If you have been paying attention to news on the Nintendo console front, you might have seen recent clamoring over Xenoblade. This game is a Nintendo-published JRPG whose localization status seems to be up in the air, and Reggie Fils-Aime was strangely silent at this year’s E3 when asked about it. Right now it is still uncertain if or not we’ll see it released in North America, even though many people believe that this is the type of gamer game that the Wii lacks on this side of the Pacific. Xenoblade, along with The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower are all critically acclaimed games in Japan and represent new IPs from Nintendo. There is nothing wrong with Mario and Zelda game at all (I just picked up OOT3D), but with very few true quality games on the Wii outside of these franchises, it would be nice to see these games over here.

The problem, of course, is that JRPGs are not selling as well in North America as publishers hope, outside of the Final Fantasy games. Tales of Vesperia for the XBox360 supposedly sold a disappointing amount of copies, low enough to cancel supposed plans for a North American release of the PS3 version and cast doubt on the future of the Tales series in the US. (Fortunately, it seems that we will be getting both Tales of the Abyss 3D and Tales of Graces F in the US. Let’s hope Namco Bandai doesn’t change their minds  on this!) Other titles, such as Star Ocean: The Last Hope and Arc Rise Fantasia also did not pull super impressive numbers in their localizations.

In the mean time, Western RPGs such as Dragon Age II are selling very well. In fact, many people have gone as far to say that the WRPG has gained dominance and is killing of JRPGs in the west. While the differences between JRPGs and WRGPs could be covered in more detail, I believe that such statements are shortsighted considering that aside from Final Fantasy, there has never been much of a market for JRPGs in North America in the first place. I think the real problem is that publishers have taken to pumping money into their JRPG localization process and expecting huge numbers from what has always been a niche market within gaming.

Publishers need to realize that when Brogamer heads down to GameStop for a game, he is never going to choose a JRPG over Madden or Call of Duty. If he’s bored, he might pick up a game like Mass Effect. While Bioware’s latest titles have a whole lot more in common with JRPGs than anyone really wants to admit, Brogamer doesn’t know that because there’s a badass space marine on the cover.

Brogamer is not buying this game. Period.

On the other hand, he sees the box art for a JRPG and sees a bunch of effeminate characters with pastel hair colors. He knows that they are not space marines (or marines of any type), and that they are not sports stars. While Brogamer may not always be the sharpest tool in the shed, he can clearly identify that this game is not for him.

And the thing is, Brogamer is right. This game is not for him, it never was for him, and it never will be for him. He really should be sticking with Halo or whatever other watered down FPS experience is popular on XBox Live. Even if you doctor up the box art and replace the anime characters with westernized replicas, it doesn’t change the fundamental nature of the game. Even if you manage to trick Brogamer into purchasing the game, he’s going to trade it in after he realizes what it is and tell his friends to avoid it and go with Gears of War instead.

What does this mean for publishers? It means that there should never be any expectation that a JRPG is going to pull the same numbers as Modern Warfare. It’s never going to happen, no matter how good the game is. That being said, there are still plenty of fans in North America who want to purchase JRPGs… as long as it isn’t butchered in the localization process. This leads me to the crux of my argument, which is this: JRPG publishers should stop sinking so much time and money into their localization processes, because often times their efforts are wasted on the niche audience who wants to play JRPGs.

Instead, I believe JRPG publishers really need to do things that make the niche fan want to buy their title.

1. Do not alter plot or characterization in a futile effort to “Westernize it.”

JRPG fans in North America are generally the same types of people who watch anime, read manga, and generally have a greater level of appreciation for Japanese culture. There is little reason to make sweeping efforts to change character personalities or story elements for JRPG players.

Translation quality is still very important in that it should be grammatically correct, and sometimes things do need to be rephrased to make sense, but overall there should not be an insane amount of effort placed into making the script more palatable for Brogamer. He isn’t playing your game anyway.

Note that this does not mean that I think that common Eastern and Western plot elements and character types can’t be merged in general case. I think it is possible if the story is well written and planned out from the beginning. However, taking a story written one way and modifying it will usually lead to a disjointed and confusing narrative that shows obvious signs of tampering. Leaving the story as the original writers intended is a good bet.

2. Stop rerecording the voice track in English.

I am willing to  wager that re-recording a game’s voice track in English is by far the most expensive part of the localization process. The time and and money spent hire the voice talent and have them voice hours and hours of dialogue cannot be small given the amount of spoken dialogue in a modern JRPG.

The irony in this endeavor is that most JRPG would not mind if the game simply kept the Japanese voices. In many cases, the Japanese dialogue is actually preferred because the English voice track is considered vastly inferior. In most cases, I agree with this sentiment. Whenever I am given the option to choose between voice tracks, I will invariably stick with the original Japanese track.

This woman is a sure fire way to make a preeteen girl sound like a chain smoking old lady on helium.

I will admit that some English language voice actors who are chosen are very good, but the English language tracks are always mixed bags that are usually filled with enough negatives to far outweigh the positives. Yes, you get may Cam Clarke doing some great voicing. This is outweighed by Wendee Lee trying way too hard to sound like a ten year old in the same game.

There are some games with English language tracks so bad that it may hurt sales. I was fully aware of, and ready to purchase, Arc Rise Fantasia for the Wii until I saw a clip of the localized game on Youtube. The voice acting was so pitifully awful that I decided against purchasing it. I’m not alone, as it appears that critics universally panned the localization on the North American version.

Given all of this, why spend so much time and money redoing voices for a game when you’re almost always going to end up with an inferior voice track? You’ll be able to release the game faster and cheaper by skipping this part, and most of the niche gamers who actually want to play your game may actually thank you for it.

3. Market Appropriately

JRPGs are usually not very well marketed in the US. In some cases, the publisher makes little to no effort to market them at all. I see very few ads for anything but Final Fantasy, and where I do see ads they are often in the same places you see bigger ads for Brogamer’s favorite titles.

I am not experienced at marketing at all, but I think that publishers need to do a bit more research. They really need to figure out what websites JRPG fans are likely to hang out on and target those places heavily. There should still be ads on IGN and other mainstream places if possible, but I think the best bet is to really focus on audiences that might actually buy the game if they know it exists.

It is easy to tell which of these characters if from a JRPG. These two should not be advertised in the same place.

Of course, all of the things I’ve said here are irrelevant if JRPG fans aren’t buying the games. Namco Bandai will probably think twice about localizing Tales of Xillia (a game I desperately want to see) if Tales of the Abyss 3D and Tales of Graces F sell poorly. However, there are some cases where gamers aren’t even getting that opportunity, such as in the case of Xenoblade. So it is also important to tell publishers that you want to see these games in ways that make sense. The large numbers of fans putting it on their wanted lists and in some cases pre-ordering it on Amazon (even though no US release date has been announced at all) may be a good way to strong support that they will actually spend money on the title.