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Post by Woody Alien on Mar 2, 2021 18:57:36 GMT -5
Maybe the title is not really that clear, but, inspired by this TvTropes page, I wanted to open a topic about how various gaming genres are more or less popular in different countries or regions. Some examples to make you understand what I mean: Italy has always been a good market for point-and-click adventure games (mostly Lucasarts ones) and sports simulators, especially football (way to not be stereotypical there...). As far as I know Germany has also been very fond of adventure games and also various kinds of simulators and management games.
Metroidvanias, despite coming from two Japanese series, have always been a niche genre there, while they became super popular in the USA and to a lesser extent Europe, mostly Spain for some reason. Speaking of Japan, it was common knowledge that FPS were a small niche there, but everything changed with the arrival of battle royale and now Fortnite and Apex Legends are quite popular with streamers and general players. Also obviously visual novels are all the rage in that country while still a niche everywhere else. And Wizardry-style games thrived there after the West long forgot about that series.
South Korea has been fond for a while of those single-screen platformers a la Bubble Bobble, Tumblepop etc. and produced several examples of them. Not to speak of Starcraft and rhythm games.
Do you have other interesting examples to add?
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Post by Bumpyroad on Mar 3, 2021 0:41:25 GMT -5
Noticed Russia is quite fond of puzzle genre in general, many Tetris clones and "hidden object" games coming from there.
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Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Mar 3, 2021 10:18:48 GMT -5
What are you using to check this? I wanted to check stats for Sweden but couldn't find anything besides the very top selling games from 2018, based on an svd.se article from 2018: Fifa 19 Red dead redemption 2 Call of duty: Black ops 4 God of war Spider-man Overwatch NHL series Playstation was also a lot more popular than Xbox apparently. However this was physical only, which was only at 38 percent at the time accoring to the article. For digital sales stats from 2013-2015 I could only find these genre stats by the interest organization dataspelsbranschen (swedish): static1.squarespace.com/static/5a61edb7a803bb7a65252b2d/t/5ab1001ff950b73eb9d60e7f/1521549353738/digital+spelf%C3%B6rs%C3%A4ljning+2015.pdf
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Post by Deleted on Mar 3, 2021 10:52:12 GMT -5
Woody Alien - I'm sure you're speaking relatively, so there are a few I'd say are exaggerations maybe? Metroidvania's for instance aren't super popular in any region, though you may be correct about the regions in which they are strongest. The last sales figures I can find for Hollow Knight is 2.8 million, but that is from Feb 2019. Strong numbers of course for this developer, but one of the top performers in the genre. Visual novels aren't really anything more than a niche in Japan either. A recent release was Buddy Mission Bond from Nintendo and first week retail figures were in the 7-8k range and it didn't reach the top 10 sellers that week. That's pretty typical of the genre. More popular than elsewhere for sure, but really what keeps it alive are low budgets that can turn a small sales number into a tidy profit. The recent 13 Sentinels is an exception that was a large success, however there was also a significantly more substantial budget and it was certainly a risk. First week sales were pretty poor relative to the budget but it sold well on word of mouth. What do tend to be popular in Japan are family friendly games and Nintendo dominates the market right now. Animal Crossing New Horizons for instance released last March and is now the top selling video game in Japan of all time. Other life sims/farming sims have a nice market in the country also. I'd say the successful FPS titles tend to come under the family friendly umbrella also. Here in the UK unfortunately FIFA is king, mostly because it's our national sport of choice and appeals to the otherwise non-gaming crowd. Once upon a time racing games had a nice market here, and there have been a lot of great racers made here over the years, however as far as I can tell the actual UK market for them has dwindled. Perhaps it has as much to do with the lack of products, I'm not sure. ----- Do we need a sales thread here to keep track of what numbers/charts come in? I have not found there's a lot of interest in sales performance here, but if there is interest I can set one up.
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Post by Woody Alien on Mar 4, 2021 6:34:39 GMT -5
Woody Alien - I'm sure you're speaking relatively, so there are a few I'd say are exaggerations maybe? Metroidvania's for instance aren't super popular in any region, though you may be correct about the regions in which they are strongest. The last sales figures I can find for Hollow Knight is 2.8 million, but that is from Feb 2019. Strong numbers of course for this developer, but one of the top performers in the genre. Visual novels aren't really anything more than a niche in Japan either. A recent release was Buddy Mission Bond from Nintendo and first week retail figures were in the 7-8k range and it didn't reach the top 10 sellers that week. That's pretty typical of the genre. More popular than elsewhere for sure, but really what keeps it alive are low budgets that can turn a small sales number into a tidy profit. The recent 13 Sentinels is an exception that was a large success, however there was also a significantly more substantial budget and it was certainly a risk. First week sales were pretty poor relative to the budget but it sold well on word of mouth. (...) ----- Do we need a sales thread here to keep track of what numbers/charts come in? I have not found there's a lot of interest in sales performance here, but if there is interest I can set one up. Absolutely, I'm not backed by sales and was just speaking in an empiric way, by reading on sites, forums and judging the content of streamers and youtubers. If you want to open a more substantial topic about global sales be my guest, I personally don't really care but it can be an interesting discussion topic. As I said it was just a curiosity of mine, not meant to be a serious study on the matter. My point was just to separate the things that are popular all over the world from those that have a niche in singular countries like some sports, for example Italy may be known mostly for football but excels at fencing, or Pakistan with cricket, marathon with countries like Kenya and Ethiopia and so on. Not sure if I can get my point across...
Agree with the metroidvanias but the fact that so many of them are being made in the last few years must surely mean something? Recently Blasphemous celebrated the milestone of 1 million copies sold, and it's not a small step for a game so unfriendly and with an aesthetic that can be off-putting to some.
As for visual novels they are surely a niche everywhere, but up to the 2010s barely anyone ever cared about them in the West beside the most die-hard otakus. I also don't agree with the statement that Japan is all about family-friendly stuff, the fact that they aren't as big as the West about military shooters doesn't mean that they don't care about them, I saw several Japanese youtubers, idols and minor celebrities opening their streaming channels (even before the lockdowns) and most of the time it's the shooter of the moment like Fortnite or Apex Legends. Might be mostly because of the e-sports influence, but still it's a change of pace from the previous decade where they were basically non-existent.
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Post by Woody Alien on Mar 4, 2021 6:43:57 GMT -5
Noticed Russia is quite fond of puzzle genre in general, many Tetris clones and "hidden object" games coming from there. Good catch, after all even Magical Drop was based on a quite obscure Russian game from the 90s. I think Russia might also be fond of strategic games like turn-based combat and such.
Just some empiric observation, for example I can see that Germany is fond of adventures by seeing the number of German translation of these games, the number of fangames (for example the 2 or 3 Zak McKracken fan sequels) and of the let's plays and streaming videos.
As for Sweden I admit I haven't the slightest idea of what kind of genre or gameplay is popular there...
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Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Mar 4, 2021 6:50:59 GMT -5
I see, interesting. I think for sweden translations to our language would just be done "for the lols" since most can speak english reasonably well and prefer for games and other media not to be dubbed, it wasn't ever really a thing here to dub english media besides for cartoons and the occasional commercial.
I know the amiga and C64 were pretty popular here and thus various games for them though the latter was a bit before my time and niche compared to the NES, it was basically replaced by the NES I think. For consoles, Nintendo was clearly in the lead until the PS1, which "won" over N64, so that reflects what people are/were into. Nowadays I don't know besides what I posted before.
From my own experience, FPS and RTS were really big in the 90s and into the 00s but it doesn't necessarily reflect the general population. Mario and Zelda are popular much like in most other places I would think, though I think they were at their worst popularity-wise during the GC era. FF is also big.
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Post by Woody Alien on Mar 4, 2021 7:10:26 GMT -5
I see, interesting. I think for sweden translations to our language would just be done "for the lols" since most can speak english reasonably well and prefer for games and other media not to be dubbed, it wasn't ever really a thing here to dub english media besides for cartoons and the occasional commercial. From my own experience, FPS and RTS were really big in the 90s and into the 00s but it doesn't necessarily reflect the general population. Mario and Zelda are popular much like in most other places I would think, though I think they were at their worst popularity-wise during the GC era. FF is also big. True, I remember that dubbing was never widespread in the North European countries, as opposed to Italy where pretty much every movie, cartoon and series is being dubbed, but not most games, since Italy is such a small market that localization is not worth the effort, no matter what fans say. (also I had no idea until now that you were from Sweden, haha). As for FPS and RTS, that was exactly what my topic was about: genres that became popular in a specific location and timeframe.
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Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Mar 4, 2021 7:22:13 GMT -5
I could've been more clear in my first post, I thought it was in my profile or sig like on some other forums hehe.
Thinking back to my school days, I guess you could say these games had a niche popularity here too due to being installed on various computers and I would assume at some other schools as well: Matteraketen aka Math Blaster Ignition (racing game) Svea Rike (a turn-based strategy game kinda similar to Panzer General and such) Lemmings Commander Keen Somewhat oddly that pirate Mario game for PC which kinda sucks (I think it was ported to MD as well) was kinda popular for a while Elasto Mania Gorillas (old worms-like artillery game) Beneath a Steel Sky - I think if teachers actually knew what this was like they would've got it banned hah Willy Beamish
In 9th grade there were various online competitive games that popped up and gained popularity there but sadly I don't remember their names besides some early version or precursor to Soldat.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2021 7:35:46 GMT -5
Woody Alien - Thank you for your reply. Besides taking a little exception to some of your adjectives, understanding that you were using them relatively and at least somewhat anecdotally I don't really disagree with much that you have said. I do understand the purpose in the thread and believe it is an interesting topic. For Metroidvania's - yes I believe those numbers show growth for the genre. So far it is driven by indies and a million seller for an indie is a phenomenal performance. There are few examples of recent entries from large publishers with the two namesakes having taken a significant break and backed off completely respectively since sales of less than a million wouldn't satisfy Nintendo or Konami. I would be interested to see the market performance of one of those two titles on a relevant platform (not 3DS in 2017). I expect we'll get one soon, however, I'm not convinced MercurySteam (probably not coincidentally to your argument a Spanish developer) has what it takes to create a genre standout with the current level of competition. On family friendly games - I certainly didn't mean to imply that all popular games in Japan were family friendly, just that there are a significant proportion (more so than in western countries I think) that are. For instance you mentioned Call of Duty, and you are absolutely right there is an increased player base for this series in Japan. The numbers reflect it as being one of the most successful western AAA games in the country. Relative to Fortnite and Splatoon however there is a large difference is all. I believe that the family friendly nature has something to do with that. Other successful series that are not family friendly of course include Final Fantasy, Resident Evil and Monster Hunter, though those are all in decline, perhaps because all are guilty of attempting to westernise. I at least expect that those fortunes will be reversed for Monster Hunter Rise due to it's presence on a platform Japan actually cares about. Going back to Call of Duty - I think that's the series biggest challenge. I don't see any reason to think PlayStation won't continue to decline in Japan since few major games, and by releasing on a more relevant platform could be a true showing for how much market potential there is. With regard to a specific sales charts thread, it is a topic that interests me personally, but I have those discussion elsewhere generally. I'm happy to continue to do that since there's a fair amount of work involved when there's no real interest.
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Post by shelverton on Mar 4, 2021 8:39:57 GMT -5
I have no idea why we (Sweden...again) had Shadowgate, Deja Vu, Maniac Mansion, Sword of Hope and the SNES Shadowrun translated into swedish back in the day. It seems even more strange today given how few people actually can read swedish. (Sword of Hope localization is a complete disaster though but that’s another story)
I guess NHL was always huge here, and one of them (94? 95?) was completely changed into Elitserien (I think?) with the swedish hockey league instead of NHL. I hate sports so don’t quote me here.
As for Europe in general I think Professor Layton did unusually well here compared to the rest of the world?
When I was a kid everyone played either NES or Amiga basically. I knew one single person with a Sega Master System, which is funny cause SMS was supposed to be huge all over Europe. I may remember wrong but Nintendo seemed much bigger to me..
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Post by dsparil on Mar 4, 2021 9:19:56 GMT -5
Nintendo didn't handle the release of the NES in Europe themselves and left it to other companies, mainly Mattel, who did not do a good job. However, in Scandinavia, it was done by the Swedish company Bergsala who was already Nintendo's distributor in the region. They obviously put in a real effort and also launched the system there much earlier than the rest of the continent. Sega took the same 3rd party release approach with the SMS and botched it which goes to show how disinterested Mattel was in the whole venture. Europe is still a soft region for Nintendo to this day!
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Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Mar 4, 2021 9:32:35 GMT -5
Yeah Bergsala were even about to release it before the rest of the west here (Famicom) but it didn't pan out. There's a YT video about that.
Us and another family near us had SMS but NES was definitely more popular, thanks in part to Bergsala and Nintendo Power I'm sure but also licenses like TMNT, and Mario of course. I subscribed to NP for a while even though I didn't have a NES, though we later got a GB.
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Post by shelverton on Mar 4, 2021 9:42:35 GMT -5
It’s funny how Bergsala even gave name to the street its HQ is located on - Mario’s Street to this day Bergsala did a nice job but I also remember them falling out with Konami at some point in the mid 90’s, right? We missed out on a couple of NES and SNES games because of it, or so I was told. Could be a coincidence though.
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Post by windfisch on Mar 4, 2021 10:19:51 GMT -5
Maybe the title is not really that clear, but, inspired by this TvTropes page, I wanted to open a topic about how various gaming genres are more or less popular in different countries or regions. Some examples to make you understand what I mean: Italy has always been a good market for point-and-click adventure games (mostly Lucasarts ones) and sports simulators, especially football (way to not be stereotypical there...). As far as I know Germany has also been very fond of adventure games and also various kinds of simulators and management games.
Yes, it's all true. Back in the day when I was visiting friends who owned computers we used to play Monkey Island and Bundesliga Manager (Bundesliga = German premier football league).
I've got no idea what kinda stuff kids are into these days. Though I hope, they've got something better than David Hasselhoff to listen to at the very least.
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