Re: See? Square Does Listen!

by Shanyou

If this is half-hearted effort is how how Chrono Trigger is going to be "Remade" up them i'm glad it's not being released on US Shores, since this will prevent it from damaging the prolific legacy of game design and writing that Chrono Trigger holds.

Is squaresoft's reputation damaged with american fans? Probaly.

Reason one:
Storyline will never be as much of a feature to American gamers as it is to japanese gamers because of the way the video games are released. Most 'squaresoft fans' knew Aerith died before they knew that FF7 stood for Final Fantasy 7, because Japanese squaresoft fans can't keep their damn mouths shut. The only way to fix this is by dual English/Japanese Releases, so this wont ever be fixed.

Reason Two:
Older Japanese, aged 60 and older, the kind of age group that stewards Japans major buisnesses (And therefore make those kinds of decisions), hate americans with a Vengence. As I understand it, it's a result of being a member of that generation which has a deep seeded untrust of americans because of our atrocities committed against them and the atrocities we allowed them to commit [sic] via Unit 731.

Reason Three:
Asian fads are very diffrent in comparison to American Fads. Not many fads can make the crossover. Squaresoft does not understand the american audience because they literally do not make games for the american audience. We merely recieve things that a minority of americans (read: the people who read this site and are into rpgs) might like.

They do not understand our culture at all, and therefore they don't understand what may or may not make us buy a certain video game.

They turn on CNBC and they literally hear people like Jerry Falwell say things like "Role Playing Games are corrupting our youth" [sic] and they think "Well if this moral leader of america" (Remember, they are Japanese, they don't exactly have a good grasp on whats going on in the US of A) "is telling parents not to allow children to buy our games, then will we have a better or worse chance of making a profit? Will it hurt our reputation? Columbine." etc.

They hear that Australia is going to put RPG's in plastic bags like they are pornography, (which could be considered an americanish culture by a misinformed outsider.) and what do you think they think? They may be convinced that there is a tide against RPG's brewing in America.

So the question is, are we disappointing squaresoft or is our culture disappointing squaresoft? Perhaps squaresoft is disappointing us by not doing more research before they make assumptions about our culture.

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I hate to tell you this, but peoples opionion of FFA probaly have nothing to do with it's release/lack thereof anyway. In fact, square probaly doesn't even care when they get verbally abused. It's the Deer Hunter phenomenon, and it effects all vg publishers. The Squaresoft Brass probaly looked at the sales figures of FFA and decided that it wasn't economical to release CTpsx here, any other excuses they have for not doing so are probaly lies.

Squaresoft could go back to releasing one game state side a year, and if they do, thats their perogative. If they are losing money by doing so, they shouldn't be releasing that many games here anyway. But they wont, because Japan is in a recession. I think that as long as Japan has economic problems that we'll get plenty of translations.

But don't expect people like me to cry for squaresoft just because they get some nasty letters.