Author: Erin Fan

The Decisive Battle: How Video Games Truly Affect Us

The belief that the media we consume affects us negatively is not a new idea. The debate that arose twenty years ago when the Entertainment Software Rating Board (or ESRB) was created to inform consumers of the violent content of video games was far from the beginning. It started with the advent of organized society. Governments have a long history of banning, imprisoning, and even executing any author or journalist for writing articles and books deemed a “bad influence on the public.”

Today, governments threaten to unleash a firing squad that would shoot giant stickers on video game boxes stating that, “Excessive exposure to violent video games and other violent media has been linked to aggressive behavior.”

This movement arrives in the middle of the battle that was documented by the Wall Street Journal between Jane McGonigal, game designer and advocate for the benefits of video games on gamers in the real world, and Edward Castronova, Indiana University professor who questions the extent of Ms. McGonigal’s claims. Ms. McGonigal states that putting people in the role of “hero” in a video game makes players aware of their best selves. Professor Castronova claims that though we have already integrated video games into our lives, all media scholars agree that too much use points to the frivolity of games—that all games come to the same conclusion of valor, without showing players that everybody has varied views on what constitutes honor and morality.

I would otherwise jump to Ms. McGonigal’s side, using myself as an example of someone who has been bettered by games, someone who believes that video games can indeed do us good as a society. But that is too easy, and it will never banish the naysayers to the land of believers, no matter how hard Ms. McGonigal fights to prove that games can make us better people.

Instead, I will step out of the warzone, look away from what arguments are on the table, and look inside of myself. Why is my life better because of video games? Why am I confronted with my best self when I assume the role of [insert popular RPG character name here]? Why am I a better person now after I played [insert game here]?

I know my answers to those questions, and I will not explain them in detail here. This is why:

I believe that before we point fingers at video games or certain video game companies for promoting violent behavior, we have to remind ourselves that we are responsible for our own actions. We are responsible for controlling how the media we consume affects us. Parents are responsible for controlling how the media their children consume affects them. Whatever that entails is up to you to decide. You are reading this blog post, and you probably also read the Wall Street Journal articles by Jane McGonigal and Edward Castronova, and you are probably deciding for yourself right now what you think of all of them, which you choose to believe, and which one affected you the most.

You are in control. You are in control of how a video game affects you. Does it raise your moral values? Or does it threaten to lower them? Do you focus on the blood that results from the fight, or do you focus on the story, what your character learns in the game, and in turn, what YOU learn from the game?

You can choose to dismiss video games as an art or as a viable piece of entertainment. You can choose to connect yourself with the experience of a game, BE the character you played on screen, feel his or her emotions and learn what he or she learns. In any case, the good and bad in a video game are found within. How do video games truly affect us? The answer: you decide.

Jina lako litukuzwe: on the first video game song to be nominated for a Grammy

A close friend of mine, Jireh Chua, once told me how he was moved to tears upon learning that “Baba Yetu,” the theme song from 2K Games’s Civilization IV is The Lord’s Prayer in Swahili. He said the song taught him that, “The story of the human race is not the pride of achievement but coming to terms with our common identity and celebrating our blessedness.”

Little did any of us know that it would go on to become the first video game song to be nominated for a Grammy. Even Christopher Tin (pictured above), the composer who received the nomination, stated he “had never dreamed it possible.” Little did I know how lucky I was to have had the opportunity to hear this song performed live at Video Games Live.

As we celebrate this milestone for the video game industry, I want all of us whose lives have been shaped by video games to remember this moment, to remember that we were alive during the era when video games started to become recognized for their contributions to art and entertainment, and to remember how we feel more alive when we play video games.

Excuse me for sounding like a broken record on the subject of video game music, but I felt it appropriate to reiterate: the pride of us as video game music enthusiasts is not just in this incredible achievement of Christopher Tin’s Grammy nomination, it is in our common identity we have when we sit in a concert hall remembering that one moment in a game when that music played. It is in celebrating together, at that moment, how blessed we are to be touched by video game music and to be offered the amazing opportunity to play.

Baba yetu yetu uliye, Jina lako litukuzwe—hallowed be thy name—that unnamed experience that shaped video games to be what it is today.

Lost in Translation: challenges of localizing video games for a global market

“Elle regarde bien,” said an unnamed character in the French version of Final Fantasy VII.  Non-French speakers will input that line into Google Translate and find out it means, “She looks good,” probably referring to the attractiveness of Tifa or Aeris.  French speakers, on the other hand, will know immediately that this sentence is embarrassingly–both grammatically and semantically–incorrect.

This laughable mistake, according to Spiders CEO Jehanne Rousseau (developer of Faery: Legends of Avalon to be published by TriplePoint client Focus Home Interactive) is most likely attributed to the fact that the French version of Final Fantasy VII was translated directly from the English version.  Knowing Final Fantasy VII was originally written in Japanese, the French version is nothing more than a translation of a translation.  This of course resulted in a line that literally means “she LOOKS (with her eyes) well.”

So why would the French translators translate a Japanese game based on anything other than the original Japanese version?  Could it be the lack of people fluent in both Japanese and French?  Surely that cannot be the case.  Having visited the city of Paris myself many times, I look around and am surprised by the high population of Japanese in Paris, and I am NOT talking about the tourists.  Or am I?  Due to the high number of Japanese tourists who visit France every year, there is a high demand for Japanese speakers in Paris, those who can lead tour groups and work in shops.  Surely there must have been SOMEBODY fluent in both French and Japanese who could have gotten the job done without such a linguistic slip-up.  Jehanne Rousseau, born and raised in France, certainly does not buy the fact that there is absolutely nobody out there of that description willing to localize a Japanese game for a French audience, noting the growing number of East Asian immigrants in France.

So why didn’t Square Enix, then Squaresoft, find somebody like that?  Were French/Japanese bilinguals so rare back in 1997?  Does localization of all games still come across this problem of the inability to translate from a game’s original language?

At GDC Online 2010, I attended a seminar by Samson Mow of Ubisoft Chengdu about how to reinvent Western games for East Asian audiences.  Mow spoke not only of the language translation aspect of localization but also about the infrastructure and features translation of a game, concluding that audiences from different countries want a game not only to be in a language they understand, but also in a format they understand and prefer.  This means they not only want their MMORPGs to be in Chinese/Japanese/Korean but they also want them to be microtransaction-based, not subscription-based.  This only means one thing.  Even if game developers and publishers find the proper way to translate a game into another language, they will have only won part of the battle for a foreign audience’s approval.

Luckily, it has been over 20 years since we have seen anything as bad as Zero Wing‘s “All Your Base Are Belong To Us” but as technology breaks down the borders between countries, it is no surprise that the localization of a game requires more than just a passable language translation.  Almost any game made today will be played by gamers from every continent, and any game developer or publisher that is not well-versed in the game of total localization may find their fans saying their latest creation definitely does not “regarde bien.”

Party in the XBLA: The Power and Beauty of Video Game Music

Most of us non-Miley Cyrus fans are tired of hearing the song “Party in the USA.”   From the clichéd opening rift to the seemingly simple lyrics, I hope that it is a fad that will soon die out.  But still, people young and old scream at the sound of those opening notes and belt the lyrics at a crowd of confused faces.  I wonder, “How can a song with such an uninspiring melody and lyrics be so catchy?”  Maybe I am too old, but no, I have friends my age and older who simply adore that song.  Perhaps it is only my disillusionment with mainstream pop.

Instead, I fill my iTunes playlist with songs that few would recognize, songs that only players of certain video games could appreciate.  Songs, though many wordless or in a language I do not understand, still mean so much to me after being on my playlist for many years.  I can dream to the sound of my inexperienced fingers playing “To Zanarkand” on the piano.  I know every word to “Suteki Da Ne” even though my abilities in Japanese are limited at best.

My obsession with video game music brought me to three performances (in different cities) of Video Games Live and two performances of Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy.  At these concerts, I have experienced perhaps some of the most profound moments of my life and realized I was not alone when a thousand other fans around me were brought together to that one moment in the game when this song was blaring from dusty speakers connected to an old TV set.

If you attend one of these performances (which I highly recommend regardless of whether or not you are a gamer), you will notice that most of the music you hear will be from AAA titles typically purchased at a retail store and played on a console for probably over thirty hours.  But what about music from the digital download market?  iPhone App games are making revenues in the nine digits.  Castle Crashers on the Xbox Live Arcade® sold one million copies within the first year of its release.  Does music from these digital download titles have the ability to move a crowd?

Some may argue that some production studios of downloadable games do not have the budget to make grand scores, but after six short hours on Castle Crashers, I was fairly impressed by the soundtrack (put together by members of Newgrounds).  A symphonic melody coupled by a faint 8-bit tune in the background, I could not believe what I was hearing.  I didn’t realize how a side-scrolling beat-em-up featuring four little almost-faceless sprites could passably be paired with such an epic soundtrack.  And sound plays a similarly crucial role in another notable Xbox Live Arcade® title, Limbo (which has sold over 300,000 copies to date), a game which has absolutely no music, just a melancholy silence, just as haunting and engaging as the wails of the Ocarina from the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.  As IGN so cleverly noted, the lack of text, dialogue, and musical soundtrack made Limbo into such a frightening and impressive piece of art.

The jury is out and statistics don’t lie.  The rise of the download era has begun in both casual and hardcore markets.  Now I ask, as downloadable games like Castle Crashers and Limbo gain as much praise and critical acclaim as their retail console counterparts, will the music (or lack thereof) of downloadable games be able to bring players together like soundtracks from games featured at Video Games Live and Distant Worlds?  Or has the music from these games already done just that?  Are there any XBLA players as mesmerized by the music of these games as I am of the music of Final Fantasy?

In any case, I shall at some point decide to dig through some links on Newgrounds and add some of those Castle Crashers tunes to my iTunes playlist, where they will play alongside the music that moved me to become a gamer.  Perhaps the next time I attend a Video Games Live concert I will hear Castle Crashers or perhaps the main theme of Tap Tap Revenge on the repertoire and as I hear the audience’s cheers around me, I will realize that it doesn’t matter what video game’s music I am hearing; that music, after all, is the universal language, a language we all understand, a language that connects us all.

As I hear “Party in the USA” for the Nth time in one day, I wonder if the only thing determining the song’s popularity is the message that all fans of the song subconsciously love so much: innocent little Miley learning for the first time that when thrust in an unfamiliar environment far away from her Nashville bubble, she can let loose and feel connected to the strangers around her with the power of music.

If music from Final Fantasy, Zelda, and all the other games I have come to love can bring me back to the most memorable moments of a game I played, and if a simple song by Miley Cyrus can get a whole dance floor hopping, then I guess it really does not matter where the music came from—video games or mainstream pop, a 30-hour RPG or a 6-hour-long downloadable game.  Video game music has the power to define an experience for a gamer.  It certainly has for me.