Abstract
This chapter discusses the radical changes in the Japanese PC market with the advent of Windows 95 and the impact of online gaming. Along with this shift, the machines used for PC games also shifted, but only after many game developers and players had already shifted to home consoles, and the Japanese PC game market was dominated by adult games that could not be shifted to home consoles. In addition, Japanese companies were unable to establish a significant presence in online games, which emerged around the same time, and the market was lost to foreign companies.
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Notes
- 1.
According to several developers, it was not until the release of DirectX 3.0 in 1996 that development became possible to some extent.
- 2.
A flag is a programing term that refers to a condition for branching. In novel games, the story often diverges into a happy ending if a certain condition is met, but a bad ending if the condition is not met. This condition is a flag.
- 3.
Since the person in charge of the scenario is also in charge of the direction, the person in charge of the scenario takes on the three roles of director, scriptwriter, and director as in other content. The burden on the scenario writer is very heavy.
- 4.
For reference, the median engineer fee at Japanese IT vendor companies that develop systems is 900,000 yen per month for companies with less than 1000 employees, and 1.2 million yen per month for companies with 1000 or more employees (Oiwa 2013). For companies developing home video games, the median fee is slightly lower than that of medium-sized vendors with less than 1000 employees, and for PC novel games it is even lower, about the same as that of second- and third-tier subcontractors of vendors.
- 5.
Fujihara (2013) is one of the few career surveys on home video game companies, and most of the cases do not reach the average annual salary (about 3.35 million yen) for people in their 20 s mentioned in the survey.
- 6.
This is not to say that shortening the work period is completely impossible. In the case of scenarios, there are cases where the scenario supervisor oversees the creation of the overall plot, and the post-branch scenarios (individual scenarios) are created by multiple people including the scenario supervisor. In this case, the time required for writing can be shortened, but careful coordination is required to avoid discrepancies in the images of the characters in the scenarios. In the case of pictures, it is sometimes possible to solve this problem by adding animators to the staff who can quickly draw pictures that capture the characteristics of the original artist (however, this is not possible if the original artist’s pictures are too unique). However, since these methods simultaneously complicate the development process and increase costs, they can only be used by PC game companies that can expect a certain number of hits.
- 7.
Since many PC game development companies are small companies, there are many cases where even the debugging process, which is less difficult than in other genres, is inadequate.
- 8.
It is categorized as a kind of “simulation” game genre because it involves a lot of trial and error during the game in order to have various experiences.
- 9.
As for the game content, it is an extension of text adventure games, called interactive fiction. A text adventure game is an adventure game where you explore a world described only in text. The world is described only in text such as “You’re in front of a trig point. What do you do?”, “There is a coffin in front of you,” etc. The game is played by entering commands such as “go left,” “take memo,” and “attach cross.” Early titles include Colossal Cave Adventure (1975) from which the name “adventure game” was derived and Zork (1977). It is interesting to note that in the early days, adventure games and role-playing games had the same root.
- 10.
Due to conflicting management policies, Richard Garriott, the main developer at the beginning of the service and the founder of the Ultima series, left the management, but Ultima Online is still in service as of February 2022, making it a long-lasting title.
- 11.
The service in Japan is operated by GungHo Online Entertainment. Ragnarök Online became the title that supported the backbone of GungHo in its early days, accounting for over 99% of the company’s sales at one point. In addition, the majority of Gravity’s shares are now owned by Gungho.
- 12.
Examples of failures by major companies include Namco’s Tales of Eternia Online (service started in March 2006, ended in March 2007) and Konami’s Tokimeki Memorial Online (service started in March 2006, ended in July 2007). Another game that was only announced but not launched was Tecmo’s Bastard Online (announced in July 2005 as scheduled for release in 2006, development was halted in December 2009).
- 13.
Taking Final Fantasy XI as an example, as of 2012, 10 years after the service was launched, the cumulative profit has reached 40 billion yen, making it the top Final Fantasy of all time.
http://www.hd.square-enix.com/jpn/ir/policy/message2012_2.html
- 14.
The Japan Online Game Association (JOGA), an industry organization for online games, has been releasing data since 2005, so data prior to 2005 was taken from the Digital Contents White Paper.
- 15.
Unlike packaged non-online RPGs, MMORPGs do not have a definite end as a game. There are some MMORPG titles that emphasize narrative, but even in those titles, the game does not end even after the last enemy in the story is defeated. New events and stronger enemies are constantly added by the management, so players can keep playing endlessly. In addition, in order to prevent players from running out of things to do, the amount of work (defeating enemies, collecting material items, etc.) required for the character to become strong (level up, get new weapons, etc.) is far greater than in non-online package games. As a result, the extreme amount of time some heavy users spend playing (in many cases, thousands of hours) has become a social problem as Netoge Haijin(Net Game Junkies).
Reference
(1) Japanese-language Document
Fujihara, M. (2013). [Work attitudes and career development issues of game developers] (Game Kaihatsu-sha no Syuro Ishiki to Career Keisei no Shomondai), in [Research report on the application of advanced technologies in digital content creation] (Digital Contents Seisaku no Sentan Gijutsu Oyou ni Kansuru Chosa Houkokusho). Digital Content Association of Japan.
Oiwa, S. (2013). [Overview of the software development engineer fee survey and future directions] (Software Kaihatsu Gijutusha Ryoukin Chousa no Gaiyou to Kongo no Houkousei ni tuite), Keizai Chousa Kenkyu Review, Vol.12, p62–p69.
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Koyama, Y. (2023). PC Games (3) Retreat of Domestic PC Game Manufacturers and Emergence of Online Games. In: History of the Japanese Video Game Industry. Translational Systems Sciences, vol 35. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1342-8_10
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