Escapist News Network: West Washing

Graham_LRR

Unskippable, LRR, Feed Dump
Nov 13, 2008
4,296
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West Washing

When Eastern developers make their games appeal to "The West", everyone loses.

Watch Video
 

dex-dex

New member
Oct 20, 2009
2,531
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jello with buttons for eyes. hahaha!

i could not believe the stupidity of the Mario re release as well when i first heard it.
 

Japester3k

New member
Aug 24, 2010
5
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Great ENN! :)

Beef certainly makes everything more believable, its a scientific fact... or something.
 

Jared

The British Paladin
Jul 14, 2009
5,630
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...way to go and cash in nintendo!!

And does feel like Japan is going alot more with western designs...loved the feature article on it...especilly Quickbender XD
 

Moriarty70

Canucklehead
Dec 24, 2008
498
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MS-Dos 6. Go back, watch it again, you'll see it. My computer doesn't even have a floppy drive anymore.

C:\Emotions\
run cry.bat
 

Therumancer

Citation Needed
Nov 28, 2007
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Hmmm, well, those games (Mario) are old enough where there are probably a lot of people in Generation Y who habven't played them, yet the basic genere remains popular as do the characters. I can see why they re-released it, even if it is pretty stupid.

As far as "West Washing" goes, I think rather than the "Jello" option what we're seeing is evidence that pre-defined characters should be a thing of the past as they cannot appeal to everyone. Games like "Saint's Row 2" have demonstrated that with current technology it's possible to give the player both a highly customizable Avatar to be the protaganist, but
also have multiple voice tracks that can be selected from for the cinematics and dialogue.

People like differant kinds of characters, the Eastern/Western thing is just one stylistic differance (dress, general body types and apperance, etc...) and to be honest I don't think the tastes are locked in regionally, despite where each "style" originated. There are plenty of people in the US and Europe who like the whole eastern style, anime, etc.. and plenty of people in Japan and China who like western artwork, comics, and stylings as well. We're actually in a time period where western and eastern styles have been influancing each other more than ever and creating a lot of hybrids.

I think the direction the game industry needs to go in is instead of giving you say "Samus" to play, letting you design your own bounty hunter that looks how you want, and can select a personality type (affecting how dialogue is read and comments made in game and such like in SR 2). Heck, 3D Dot Game Heroes has shown that this kind of thing is possible even for games with a retro or "cutesy" style though voicework wasn't as prominant a part of it.

Such are my thoughts. Also I feel that if we manage to stop the whole Scwartzneggar Vs. Free Speech thing, and ACTA hre in the US, and then get the current people in power out of power and hopefully see a return to more balanced politics, you'll see people doing a lot less messing around with games, since I think a lot of the "changes" people are noticing both in art styles, but character personalities, are in reaction to politics. The US representing the biggest game market at the moment. What's more if the US gets it's act together hre, I think a lot of the rest of the world with censorship problems can be "fixed". I think we're seeing a lot of the current social/speech related issues around the globe because people figure that if the US is going in these directions itself (which have been there for a while, creeping up, only to burst onto the scene due to some political aberrations) it's not like we can yell at them for violating human freedoms with a straight face.

Ah well, enough rambling.
 

sooperman

Partially Awesome at Things
Feb 11, 2009
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Well I'm in favor of "West Washing". The East and the West have been influencing each other for generations, but the East still seems to make video games on completely different standards(and if not games, their characters).

There's nothing wrong with Japan's culture or Korea's MMOs, but I think that the silent majority is taking a stand against the weeaboos. World of Goo showed us that blobs do make effective characters if the plot stays simple, so maybe it's worth a try.
 

Pinstar

New member
Jul 22, 2009
642
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The question is, what changes (if any) will be made to female characters on a West-washed game?
 

Eleima

Keeper of the GWJ Holocron
Feb 21, 2010
901
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Paul & Graham's reaction to the talk of a movie release of SC2 cutscenes was absolutely priceless. Paul's outrage, and Graham's stark expression (see what I did there?) of terror were just perfect. And I love the "evil porpoises" t-shirt. I loved those 3 seconds of footage so much, I watched 'em 5 times. XD
Replace characters with amorphous blobs of goo?? I wonder what Mr. Grey [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/profiles/view/Mr.%20Grey] has to say about that...
Also, Kathleen *does* have a point: there's no way Mr. or Ms. Smith would survive a zombie apocalypse (I mean, I have no illusion on that point, I'd totally be scrambled brains on a zombie's menu).
 

BOBdotEXE

New member
Nov 17, 2009
199
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Moriarty70 said:
MS-Dos 6. Go back, watch it again, you'll see it. My computer doesn't even have a floppy drive anymore.

C:\Emotions\
run cry.bat
ahhh, the good old days!
/nostalgia
 

Mr. Omega

ANTI-LIFE JUSTIFIES MY HATE!
Jul 1, 2010
3,902
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Hey! My cousin is a blob, and he was offended!
In all seriousness, this trend will have positive and negative effects, so all we can do is just hope the good outweighs the bad.
Also, I love you, Nintendo, but SERIOUSLY?
 

Tarkand

New member
Dec 15, 2009
468
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sooperman said:
Well I'm in favor of "West Washing". The East and the West have been influencing each other for generations, but the East still seems to make video games on completely different standards(and if not games, their characters).

There's nothing wrong with Japan's culture or Korea's MMOs, but I think that the silent majority is taking a stand against the weeaboos. World of Goo showed us that blobs do make effective characters if the plot stays simple, so maybe it's worth a try.
Fully agree with this.
 

DTWolfwood

Better than Vash!
Oct 20, 2009
3,716
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Kathleen makes a very good point at the end! XD

also <3 cutting off matt's rant on Reach XD
 

scw55

New member
Nov 18, 2009
1,185
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When the credits started, an ice cream van went past my room playing music. It terrified me as It sounded like the sound bite when the blob spoke. I genuinly thought the blob was going to attack. I was deeply terrified.

Well done for making a 21 year old terrified of a plate of jelly :)