanese are so cautious or stingy when it comes to western video games, why they typically sell so little. The responses were pretty interesting.
One of the major issues was our games seem so needlessly complex. Most of the time when we think of Western games we think of shooters, which oddly enough don't come off as being complex to us at all. However, over there they apparently do. I always found this interesting because a lot of their RPG's have started to add so many small features to so many things, where leveling up is no longer a quick process, nor is item creation, there are a lot of concerns as to how to best equip your character, etc. I guess there's a different style of complexity for each of us.
Another issue was the fact that our heroes are all muscle-bound men with short hair. They'd prefer to see younger heroes or heroines with smaller frames. This, of course, is primarily a cultural issue. While even we are getting sick of the space marine on steroids, it's nothing strange for our hero to be a full-grown adult. A lot of our entertainment centers around adults. If you want to read too much into it, then you can suggest it ties into our European histories where each culture has mythological heroes that are full-grown men accomplishing great feats.
Now, I've read a few different things in terms of the Japanese and their gaming habits, but one thing that has been suggested is most adults stop gaming once they enter adulthood and the work world. It's sort of like giving up childish ways. However, Dragon Quest cannot be released on a work or school day over there because of how many play it. Maybe adults play games a lot less over there (which is no surprise as, well, that's adulthood for you, but I know plenty of adults over here that continue to game rather regularly despite a family and job).
Why I bring that up is simply because, if they stop gaming so regularly when they become an adult, then it makes sense that their heroes and heroines would primarily consist of teenagers. I feel this is also a recent cultural trend, as when I look back on a lot of classic games and anime there are plenty of adult heroes and characters as well (Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Trigun, Ninja Scroll, Final Fantasy 4, Final Fantasy 7 (I believe youngest age was 20), Metroid, etc.). It only seems to be some sort of recent media phenomenon that every hero/heroine has to be a teenager that doesn't like other people and experiences "the one" syndrome. Hell, the greatest reason I've avoided "The World Ends With You" thus far is seeing one shot of the kid with earphones saying "I've never been able to understand anyone else" or something. It was so Linkin Park that it killed all interest in the game. I've grown up out of that, but it is what is popular in Japan these days.
Lastly, a lot of our games possess little to no visible story. If they possess a story that was merely tacked on, it takes itself seriously (think Doom 3). The Japanese told Famitsu that they don't understand it. They don't get why our games often enough lack a story, and why every story is such a serious matter. THIS perspective explains why even a lot of Japanese games have cheesy and melodramatic stories that are absolutely horrible (I'm looking at you Project Sylpheed and every fighting game out of Japan). They are there because the Japanese gamers like having a motivation and depth to their characters and plots, but they don't take it so seriously that it needs to be something special. It just needs to be enough to remain entertaining.
Our current gaming culture is in a flux of story-telling. In some ways, what matters most is gameplay. The story is just the means for the gameplay to carry on. In other cases, the story is incredibly important. In 2007 we had Bioshock, Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect. I just replayed Assassin's Creed, and I can certainly say that story was important there. All three of those games were attempting to push game narrative to a new level. Hell, even Modern Warfare pushed the boundaries by placing you in the shoes of a character as he died gazing into a mushroom cloud. That was one of the most powerful emotional experiences I felt from ANYTHING, let alone just video games.
Yet since then we've had...what? Nothing that has truly come close. Still, the holidays of 2007 show that the Western games industry is certainly evolving what we can do with story-telling. We just aren't as uniform about it as the Japanese currently are.
I found those insights from Famitsu to be very interesting. Still, some of our values will clash with theirs because, again, we're just foreign. We will never completely understand their culture unless we assimilate ourselves into it, and vice versa.
