"Fantastic public transportation and means that the likelihood of running into someone else with the same game and system is much higher. Public transportation even facilitates a form of random matchmaking."

You live in Boston? How many ad-hoc games have you played with strangers on the T? How did they go? What was the interaction like?

There are, I think, definite culture differences that come into play.

We in the US have always had a strong individualistic streak. Also we've been taught to be wary of people we don't know. We're heterogeneous, we've been subdivided into small isolated groups by marketing and politcs (two evils of the modern world).

So is it any wonder ad-hoc groups are easier in the East?

I'm susrprised this article fails to address these kinds of difference.

I'm not sure why we haven't seen more "ad hoc" games, but I suspect we're on our way toward them as a result of the explosion of smartphones.

Apps like Yelp and Google Buzz (those being just the first two that come to mind) are beginning to allow for real-time interaction in urban areas. It's not hard to speculate that other such applications (like the app that alerts you when it finds people physically near you that share some predefined characteristics), eventually including games, will follow.

After that, all we'll need is teleportation to make the world of Logan's Run a reality, but I'm hoping we can get it without that pesky lifeclock thing....

If I want to play PW ad-hoc, I'd have to: first, happen to be carrying my PSP with a copy of PW; second, be in a busy metro area with free wi-fi (unlikely); and third, happen to be looking for players at the same time as someone else doing the same thing. Given how contrived those circumstances would have to be, the whole thing is unlikely, to say the least. Added to this, the design of PW is such that it isn't particularly forgiving nor designed for short bouts of play.

So, as I see it, PW's multiplayer functions are completely useless, unless you have friends you know willing to play with you. Thus, the lack of difficulty scaling comes across to me as a pig-headed decision. All that moaning aside, PW is a good game, which I'm enjoying, and which doesn't require you play in multiplayer to get a lot out of it.

"After that, all we'll need is teleportation to make the world of Logan's Run a reality, but I'm hoping we can get it without that pesky lifeclock thing...". But can we keep the beautiful Jenny Agutter? ;)

The reason the article doesn't address topics like political difference (That's such a problem for the teen demographic, right?) is because those topics don't even approach the actual point, and isn't that the definition of an excuse? That's exactly what the author is saying: That blaming product failure on the gamers themselves because of an assumed, unnamed "cultural difference" is an excuse, no matter where you are from.

The major point is that, in reality, Western gamers DO seek out face-to-face play and always have. This isn't a supposition -- It can easily be seen in any educational setting or demonstrated by any group of gamers between the ages of, well, let's just guess 12 and 45. If you were, for instance, a young to middle-aged adult gamer right now, you probably grew up figuring out how your could tote your rig over to a friend's living room every weekend. As an adult, you probably spend your free evenings playing console games at a friend's home. Your whole life has likely been filled with face-to-face gaming.

These same crowds of gamers are also more than likely to have gone through other forms of face-to-face game playing, regardless of the popularity of the video game. This isn't demonstrating less tolerance of face-to-face, it's demonstrating different types at different times in different settings. I would go so far as to argue that the West is actually more diverse in how they choose to play games face-to-face, and more aggressive in seeking it out when it's a personal choice. Not only are the same older individuals still gaming, crowds of younger players still LAN when there's really no essential need. It's all by choice, and of primary importance is to note the lack of convenient ways to "ad-hoc," because it emphasizes the purposeful nature of that choice.

There most certainly *is* a cultural issue coming into play here, but it's not one of host Nation. It's one of gamer culture, which is a social idea. To be in the 'gamer culture' means you define your social space within those parameters. You look for opportunities to game and choose gaming over other forms of entertainment as a social past time. A person who plays video games alone 18 hours a day may be a gamer, but they aren't hooked into any culture. Most gamers, however, do indeed have huge networks of friends with whom they share the past time, just as some people use music or sports to define their activities with others. These groups require more than personal achievement or fandom -- they require topical communication and event.

As we see with almost any online play, people are very open to strangers joining in their social group as long as the stranger demonstrates having the group's focus interest at heart. Gamers are especially and consistently open to actually bonding with strangers through social interests. Game players trust other game players, and they give much more private information to a gaming stranger over the internet than a man would give another man on a train ride in order to play Sudoku. What that's meant to underline is that if there was a normalcy to meeting other gamers on the street – gamers already gaming – the goodwill there would be just as open as it already is in thousands of online spaces. It's not the person, and not the space, it's the communication scheme in between, which is called infrastructure, and that's exactly what Andrew writes.

Take "game" out of the equation. People, no matter who they are, communicate every day of their lives. If a communication service fails, it's because it did not serve the chosen audience correctly. Do you know how many times I've publicly run across another individual with a DS when I happened to have mine? Twice. Once, a 6 year old on a plane. The other, a coworker whom I could game with at anytime anyway. I've taken it out randomly at many locations only to be alone or not find service. I don't have the *expectation* of it working or of finding another person. The expectation has to be there for people to desire to look, no matter how convenient the process seems. That's an important aspect of the article that was alluded to, but not really emphasized.

Free Wi-Fi? Why would you need Wi-Fi? Do you guys understand the meaning of "ad-hoc"?
I agree with the population density factor, though. It's just more probable to find people around you playing the same game. Trauger's comment also goes in the right direction.

@David Yes, you don't need free wi-fi. My mistake. I maintain the rest of what I said, though..

Westerners prefer local multiplayer on the Wii. Japanese prefer their local multiplayer on handhelds. If there is any cultural difference, then that is it.

Blaming a relatively concrete problem, easy to solve or not, on some cultural cliche is a pet peeve of mine so I'll admit to having that bias, but I am really confused as to how readers could still think someone's choice to play 'Starcraft' or a game of Battleship over 'Monster Hunter' is due to supposed Western "individuality" and likely dissimilarity to their neighbor. It's a Red Herring. Whether or not those points are valid in any other context has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that said game player is still over there playing a game socially in the first place.

I like this article a great deal because it brings a high flying topic back to earth. Any kind of social gaming, and by that I mean a multiplayer game in any regard, is not some new-fangled concept that has to be marketed as a idea to a suspicious public. It's how people normally play games. Any games. That we've had a run of single-player popularity is the historical anomaly, and even then, many people still find ways to involve others in their single player experience.

The topic of the article was if Westerners supposed dislike of social contact with one another drove decision making behind private network choice. That's all. It seems pretty clear it doesn't.

Bart Stewart's commentary was a lot more on the topic. He points out that with a reliable system of hardware usage in place, new network usage is soon to follow. That has to do with availability and expectation. I can't go to the grocery store without tripping over someone on a smart phone. I saw a large number of people of all ages on iPads the last time I was in an airport (the same instance where I was the only person on a portable gaming system save for some 6 year old two seats down). At a private party recently, I played a video game as early arrivals waited on the event to begin. Suddenly, feeling awkward to be gaming when I probably should have been engaging the other adults next to me in discussion, I switch off my system only to find that every other person in the room is on their smart phone or iPad!

Here's yet again another demonstrated point of culture that is totally separate from the supposed, cliched aspect of this particular East/West argument: the gulf between our gamer culture and our population's everyday hardware use. If you want to analyze the exact "hows" behind why more people aren't playing Monster Hunter, yet playing something else, get rid of the Red Herring and follow that Rainbow Carp.

Umm... social elements such as physical infrastructure and population density ARE cultural, of course. These elements are very different between countries and cultures, and between groups such as "gamers." Another element that is not physical is the fact that Japan and various other cultures focus on groups over individuals unlike certain other cultures such as America. This is what is meant when people refer to cultural differences between the East and West, or specific cultures such as America and Japan.

By the way, if people wish to be taken seriously with respect to research, never use Wikipedia as a reference source. It is not a valid reference source in any way, shape or form, and responsible scholarly publications will not allow its use as such. Likewise, I cringed when I read the interview with the developers of Deus Ex 3 a month or so ago when they claimed they were doing research by searching on Google. That's not where you do actual research for a topic, at least if you want to find accurate, peer-reviewed information for your work. Use academic sources. Despite the prevalence of subscription-based academic databases and publications, there are some that are open source/free that are sponsored by more affluent institutions such as MIT. Yes, academic sources may be flawed in various ways, but the flaws can be traced via critical analysis. That's very different from using irresponsible sources like Wikipedia where anyone can post anything without being required to account for the information presented as though it were "fact" when it's actually just "opinion" (and often not even informed opinion, at that).

That being said, you may be led to a responsible, accurate source through something like Wikipedia or general search engines such as Yahoo or Google. You just have to do the digging and reference the actual source, complete with any caveats regarding limitations and/or biases. Then again, this is the same process for any type of accurate research, so it's nothing new.

@Meredith: you may see lots of smart phones and iPads, but that does not necessarily extend to the general population. It is dangerous to make such generalities. For one thing, there are many, many people who cannot afford such technologies, or do not want them even if they could afford them. Pretty much like anything else, in fact. In a similar fashion, not everyone is online; last reports I read within the past year or so stated that about 50% of America is online. This issue is even more pronounced if the global aspect is considered, and is a key point of debate between academic scholars and researchers in different areas around the world. Many academics do not have access to online materials and various academic databases that tend to be taken for granted in other countries.

Also, single player gaming is not at all a historical anomaly, especially for electronic gaming. On the contrary, this is the norm and precisely why electronic games became popular in the first place. Most people cannot find someone else to play with, and many games - like other media formats - are intended to allow a person to be entertained and experience a story, characters, events, etc. We do not need to have anyone else around in order to learn, after all. Class instruction can be one on one and groups are not required for most any field of endeavor. Same with reading, film, plays, sculpting, painting, etc. People normally play electronic games solo, not multiplayer in any way. This has been true since Pong and other initial offerings. Ralph Baer intended "TV games" to be something the family could do, but ensured that more than one player was not required in order to enjoy the medium.

Of course, you might happen to go to a movie or read a book together with other people, but that is certainly not the most common method and is not the approach taken when creating the work in question. If you want to limit the potential market for a game product, make it so that it requires 2 or more people. In addition, that is also a perfect approach to undercut unit sales. After all, if only one copy is needed (such as a board game like Monopoly, for example) two people do not (or should not) need to buy it in order to play it. Pong and many other games did not require both players of multiplayer versions to buy the product, after all, and many consumers are smart enough to take exception to attempts to force such purchases on them. You may be successful with multiplayer products, of course, but you will not be able to sell as many units as a single person media experience, nor will your product appeal to the vast market of people who wish to be entertained and enjoy your product's characters, story, events, etc but who happen to either not have or not desire the company of others while doing so. Even successful MMORPGs have learned this lesson quite well despite initial attempts to focus only on "group play."

Oh, and maybe that's another reason why a game product like Monster Hunter doesn't do as well in America as someplace like Japan. Americans are brought up from childhood onwards to be individual and to stress their unique personhood while other children such as Japanese kids are brought up to identify themselves as members of various groups (and, generally speaking, have a physical infrastructure that supports this sort of socially constructed coercion).

I honestly think it's the "bright lights outside their basement, are unable to venture out in the world to play with others?" thing. Or related to it.

Western gamers simply seem to prefer to play games at home. If not in their basement, in their living room with a big TV and stereo system.

Still, some of it is that no one has ever really tried to foster this sort of thing in the West. Just a few days ago, I was at my local library, and there was a Magic: The Gathering tournament. Geeky kids everywhere.

A large part of the success of Magic was WOTC promoting this sort of thing.

Sony and/or Capcom really needed to do the same thing. Promoting people to get together and play with one another. But these days video game companies don't really seem to feel the need to market their games; too many just publish them without any fanfare at all, maybe a press release or screens (sometimes not even that).

@Dave: In the context (my response to Bart's comment), it doesn't matter if a majority of the global population can afford, or wants, smartphones (etc.). I don't have one myself. I felt that Bart had a meaningful point. It was about the conceiving of a hypothetical possibility: It's much more acceptable and likely in an average city that the average person on the street will have a cellphone of some kind rather than a game system. It is likely that a person who spends a large amount of their income on a lifestyle centered around video games and gaming will own a portable gaming system at some point ... but just because the "gamer" is willing to buy [a PSP] at some point doesn't mean the average person using a cellphone will ever buy a platform for playing games. That cellphone user, however, WILL possibly consider buying an iPhone. This is what I meant by "general population" as opposed to gamer culture. I don't mean to imply that I think “everyone” has an iPhone. I'm distinguishing between those likely to buy games/game systems and those who buy other electronic devices, but not game systems.

There is a population of consumers out there happy enough to use smartphones who don't consider themselves as having even a particularly tech-oriented lifestyle, so, if the American trend of buying smartphones continues, and the trend of developing varied and numerous apps continues, and the trend of creating game-like experiences for that market continues, it will become more likely that a "gamer,” when on a smartphone, will be able to start a multiplayer game with greater ease. Through the acceptance of hardware (in this case, a smartphone), the non-game playing public supports the needs of the game playing public.

By saying 'with ease' I'm meaning to include not only instances of public gaming with strangers, but gaming among friends who may not otherwise have had the same platform, despite sharing interests and hobbies.

Reaban's saying the same thing with his CCG example: that promotion of the environmental whole creates a correctly motivating situation, and then and only then does greater opportunity present itself. It was the same way with the public growth of the internet as a system.

It also doesn't matter, within the framework of this particular question, that many individuals globally don't have access to the internet. No one is implying everyone has a smartphone, access to the internet, the same technology, the same technological culture, that an implementation of physical infrastructure does not have a social element, or that culture is not involved in a consumer's purchase choice. Neither is the author implying (if I understand him correctly) that less PTP popularity in one geographical area or subject genre as opposed to another doesn't have cultural roots. The debate is over what *specifics* might be involved and what causes them. (Honestly, we keep saying "West," but that could mean so many places. The opinion writer above is from the States. Many of us here are from the States. The contributing writer referred to in the piece is from California. Since the piece above is asking us to question ourselves about specifics, I'm assuming in my commentary that this is not a global debate but one mostly about gaming habits in America and the United States.)

The game mentioned (MGS:PW) is being marketed toward people already in possession of means to play. The target market has already shown themselves interested in buying this product, or a similar one. The hypothetical question has to do with whether the mechanic will do as well as hoped, considering that, earlier, a wildly popular game relying on the same mechanic didn't do as well as planned outside the home location. (Although, if you ask me, there are far and away other possible reasons why 'Monster Hunter' didn't do as well outside Japan.) If MGS:PW doesn't do well, why might it not, especially since the market seems willing enough? If the market didn't seem willing enough, the title wouldn't have been developed in the first place ...

As far as the "historical anomaly" comment goes, sorry, but I stand by that. Video games have a very short history indeed next to games as a whole within human history, and if you're under the impression everyone has always played single player video games alone, then you aren't considering how people gather around a kiosk to watch a person play, engaging each other in the excitement of gameplay even though they aren't literally at the controls. Maybe you're not from a culture of kids who grew up watching each other play single player games and taking turns. People gladly interact when the right opportunity is there. It was admittedly tangential to the topic to mention the history of interaction in play, and I'm sorry for that, but I felt it was a further example of why it's wishy-washy to blame poor sales on lack of a whole culture's *desire* for social contact. The desire is there. Social play, playing socially, intercommunication between friends and intercommunication between a society at large; these are larger topics than simply that of providing a literal co-op video game mode in a title that gets bought or not bought.

@Reaban: I would wonder if it's not that American players (I assume you mean) prefer to play games at home, but that home is most often the only available choice, the safest choice, the most comfortable choice, or the cheapest choice. (Not necessarily all of the above.) Where are the public game spaces, exactly? There are a few, but are they convenient? Welcoming? Maybe it's a chicken/egg argument but it's not like there are a lot of fun places to go for game players to hang out (and I can make a few guesses as to why this is but I've typed enough already). I can also think of many people who view gaming as the best form of entertainment for them because it lets them do a variety of things while saving money overall. It's something to do with friends that doesn't involve a huge restaurant or bar tab, and is more engaging than watching television. For younger kids, in America at least, it's something engaging they can do at home. There aren't a lot of other places for these kids to go. When they do get to go to available play areas, they many times don't have the autonomy to decide what they want to play, when.

Is Andrew's conclusion likely to be worthwhile? That, “Western gamers don't have some sort of phobia of face to face interaction that causes ad-hoc to fail. The main difference between the success of ad-hoc in the East versus the West is much more likely to be the infrastructure of the countries than their entire cultures.” Yes, I think so. Does he use the best, the only, examples? Well, best is subjective and these examples certainly aren't the only ones, but his argument is still meaningful.

Maybe the japanese just don't have a custom of bringing friends over into their homes? (At least as casually as in the U.S.) In many countries it's not customary to do so. Instead, you meet outside. In cafes or wherever. Then you have no choice but portable gaming.

And when you are at home with your friends, why would you want to play with an inferior small device when you have your 50" tv.

Yes LAN parties and such allow face-to-face gaming and are (were?) popular in the west. Andrew misses the point I'm afraid. There is a huge cultural difference like it or not: westerners don't much like socializing with *strangers*. In Japan and several other Asian countries it's quite common to strike up a casual conversation on the street, especially if you realize you have a common interest.

Try that in almost any big city in the west you'll get an icy stare, told to f-off, or worse. Big western cities are not friendly, it's as simple as that. People will play face-to-face but they don't want to have an excuse or worse an obligation to be friendly with strangers.

Ignore the cultural differences if you want. Your product will fail. You can spend a billion dollars on infrastructure; it won't sell you one more unit of Monster Hunter.

Mark Raymond said:
"If I want to play PW ad-hoc, I'd have to: first, happen to be carrying my PSP with a copy of PW; second, be in a busy metro area with free wi-fi (unlikely); and third, happen to be looking for players at the same time as someone else doing the same thing. Given how contrived those circumstances would have to be, the whole thing is unlikely, to say the least."

But Mark, this very thing happens in Japan. That's the very point of this article - why are different cultures embracing different types of multiplayer gaming?

I agree adhoc isn't going to happen in the US anytime soon - I have no interest in it. Heck, I have a PSP and I don't even play it in public.

I think, perhaps, it's a function of how we think society will perceive us. Yes, people gather to play Magic or D&D in libraries or game stores, but again, that's effectively private. It's the basement. It's far less likely to see people playing those 'out in the open'.

I think smart phone style gaming could bridge the gap, though, as it's not as socially damning to be seen on a phone. If the right game hits that gets strangers on a train playing together with phones...

Stepping over the numerous, whole cloth assumptions Joe makes about millions of people in multiple countries and of multiple cultures (and that "realizing you have a common interest" with someone by definition makes you not strange to them), what exactly about using a wireless network requires an absolute stranger? Nothing. For that matter, why does it require you to be out in the open? It doesn't.

If you take away the assumption that wireless ptp takes the participation of an absolute stranger, what are you left with? Why else might people choose another activity, game system, or game title? First of all, what else does "ad hoc" require -- technologically and factually? What are its shortcomings? What activities don't have those shortcomings? Where could one casually and consistently use "ad hoc" to play a game? Where are you more likely to find those places, and where are you less likely to find those places?