High Dynamic Range Lying

Sony Computer Entertainment Chairman and CEO, Ken Kutaragi stands on stage beaming, huge corsage blooming from his lapel. Beside him, well dressed and smiling just as greatly, is Koei co-founder Keiko Erikawa. They stand on stage at the inaugural launch of Gundam Musou (ガンダム無双), proclaimed as potentially the first million seller for the Playstation 3.

“We’ve made a fantastic game,” Erikawa said, at the event. “Gundam Musou is the most ordered PlayStation 3 game, but it’s just one tenth of the sales we’re thinking of. For us, Bandai’s Gundam is one million, and the Musou series is one million. We’d like to sell a total of two million copies.”

Is a fantastic game enough, though? In a time where games are becoming more and more expensive to produce, and profit margins are shrinking, more and more companies are starting to look at creating a global product. Ryan Payton’s hire at Kojima Productions was a step to get a more global perspective on their series, including the ever popular Metal Gear Solid. Even Capcom has started looking at developing products for a more global market, evidenced by the release of both Dead Rising and Lost Planet, which are arguably of North American sensibility, on the Xbox 360, arguably the most “American” of the three consoles.

Is the future of gaming to make a global product? Is making a globally diverse, but somewhat culturally ambiguous, product an evolution of game development? Is there a place for games that bear a “regional identity”?

Gundam Musou is of wholly Japanese pedigree, on both fronts. The Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors series have enjoyed moderate success in the states, but nothing like the near religious fervor both series enjoy in Japan. Called Shin Sangoku Musou (真三國無双) and Sengoku Musou (戦国無双), respectively, both series are developed by ω-Force (pronounced Omega Force), and published by Koei. The Musou series is characterized by its brand of action gameplay: players take control of a legendary Chinese or Japanese army general, and cut a blood swath through hundreds of on screen enemies, breaching gates and fighting other famous generals to take over the map.

Even Capcom threw their hat into the ring with its Sengoku Basara (戦国BASARA) series, which took the Sengoku history, and gave it a slightly more “extreme” face lift. Up until this point, Musou games and their lookalikes have fallen into known history timelines, rarely straying from the path. Koei and ω-Force, in a move that surprised many anime and gaming fans alike, finally applied the formula to one of the most lucrative franchises in Japanese entertainment history: Gundam.

For the Japanese gaming market, the amalgamation of Gundam and Musou is a no brainer. The game is a mix of the most popular action series in Japan, and the biggest animated franchise phenomenon in Japanese history, on a single Bluray disc. Apart from its current inaccessibility to many gamers due to a Playstation 3 release, the game has been met with praise. Of course, the fervor and frothing demand the game garners in concept may only be confined to Japan.

Bringing the series to the United States and Europe, as promised by both Sony, and Namco Bandai, may prove more difficult than expected. A number of criteria are important to consider when bringing a product like Gundam Musou to other regions.

In the case with a license or series with cache in other regions, like Gundam, it’s important to take into account what kind of importance the name has in the region you’re porting the product to. In the case of Gundam, the US has only been privy to a few of the series, and not even the best ones. Some of the prominent characters in the game are totally unknown to those outside of Japan.

Koei can ignore the fact that an entire portion of the game contains characters that many casual Gundam fans have never seen or heard of before. They could even change the game’s final box art to reflect characters that are more familiar to western gamers. Units like Zeta Gundam and ZZ Gundam could be replaced by God Gundam and Wing Gundam, which are more immediately recognizable to casual western gundam fans.

The other, slightly less desirable option, would be to change the subject matter entirely, either by omitting the characters that western gamers are not familiar with, or by replacing said characters with more regionally relevant characters. This is probably the least viable option, as it not only requires considerable unnecessary work, but it also changes the final product into something that was not initially intended.

Naming comes into question as well. This is an article topic in and of itself. Game names are as integral to selling the final product as the box art. In the case of Gundam Musou, the problem is two fold. The Gundam Musou logo is not only a parody of the Shin Sangoku Musou logo (the characteristic sword slashes in the logo are replaced with a plasma sword burn, and a laser bullet hole), but it also effectively communicates to interested parties what they’re in for if they buy the product.

With no Musou name in the West, how does Namco Bandai name Gundam Musou? Does Namco Bandai make their connection to Koei public, and call the game Gundam Warriors? They could sever the connection entirely, and instead ride on the Gundam alone, going with something close to, but likely more original than, Gundam Battlefront. With a change like that, they lose the cache that the Musou name would give them, but in the United States, that might not matter at all.

Outside petty naming concerns, and the unfamiliarity with certain parts of the Gundam franchise, could Gundam Musou really be the worldwide global title that Koei is hoping it will be? The subject matter is certainly more accessible to a worldwide audience than a game based on a specific region’s historical battles. The game plays upon most every man’s childhood fantasy: to control a giant robot.

Perhaps the answer to creating a worldwide success isn’t to dilute the product and make it culturally indistinguishable. Instead, it’s important to access a cultural phenomenon that, while deeply rooted in its region’s culture and zeitgeist, it prays upon the imagination and desires of a far larger, global community.

Creating a worldwide success, which is becoming more and more required to meet development costs, and still create a unique and culturally rooted title is a difficult tight rope to walk. Part of what makes some titles so endearing is their looking glass into the culture that shaped them. Games like Okami (大神), Rockstar North’s Grand Theft Auto, and even GSC Game World’s recently released S.T.A.L.K.E.R. show us how important a cultural imprint can be to a product, and how endearing and unique an experience a strongly culturally aware product can be.