Discussion The Japan Mindset

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Misty

Guest
In Japan the Japanese still use CD-ROM games. They are cautious of the "cloud" service and want tangible items. They are mocked and ridiculed by Americans for not "embracing" the future. Americans are rude to them and Steam makes them type things IN ENGLISH to search for games. I too am cautious of this "cloud" service and long for the days of tangible items.

But the future scares me. I lose faith in humanity. I see so much hate and evil in this world. And the future scares me. I think JRPGs are devoted to the idea of a noble minded person, fighting against evil. Lavos is now.
 
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SamSam

Guest
Hey @Misty, actually our world is a bit more likely to go in the opposite direction if you consider elements like these :
Climate change and global pollution

Structurally exponential economic and financial system vs oil-peak and depletion of mineral resources
Overpopulation

If you want to go further with this subject I can recommend you these famous documents :
https://www.ipcc.ch/
http://www.jareddiamond.org/Jared_Diamond/Collapse.html


PS : You are my favorite anarchist troll ever ! ♥
 
V

Vereor Nox

Guest
It's called "the fear of change." It's human nature to fear change or the unknown, most people have this fear in some form or another. We all want things to stay the same, but ultimately we need to change and evolve to survive.

That being said, not all change is good for everyone. I don't trust the cloud with my information. I do use it for a few things, but I have all my data backed up on personal hard drives and blu-ray discs.

Steam is a double edge sword. It's great for indie developers to get their games out to the masses, as is other online gaming sites. We probably wouldn't be here without them. Though with Steam being all digital there's no way of known what could happen to your purchases.

There's nothing like buying a physical game and unwrapping it and going through the contents inside. I know my dopamine levels would go crazy when I would go to a video game store and buy a new game. haha!

Anyways, it just means there is nothing wrong with you or Japan.
 
Digital and physical games are both good for different reasons. For games I think "I'll still want to play this in twenty years," I buy physical. For most other games, I'm fine with buying digital. They're more ephemeral, but also more convenient.

Nothing beats opening up a brand new game and going through the manual. Unfortunately, almost nobody does manuals anymore. Gotta get that extra dollar of profit, I guess. Oh well.
 
M

Misty

Guest
I suppose digital downloads are acceptable, since digitals are actually a physical entity stored on a disk. Cloud storage, is just crossing the line into the scamworld though.
 
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Sabrina Stoakes

Guest
This is an interesting subject to me tbh cause it's so strange and weird to think about.

Technology is advancing at a very fast rate, and it's sort of heading towards an almost biblical apocalyptic ending (Especially with the whole idea of a one world government, and the idea that we will have a code that will be used for purchases.) I'm skeptical about the whole religious aspect of it, but it seems like this idea of an endgame has always existed. I don't like the idea of being connected to a system. We're already somewhat connected to a system like it is, and monitored (Just say something suicidal on Facebook and watch how fast the police show up.)

Pretty much all of us here are closely connected to technology, but we really don't know just how insane technology can get. I've been driving an old Mustang for a long time (Almost as long as I've been driving,) and my parents recently let me drive their new Honda Pilot, and lemme tell ya, that car had an unsettling amount of technology. I didn't like it at all, it felt like I wasn't driving a car, but more so that the car was driving me. Needless to say, I won't be giving up my Mustang any time soon.
 

chance

predictably random
Forum Staff
Moderator
In Japan the Japanese still use CD-ROM games. They are cautious of the "cloud" service and want tangible items.
Not sure the reason is simply because they are "cautious" of cloud / online services. It may be more complicated than that.

Much has been written about the Japanese love of physical collectibles. Many prefer CDs to downloads because they want to physically possess what artists make. Perhaps it's that sense of joy and excitement in opening the package and handling the CD booklet.

Another factor may be the complex licensing agreement for online services. My brother's daughter who works for Google tells me Japan's online license agreements vary by prefecture (all 47 of them). So cloud services are slow to get the appropriate licenses.

Anyway, interesting discussion.
 

MissingNo.

Member
Much has been written about the Japanese love of physical collectibles. Many prefer CDs to downloads because they want to physically possess what artists make. Perhaps it's that sense of joy and excitement in opening the package and handling the CD booklet.
I'm honestly surprised this is the case, from what I know about the japanese they like their electronics smaller and portable. That's why systems like the PS3 and Xbox
didn't sell as well there then they did in the USA or Europe.

Don't get me wrong I like Physical media more but it seems strange considering how Japan likes to game.
 

Carnivius

Member
Digital and physical games are both good for different reasons. For games I think "I'll still want to play this in twenty years," I buy physical. .
You better look after those discs well then. A lot of old physical media like cassette tapes and floppy disks have been prone to failure after a number of years and CDs/DVDs sure like to get all scratched and such even when you think you've been careful (plus accidents happen).
I'm much happier with digital. For convienence and tidiness and being able to actually purchase games easily (i don't live near any video game stores and digital doesn't run out of stock). I was never fond of game boxes and paper manuals and such. All just clutter. to me. I just having the one box with all the games stuffed in there without having to swap discs about and cos I often carry the console other places too and don't need the extra weight and bulk of the physical media. Plus there was that time I got burgled and my PS2 with 30 or so games got stolen. At least with digital I'd just need to buy the console again and get my account deactivated on the stolen machine, activate it on the new one and redownload my games.

I do still quite like box art but I prefer it to buy it in poster form and stick it on my wall where it takes up no real space and looks darn pretty. I'm very keen on new software for old 8-bit systems and while I tend to skip the expensive physical set I download the rom legally for free (or a few pounds, depending on the developers pricing) and I buy the poster where available. :)

I get why folks still prefer physical if they're into all that but nah not for me. I felt generally more content as a gamer once consoles got hard drives and online stores. Ok I can't sell on the games but so far that's only been a problem with one game (Bloodborne, i frickin' hate that game and would have quite happily wanted a refund or to resell it).
 
M

Misty

Guest
Not sure the reason is simply because they are "cautious" of cloud / online services. It may be more complicated than that.

Much has been written about the Japanese love of physical collectibles. Many prefer CDs to downloads because they want to physically possess what artists make. Perhaps it's that sense of joy and excitement in opening the package and handling the CD booklet.

Another factor may be the complex licensing agreement for online services. My brother's daughter who works for Google tells me Japan's online license agreements vary by prefecture (all 47 of them). So cloud services are slow to get the appropriate licenses.

Anyway, interesting discussion.
maybe its because they are afraid big companies will just randomly remove games from the library, games such as Lawbreakers.
 
L

Lonewolff

Guest
Much has been written about the Japanese love of physical collectibles. Many prefer CDs to downloads because they want to physically possess what artists make. Perhaps it's that sense of joy and excitement in opening the package and handling the CD booklet.
Bring back the cartridge!
 

TheouAegis

Member
Cartridges:
Typically fast load, optional built-in battery for easy save file sharing, satisfying click when installed, high durability
Get dusty or oxidized easily and stop working (can be cleaned, sure...), clunky size (prior to DS), difficult to backup

CD-ROM/Blu-Ray:
Hold more ROM data typically, small and thin, sometimes contain music tracks you can hear on your stereo, typically easy to backup
Slow load times, no built-in battery so requires system memory or SD-card for save files and thus poor file sharing, very fragile

Digital:
Can use as much ROM data as the system allows, fast loads, easy to backup
Available at the developer's whims, cannot be resold, requires additional space memory that YOU must provide


And then there's the whole debacle about online-only games. I refuse to play those. Blizzard lost hundreds or thousands of customers when they switched to that model. But that's a discussion we've had before, so I won't press it.
 
M

Misty

Guest
Cartridges:
Typically fast load, optional built-in battery for easy save file sharing, satisfying click when installed, high durability
Get dusty or oxidized easily and stop working (can be cleaned, sure...), clunky size (prior to DS), difficult to backup

CD-ROM/Blu-Ray:
Hold more ROM data typically, small and thin, sometimes contain music tracks you can hear on your stereo, typically easy to backup
Slow load times, no built-in battery so requires system memory or SD-card for save files and thus poor file sharing, very fragile

Digital:
Can use as much ROM data as the system allows, fast loads, easy to backup
Available at the developer's whims, cannot be resold, requires additional space memory that YOU must provide


And then there's the whole debacle about online-only games. I refuse to play those. Blizzard lost hundreds or thousands of customers when they switched to that model. But that's a discussion we've had before, so I won't press it.
I agree. All 3 are acceptable but online only is completely unnacceptable and should be illegal. Because of that lawbreakers debacle where people paid actual money for a game that they are not allowed to play anymore. Which is a form of property destruction.
 

chance

predictably random
Forum Staff
Moderator
I agree. All 3 are acceptable but online only is completely unnacceptable and should be illegal. Because of that lawbreakers debacle where people paid actual money for a game that they are not allowed to play anymore. Which is a form of property destruction.
I don't know the details of the "lawbreakers debacle". But if a seller broke an agreement with buyers, that seller should be dealt with.

No need to ban an entire distribution medium.
 
M

Misty

Guest
I don't know the details of the "lawbreakers debacle". But if a seller broke an agreement with buyers, that seller should be dealt with.

No need to ban an entire distribution medium.
It needs banned to prevent corporate greedy thieves. Online only are an inherent flaw where corps can delete your games (property destruction).
 
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Sm0ke

Member
Technology is advancing at a very fast rate, and it's sort of heading towards an almost biblical apocalyptic ending (Especially with the whole idea of a one world government, and the idea that we will have a code that will be used for purchases.) I'm skeptical about the whole religious aspect of it, but it seems like this idea of an endgame has always existed. I don't like the idea of being connected to a system. We're already somewhat connected to a system like it is, and monitored (Just say something suicidal on Facebook and watch how fast the police show up.)
I don't know if civilization will progress to the point where such a dystopia is allowed to occur. Perhaps if (and that is a big if) we find a source of sustainable, clean energy, alongside such a way to make theoretically infinite resources to cater a population that is growing at an exponential rate, governments will be able to merge and consolidate power to a degree such that citizens are akin to drones. The climate change/resource depletion apocalypse is very real and very near, however, so unless in the next decade technology wholly consumes us, we have other, more primitive things about which to worry. It is very self-indulgent to say, but if anything, we should be more worried about the abrupt egress technology could have from our lives if civilization collapses in this proposed fashion. Technology has disrupted human evolution to a degree such that we are no longer animals capable of living in a wild environment.
Anyway, I'm not sure how I managed to unearth my apocalypse worries in a thread about the physical state of games. Off to a good start, I suppose.
Much has been written about the Japanese love of physical collectibles. Many prefer CDs to downloads because they want to physically possess what artists make. Perhaps it's that sense of joy and excitement in opening the package and handling the CD booklet.
I only own a few digital games and still have a growing collection of physical copies. I mainly do this just to make sure I always have my purchases with me and I don't have to depend on fallible, virtual platforms. I do find some value, however, in the physical artistic craft of a game. Tim Hecker, a musician of which I am a massive fan, has said that he finds a worrisome trend of the virtualization of artistic forms. Obviously, his concerns were with the medium of music, but this applies to any artistic medium, including video games. Hecker said that with encoding music into a virtual, intangible thing, there is some erasure of its value and artistry. The physical erosion of music, as it were, turns art into a disposable entity that can be created and destroyed on a whim. There are some valuable aspects to such a thing, but it primarily serves as a method by which art is rendered pointless by digital encoding. You can apply this same perspective to that of a physical disc or cartridge.
You better look after those discs well then. A lot of old physical media like cassette tapes and floppy disks have been prone to failure after a number of years and CDs/DVDs sure like to get all scratched and such even when you think you've been careful (plus accidents happen).
CDs are a little more durable than tapes or floppy disks. Cassette tapes fail because the tape gets threaded, worn out, and eventually just starts to break apart from wear and tear. Floppy disks are made of much cheaper material than CDs, and since they are just hunks of plastic, they aren't very difficult to destroy. CDs are also made of cheap plastic, but I've found that it takes a lot longer for them to be scratched beyond compare than, say, a VHS tape that gets spooled and torn up after a year.
maybe its because they are afraid big companies will just randomly remove games from the library, games such as Lawbreakers.
To my knowledge, LawBreakers was pulled because the game commercially flopped and the developers did not have the financial capital with which to run the servers and keep the game afloat. It was not "randomly" pulled from people's Steam libraries, especially since it went free-to-play concurrent with an announcement from the developers that they were shutting it down in September 2018.
 
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chance

predictably random
Forum Staff
Moderator
[Tim] Hecker said that with encoding music into a virtual, intangible thing, there is some erasure of its value and artistry. The physical erosion of music, as it were, turns art into a disposable entity that can be created and destroyed on a whim. There are some valuable aspects to such a thing, but it primarily serves as a method by which art is rendered pointless by digital encoding. You can apply this same perspective to that of a physical disc or cartridge.
(emphasis mine)
I don't really understand his connection between digital medium and loss of artistry. Encoding music on vinyl LPs, or encoding a story-teller's tale onto a written page seems the same. Those can be copied or destroyed on a whim, the same as digital versions.

Perhaps it's the familiar feeling of holding something in one's hand? Not sure. But whether that's a printed book, a digital disk, or a memory stick filled from a cloud server, seems like a superficial difference. They are all just recordings of what an artist produced with his hand and voice.
 
M

Misty

Guest
I don't know if civilization will progress to the point where such a dystopia is allowed to occur. Perhaps if (and that is a big if) we find a source of sustainable, clean energy, alongside such a way to make theoretically infinite resources to cater a population that is growing at an exponential rate, governments will be able to merge and consolidate power to a degree such that citizens are akin to drones. The climate change/resource depletion apocalypse is very real and very near, however, so unless in the next decade technology wholly consumes us, we have other, more primitive things about which to worry. It is very self-indulgent to say, but if anything, we should be more worried about the abrupt egress technology could have from our lives if civilization collapses in this proposed fashion. Technology has disrupted human evolution to a degree such that we are no longer animals capable of living in a wild environment.
Humans were never capable of living in a wild environment. They always gathered together in villages and tribes, building homes and shelters, and fighting off beasts with artificial tools and weapons. They used horses and camels to move. Tarzan and George of the Jungle are works of fiction. Great games created using Fortran do not exist.

It was not "randomly" pulled from people's Steam libraries, especially since it went free-to-play concurrent with an announcement from the developers that they were shutting it down in September 2018.
People paid 30 dollars and aren't allowed to play the game they bought.
 
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Sm0ke

Member
Perhaps it's the familiar feeling of holding something in one's hand? Not sure. But whether that's a printed book, a digital disk, or a memory stick filled from a cloud server, seems like a superficial difference. They are all just recordings of what an artist produced with his hand and voice.
I don't exactly know what he meant, but from my perspective, it's the idea of owning a physical, tangible representation of the work. Some formal, I suppose ceremonial manifestation of the art that makes it less "disposable." I have a physical copy of an album and a digital copy of it, and I store a lot more value in my CD copy than the 12 .mp3 files on my laptop in a folder. It's the same thing (the CD is just those same .mp3s) but the casing, album art, and art on the back make it more valuable to me. Perhaps it's more than just the CD and the accompanying art on it. It's symbolic of an abstract collection of sounds (or, applied to a game, many different aspects working in unison) being brought to life and having a physically approachable presence. It's all about perspective, I guess. Some people might find a CD wasteful in favor of finding free .mp3s of the same music online, or just YouTube-to-mp3'ing the tracks.
Humans were never capable of living in a wild environment. They always gathered together in villages and tribes, building homes and shelters, and fighting off beasts with artificial tools and weapons. They used horses and camels to move
I don't know if I would consider this a valid metric for judging a species' ability to live in the wild. Bees and wasps live in built shelters, as do ants, birds, beavers, and surely other animals about which I am forgetting. If you want to take it a step further, you can invoke species with evolutionary, biological shelters, like crabs or turtles. By that same logic, all of these animals are incapable of living in a 'wild' environment, which is a term that is nebulous and which I failed to properly define for the sake of this thread. Also, there is a large amount of time between when our ancestors (which you can consider "human" by some metrics) evolved and when we figured out how to use tools, which is a byproduct of our brain sizes. There is no accurate way to decide whether we are capable of living in a truly "wild" environment because our evolution steered us in another direction. Humanity has been spoiled for millennia with how easily concepts come to us. Maybe if our brains didn't evolve and we had to continue to live in cutthroat environments, we would have accordingly evolved. If not, humanity would have died out a very long time ago.
People paid 30 dollars and aren't allowed to play the game they bought.
There was no refund system put into place? Okay, that's pretty raw. I don't consider it to be an exercise in wholesale avarice, but that is still very unfair.
 

chance

predictably random
Forum Staff
Moderator
I don't exactly know what he meant, but from my perspective, it's the idea of owning a physical, tangible representation of the work. Some formal, I suppose ceremonial manifestation of the art that makes it less "disposable." I have a physical copy of an album and a digital copy of it, and I store a lot more value in my CD copy than the 12 .mp3 files on my laptop in a folder. It's the same thing (the CD is just those same .mp3s) but the casing, album art, and art on the back make it more valuable to me. Perhaps it's more than just the CD and the accompanying art on it. It's symbolic of an abstract collection of sounds (or, applied to a game, many different aspects working in unison) being brought to life and having a physically approachable presence.
I can understand that. I own a copy of a favorite book for children. And I cherish it because of the color illustrations, old-fashioned thick binding, and oversized pages. Same words, same story, same memory of reading it. But it has a physical presence that typical mass-produced (disposable) books lack.

The only part of his statement I find puzzling is that a particular medium can somehow "diminish the value" of the art. For example, my favorite piece of musical art is just a memory of a concert I heard long ago. I have nothing physical from that concert at all. To my knowledge, no recordings exist. But the value of that musician's performance is immeasurable.

But I understand the idea behind the tangible object.
 

RollyBug

Member
The only part of his statement I find puzzling is that a particular medium can somehow "diminish the value" of the art. For example, my favorite piece of musical art is just a memory of a concert I heard long ago. I have nothing physical from that concert at all. To my knowledge, no recordings exist. But the value of that musician's performance is immeasurable.
This intrigues me, maybe because I have a poor memory have trouble imagining such a thing having this sort of lasting impact on me. What sort of music? Where at?
 
S

spitler

Guest
The Japanese are supposed to be one of the most technologically advanced races on this earth, to rival america. To claim that the big mac is in control and that impoverished classes are simply clans, may be a piece of misinformation.
 
M

Misty

Guest
Misty the ultimate weeaboo;)
Not a weaboo I just respect higher cultures. I'm not saying japan is a perfect place to live, in fact the only country that still has Freedom of Speech is America. I'm just saying when you compare their art and spirit...Americans (usually) cannot hold a candle. Although there are some exceptions. Id and Epic games has really great art, Blizzard does also. In the 90's, Americans still had this "spirit" but now they have become bogged down. I guess what I mean by "American Games" you will have to google a game called Game Party Champions. That game is the the core essence of what I mean. Again, I don't mean that all American games are bad, I listed that there are exceptions. But there seems to be this "core" that is the spiritual equivalent of what is sensed in Game Party Champions. For instance, the new Star Wars, at it's core, is Game Party Champions.

Game Party Champions:
 

Smiechu

Member
There is an example where failure of the cloud software model affected me personally.
There was a service for musicians called Jammit. It was a platform where peaople could learn to play the tracks of the best rock and metal bands with use of original isolated studio tracks and official scoresheets. It was great and something "promising" in field of music learning.
But... the app was cloud based (to avoid piracy) and user had to "buy" lifetime access to single tracks. It was ok. Price ware 4-9$ per track. I bough couple of them and ware very satisfied with the service. Then suddenly end of 2017 the site disappeared, the cloud connection could not be made, app was dead, I could not download the tracks i bought. No info, no official statement, no support for thousands of peaple around the world. Nothing...
So I lost approx 30$ I've spend on the tracks. Later on formed an unofficial community, where peaple managed to hack the cache files they had on the hard drives in order to "recover" the tracks, and a hacked offline app was created.

From many modern things, the cloud access system is the one thing I really cannot trust. It's comfortable and good for companies, but there should always be the possibility that the software will work offline.

And the subscription model is a slickly thing as well...
 

Niels

Member
Not a weaboo I just respect higher cultures. I'm not saying japan is a perfect place to live, in fact the only country that still has Freedom of Speech is America. I'm just saying when you compare their art and spirit...Americans (usually) cannot hold a candle. Although there are some exceptions. Id and Epic games has really great art, Blizzard does also. In the 90's, Americans still had this "spirit" but now they have become bogged down. I guess what I mean by "American Games" you will have to google a game called Game Party Champions. That game is the the core essence of what I mean. Again, I don't mean that all American games are bad, I listed that there are exceptions. But there seems to be this "core" that is the spiritual equivalent of what is sensed in Game Party Champions. For instance, the new Star Wars, at it's core, is Game Party Champions.

Game Party Champions:
As far as I know I have freedom of speech here in the Netherlands:)
 
I don't know, a couple of my oldest CDs that I kept in cases and never scratched started to rot or something, I don't know. Discolouration growing out from the centre, it was weird and gross.
 

Smiechu

Member
My ATARI carts still all work, and I've never had a CD get so scratched that it stopped working on me. They come in cases for a reason. I think I'll be fine, lol. Half of the games in my collection are older than I am. ;)
In CD/DVDs produced with "press" technology, the vulnerable part is the top painting coat, based on silver. Depending on the quality, the coat can deteriorate after some years, even when the CDs are stored in perfect conditions. Couple of cracks or simple delamination and you have a problem. The layer can also start to rust if silver was replaced with cheaper materials.
Theoretically it's not so bad here, because the data is stored on the plastic layer, there are technlogies which allow to remove the old paint layer and make a new one... the cd should run perfect.

The real problems are with wrirable and rewritable CD/DVDs. Here the data is stored in the paint layer. There is no possiblity to restore the data if the layer is damaged. Additionally the data layer is made out of organic protain substance. This one can "rot" after time, or simply loose it's transparency properties and the data is lost.
It's well known that CD/DVDs are poor if it goes for withstanding the effects of long time storage...
 
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