I don’t mean leaderboards and such, American games have plenty of that for multiplayer. What I’m referring to is “grades” that you tend to see in games like the more recent Sonic games, Final Fantasy XIII after each battle, and Bayonetta (just for a small slice of examples that instantly come to mind). It strikes me that you rarely, if ever, see this in American games.
Yes, we do love our pointless achievements and one-upmanship in the form of speedruns and such we don’t seem to really do the “I’m going to assign a strict letter grade/color/star ranking to your performance” thing. Whenever I see that I almost inevitably find out at some point that the game was developed by a primarily Japanese team. It’s not bad, just something I’ve noticed that’s different in development styles.
Is there a reason for this? My best guess is that it feels very “arcadey” and in Japan arcades never really fell by the wayside the way they did in the west, so tying into that arcade-like feel allows for more marketability in Japan. I’m not sure if that’s the extent of it, or whether there are other cultural factors at play as well.
I know that not all Japanese games have this, the primary “core gamer” Nintendo franchises in particular seem to avoid it (contrast Sonic’s use of it to Mario’s lack of it). It’s also not to say that American games avert it completely, though we do tend to reserve it for more casual games with a more arcade feel in my experience. This is more a question of the prevalence of such in Japanese games where performance rankings may not even be something you’d expect (such as after every single encounter in an RPG), and the reason behind it.
You seem to cover my Best WAGs however, I would go just one further and suggest that it is the entire Banzuke concept. A rank-in list that sets up an arbitrary common goal. I think that it gets at a level of respect that fellow players have towards other players, that they can get XX% better or further than them. In short, I want to say that it is giving value to something, so that you don’t have to admit it is pointless. But, if you can measure something and know that there is a given measure more you can do, you don’t feel as bad devoting time in practice to it.
I guess it is a ploy to make games more addicting. Most addicting games tend to have a built in end. But, we come back to it, because we feel like the next time we can eke out 3 more seconds or so of play. A grade on our performance confirms that there is more game there, and beyond that, we know to some extent how much more.
It creates a sense of competition and re-playability. You have beaten the big bad, but I did it with a S+ Best in the Universe rank, and I have the YouTube video to prove it!
As pointed out, basically, the Japanese figured out achievements before we did. And in fact, still have one up on us in a way, because instead of a strictly binary “You got achievement X”/“You didn’t get achievement X” it actually RATES your performance.
It’s exactly the same sort of thing as achievements/trophies. A meaningless but clearly measurable goal to make you want to play more.
And it’s definitely not a new thing at all. I remember playing an old Game Boy game, the name of which I forget, that would rank my gameplay. Never could get higher than a D.
It was there right there in Golden Axe too, a game at least 20 years old. It gives you a score depending on how many times you have died, hit and how many enemies you have killed.
