[MUD-Dev] Cultural impact on Muds (was: Star Wars Galaxies)

[Damion Schubert]

From: Jacob Cord
> On Tue, 2003-01-28 at 00:36, Eric Hu wrote:
 
>> Frankly, I was shocked when I read this "...USA currently doesn't
>> to seem actually need to know that much about the cultures it
>> exports to" by the creative director of the most expectant
>> MMOG. Now, I cound understand why Japan videogames could seep
>> into USA but Xbox failed into Japan...

I'm pretty sure that what Raph means is that, so far, American
games, movies and other media have done extremely well in these
markets without any extraordinary effort to change the actual
product to suit those markets.  The numbers bear this out.  For
example, in doing my research on the movie industry for Hollyworld,
I discovered that one country in the world consumes more of its own
cinema than Hollywood's (that country, incidentally, is Korea).

This is much more true for blockbuster successes, of course.  Star
Wars: Galaxies probably _does_ have to do less to succeed in these
markets.  The XBox

> When I read that, I nodded my head in agreement.  Americans on the
> whole tend to know less about other countries than non-Americans.
> Hollywood churns out movies without thinking first about "How will
> this movie relate to a Chinese/Japanese/Korean audience?" because
> those cultures have an interest in American culture and will see
> them whether they are the target market or not.

In my opinion, it's much easier to change a game to suit a market
than a movie.  A movie is a very, very tailored piece of work, and
almost any aspect of it can seem quite foreign.  By comparison,
interactive entertainment by its very definition is pretty much what
the user puts into it and takes out of it.  That's not to say that
those of us not working on Galaxies-level products don't have to
work to go that extra mile - more to the point, it's just saying
that the interactivity gives us a huge advantage.  Players can play
UO in any number of modes, but there really only is one way to watch
The Matrix.

--d

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