It is arguably the case that the development of “national” gaming cultures – that is to say, identifiable tendencies as opposed to the broad generalization usually implied by the term national – remains a fairly understudied topic of comparison. This is surprising given the vividly interesting cultural differences present within major gaming markets. An analysis of two of the three largest gaming markets - that of Japan and the United States - for example, reveals differences that are as deeply seated as those explored through more “proper” media, such as film, literature and art. Indeed, such an analysis, specifically in terms of the differences between manners of consumption and the spaces of consumption provide an interesting insight into the development of the Japanese media mix tradition. One example of this can be found in the development of the rhythm game (ongaku gemu) in Japan, one of the major genres of Japanese arcade gaming. The case study here focus specifically on the largest combination of rhythm game and arcade space in Japan - that of the Bemani franchise, and the Taito Station arcade chain.
Let us first begin by addressing the issues that arise when considering a term that is immediately as problematic as a “national” gaming culture. Certainly, to draw distinctions between gaming cultures suggest inherent and clearly defined juxtapositions, but the focus of a “national” gaming culture here is market: trends of consumption and engagement, rather than product development. The latter is, of course, increasingly international if not already a completely international space in today’s world of globalized production, while the former has become a site for contention for producers and consumers alike. Localization firms often cite the challenges of bringing certain Japanese game to an American market, for example, while prolific producers such as Inafune Kenji (Megaman, Onimusha) and Kobayashi Hiroyuki (Resident Evil, Devil May Cry) have been interviewed for their insights on the differences in perspective that they assume when producing a game for a Japanese market as opposed to when producing a game for an American market. There certainly exists a global gaming culture - as the gaming phenomenon can be very much considered a direct consequence of postmodern media in the new, interactive ways it engages with its consumers, but there are certainly identifiable tendencies that are different and worth considering between different gaming cultures.
Before we begin to explore the Japanese rhythm game genre, it is first necessary to understand the prominence of the arcade center in Japan (or game center as it is more commonly referred to in Japan). This is because an understanding of this space is pertinent, as will be argued, to conceptualizing the consumption of music through the rhythm game genre. To do so, let us turn to one of the most one of the most prominent signs that one can encounter wandering across urban Japan: a white, iconic Space Invader alien set against a bright red background. This is the logo of Taito Station - arguably the largest and most ubiquitous arcade center franchise in Japan. Its ubiquity reflects the continued prevalence of arcade gaming in Japan especially when compared to the United States. Indeed, the Japan Amusement Machinery Manufacturers Association (JAMMA) - a trade association run by representatives from prominent Japanese video game companies such as Sega, Capcom and Konami among others, reports that there are 18,000 arcade centers across Japan as of 2013. The significance of this number is perhaps better understood when compared to the fact that the extremely popular gyudon chain, Yoshinoya, can only boast 1,200 stores in its home country.
Having established the importance of the arcade center in Japan, let us now consider the space that rhythm games hold in the Japanese arcade gaming market. The significance of rhythm gaming can be understood by considering the way space is negotiated in a Japanese arcade. A standard Japanese arcade is typically segmented into several floors, each of which are dedicated to its own game genre. Smaller stores will of course have less floors, but will generally still attempt segregation by space. Almost all arcade centers - and certainly almost all Taito Stations - have a floor exclusively dedicated to rhythm games. When we consider that most of the other video game genres for example, fighting games, driving games and survival horror games just to name a few - are often grouped up within the same floor (the floor is often simply named “video game”), it is clear that rhythm games has established itself as a significantly distinct and important genre within the Japanese arcade space.
 |
|---|
| Figure 1. A rhythm game floor in Taito Station with Maimai. Source |
For reference, the other major floor divisions that are common to Japanese arcades are that of the “prize game,” which usually spans several floors and are comprised exclusively of UFO catchers; “medal games” which are essentially pachinko-style gambling floors that have expanded to include horse racing simulators and virtual mahjong and other card games within a smoking environment; and floors dedicated to purikura. Recently, there has also been the introduction of a dedicated “Online Card Game” floor owing to the increasing popularity of the genre. The category names themselves are by no means strict – and floors are sometimes merged and separated depending on the size of the building. The purikura floor is incidentally interesting spaces to analyze from a gendered perspective, given that female accompaniment is
often necessary and mandated by the establishment for a male to descend down into these floors, which are also often located in the basement level of the building.
This breakdown of how to situate the rhythm game within the space of the arcade is useful when examining the manner in which a rhythm game is consumed. In order to understand the medium itself, let us consider a typical Japanese rhythm game. It should be stressed here that the rhythm game genre analyzed is specifically situated within the Japanese context, something that will be significant later on in the analysis.
The basic structure of a rhythm game is that it has a predetermined “map” of “notes” which appear in a certain pattern. This is usually set to the track selected by the player, and it often flows freely all over the musical score within a single play through, at times representing the beat, at others the melody or the bass line. The “hitting” of each “note” becomes the objective of the game, and accuracy and timing is almost always a factor in the gaining of points. The way the “map” interacts with the player becomes the unique selling point for each rhythm game. For example, within the Bemani franchise itself we have Jubeat, a game set on a four-by-four grid of squares.
The “notes” are represented by a lighted box, and the tapping of a lighted box within a certain time window represented by a “shutter” (you must tap it just as it closes) would gain you points.
 |
|---|
| Figure 2. The graphic tutorial depicting the four-by-four square system of Jubeat Source |
Another popular Bemani franchise, Sound Voltex, has the player facing a screen in which he or she appears to be heading forward in a virtual universe of color and special effects. Four lines of “notes” fall down from the top of the screen and six buttons must be pressed accordingly, two of which represent a “wider” note that fills two lines. The unique part of Sound Voltex, however, is the existence of two knobs on either side of the buttons which are represented as long notes on the screen. The player perspective swivels and turns with the twisting of these knobs, giving the illusion that they are traveling in a sort of “musical vehicle.”
 |
|---|
| Figure 3. The graphic tutorial depicting the vehicle-like system of Sound Voltex Source |
By hitting these “notes” within the correct rhythm and time, the player “plays” the song - and the word is often used in the musical sense - it is in fact often the case that low accuracy and multiple missed notes will result in certain portions of the song (the mids or the melody for example) to suddenly disappear from the track. Certain games, such as the popular DJ Max series which originated from South Korea, map actual sounds to each “note” so that a mis-tapped “note” will actually sound out, allowing the player a greater amount of immersion in “playing the song.”
It is the success of Bemani within this rhythm game-physical arcade space that has allowed it to become arguably the most prominent rhythm game genre in Japan. The Konami-owned series is named after its first and most successful game, Beatmania, which was a hit in both the United States and Japan and gave rise to the rhythm game boom in the late 1990s. However, while the popularity of rhythm gaming would fade away with the arcade space in the U.S. (perhaps highlighting the relationship between the genre and the arcade space at that time), Bemani thrived in Japan and expanded into different forms, from the dance-rhythm game of Dance Dance Revolution, which also fachieved popularity in America, to less globally known entries such as the still retro-looking Pop’n Music series. Interestingly, the rhythm game-arcade relationship has also thrived abroad in Taiwan and Hong Kong, once again highlighting the difficulties in figuring out where to draw a line between the tendencies of various gaming cultures.
Each entry in the Bemani series has arguably spun off to become a stand-alone successful franchise in their own right, underlining the importance of considering Bemani when considering the development of the rhythm game genre in Japan. Indeed, to break down the media mix of Bemani would require a dissection of the media mix of each particular franchise - for example, Pop’n Music places a heavier emphasis on the character-driven model that more commonly comes to mind when considering a “Japanese” media mix tradition. Sound Voltex, on the other hand, builds more heavily on an established media mix, drawing a lot of its content from prominent doujin circles, especially that of Touhou Project. As new franchises emerge and existing franchises continue to grow within the Bemani universe, each franchise has also increasingly come to rely on each other: “Bemani music” has become a unique sub-genre altogether, where players of Pop’n Music for example can play tracks originally released in a different franchise, such as Reflec Beat. Many of these franchises - especially the newer and more popular ones such as Jubeat and Sound Voltex, remain even to this day heavily focused on the arcade space, as is the case with the former, or completely constrained within the arcade space, as is the case with the latter.
The interweaving of relationships between the Bemani franchises have led to the formation of something similar to a large community, something which will be important in the analysis to follow. Indeed, there are not only in-house producers of music in Bemani that have become popular artists in their own right, but their Bemani original tracks have also been released in the album form under the music beatnation, which Konami itself founded in 2006. Each year since 2007, the beatnation summit brings together the Konami in-house producers as DJs to “perform” their songs at large concerts. The KONAMI Arcade Championship, an annual tournament hosted by Konami, has a lineup of games that are almost always exclusively Bemani series rhythm games. The rhythm game genre in Japan is therefore very much a hybrid form of media, and this hybridity presents a variety of issues when trying to understand it from a media mix perspective.
The hybridity of the rhythm game can be expressed in the following dilemma: the player is playing a game, the player is consuming music and the player is “creating” music. This makes the rhythm game genre problematic from a media theory perspective. Already the term itself reflects the potential issues - a “rhythm game” essentially a fusion of two “classic” media - that of the “video game” and that of “music” - something which is perhaps more clearly highlighted in the Japanese name for the genre in ongaku gemu. From the perspective of the audience, you have a medium that is consumed in the active mode in the former, while you have a medium that is consumed passively in the latter. One plays a video game, but one listens to music. Not only does
the very conception of rhythm game as a medium inherently deconstruct the “exclusive [domains]of development” held by “each art form” (Caroll 39) proposed in medium specificity frameworks, but it also arguably finds fault within more connected media frameworks such as Jenkins’ transmedia model by blurring the line of separation between media. Indeed, “each medium” does not “[do] what it does best,” and is not “self-contained” (Jenkins 96), the rhythm game experience is not complete without the music and the music is also not complete without the patterns that appear on the screen.
On top of all this also rests the conundrum that the player is involved in “making” by “playing” the music, he or she in a way is engaging in the creation of narratives rather than simply in the consumption of it. Indeed, if we are to focus on this “experiential aspect,” to paraphrase Christy Dena, one would argue that it “brings the participant closer to the reality” (Dena 189) of music making. The rhythm game can therefore perhaps be seen through the “intrasystemic meaning-making process” which Dena ascribes to her conception of polymorphic fiction (189). However, this is complicated greatly by the nature of the music used within the game. The music tracks that accompany the maps are pre-produced tracks - mostly produced, in Bemani’s case, by a group of in-house composers (though tunes such as catchy pop songs, popular anime opening themes, and songs from commercials do also form a fairly substantial part of the song list). These tracks are available for sale as part of the media mix of the rhythm game genre - for example, one may purchase Bemani albums directly from Konami. In addition, even the tracks produced by Bemani’s in-house producers have their names affixed to each track as artists. Certainly, therefore, the player engages with the music as if he were playing and making the sounds and thus enters into an illusory contract that forms the basis of the genre’s addictive quality and this gives new meaning to the separate medium of music. But when thinking in terms of the different media that come into play, it is arguably the case that the presence of albums and artists names is also an explicit acknowledgement by the audience that he or she is engaging in fiction - that he or she is aware of the legitimate creator and legitimate “player” of the song that the player listens to when playing a rhythm game track.
Finding the proper theory through which to conceive the rhythm game genre is therefore highly fascinating and convoluted but as the analysis has shown, it is very much a postmodern genre. The fragmentation of traditional consumption methods, especially in the complication between passive listening and active making. One could even argue that allowing the player to engage in an illusory act of “playing” music parallels the conflation between high art and low art in postmodern conceptions of art theory. The rhythm game therefore acts on multiple levels of meaning and is constructed perhaps of a sort of Deleuzian rhizomal identity and meaning. Indeed, engaging in a rhythm game experience is literally “no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody” (Baudrillard 2) - in the time that the song is played, the player feels as though he is authentically “playing” the song, but that reality is not one that he internalizes and yet there is no conflict in that. To elucidate this point further, let us here draw a comparison between titles that are popular in the West, such as Guitar Hero. Unlike its Japanese counterparts, the central element to titles like Guitar Hero is imitation - one holds a controller that is essentially a synecdoche of a real guitar. In contrast, the majority of rhythm games in Japan do not attempt to “imitate” in the sense that there is no attempt at all to reproduce actual methods of music making. The four-by-four cube controls of Jubeat has no resemblance to an instrument. The games that do - Gitadora, Drummania - are often relegated to one machine per arcade, while there are at least six machines of Jubeat for each Taito Station. In this way, the rhythm game genre in Japan is arguably one form of the postmodern, “simulated generation” (3) and perhaps regeneration of reality: creating an illusory reality but through non-imitation.
Regardless of the conclusion that we come to in the theoretical navigation of this genre, it is in the inherent difficulty to map Japanese rhythm games onto conventional media models that becomes the most interesting point of contention when returning to the initial question of a “national” gaming culture. Here, it will be finally be time to compare how the hybridity and postmodernity inherent in Japanese rhythm gaming sets it apart from its Western counterpart, and how the physical space of the arcade contributes to this difference. This can be achieved through a comparison of their respective media mixes, which, as will be argued, will now also include the arcade space itself.
As with all media, finding the point of juxtaposition between the American rhythm game scene and the Japanese rhythm game scene can be found by comparing the modes in which it is consumed - its media mix. This comparison will lead us to find a strange, communal tension that exists within Japanese rhythm game culture that does not exist in its Western counterpart. The primary space of consumption for any player of a Bemani game is the arcade. There exist mobile versions of Jubeat and homebrew versions of other Bemani games, but the popularity of the portable versions are incomparable to that of the arcade version. This is measurable even by the attention the companies pay to the alternative versions of the games - the tracklist for Jubeat plus, the smartphone version of the game, is simply not up to the same level of diversity. In contrast, the Western rhythm game experience is very much defined by the home. Popular titles such as Guitar Hero and Rockband may emphasize at times a coming together of individuals, but it is never within public space such as Taito Station. Hence, there is a need for players of Japanese rhythm games to physically commute and convene at that one level or space in the arcade where the entirety of the population would be engaged in playing a rhythm game, and nothing else. The arcade space’s centrality to the experience, therefore, also warrants its inclusion into the rhythm game media mix.
The strangeness in this communality can be seen in a tension between an intense intimacy and a profound connectedness that operates on several levels. The gathering of large numbers of like-minded individuals into a highly compressed and active space in the arcade is not unlike conceptions of the doujin community - and this is the reason why rhythm game as a genre can arguably be described as highly significant, for the “video game” floor is much more fragmented, and far less communal, as described earlier. This communal aspect is further emphasized in several ways - tracks created by in-house composers are often spread across several game titles, meaning not only that players constantly switch between titles but that players of different titles can easily find commonality with each other. For example, the popular track Evans by DJ Yoshitaka can be found on Jubeat, Groove Coaster, Maimai, Reflec Beat and countless of other titles. In addition, the in-house composers themselves often operate in a curious way: one composer’s music may appear under several artist names in the game, and often each have a long enough tracklist to have their own following as separate individuals (though there has been little effort on the part of Bemani to hide this). There is therefore a deliberate multiplication of identities and individuals which further attempt to construct a large and diverse “rhythm game composer” community, something which is absent in the Western counterpart (where the songs in rhythm games are exclusively pop songs). When a player buys the album from Konami, he reinforces the esoteric, communal element of this community: buying the album from a rock band that a Western player finds in Guitar Hero arguably exits the loop and factors a wholly different media mix into the equation. Granted, similar tracks exist in Bemani but the prominence of the in-house tracks in Bemani are what set the two apart.
Yet despite the overwhelming social potency found within the rhythm game space, social interaction is often highly limited. While the Japanese rhythm game has a multiplayer function, it is more often played alone. In addition, because of the level of noise emitted by the machines that effectively drown out both the actual music and any attempt at conversation, it is often the norm for players to bring their own set of headphones (amplifiers and jacks are provided at each game machine). On the other side of this is the ironic fact that almost all contemporary rhythm games will automatically match the single player with competing players from around Asia. There is therefore a strange tension between a highly communalized, rhythm game enclave and the highly intimate and personal experience that a player pursues when interacting with a rhythm game in Japan. This tension is arguably also not part of the Western rhythm game culture.
While situating Bemani within a particular media mix framework may be challenging, it is interesting to note how successful it is from the standpoint of material – or “thing” communication (Steinberg 87). Indeed, the various relationships that have been discussed are perfectly parallel to the “thing-thing,” “human-human” and “human-thing” (89) networks of communication that would qualify Bemani as a Steinberg media commodity. For example, the curious space of communication set up by the intense intimacy of the arcade machine and the intense social space that the physical arcade rhythm game floor sets up is arguably Bemani negotiating a “human-human” and “human-thing” (89) relationship. On the other hand, the sharing and switching of tracks from franchise to franchise within and beyond the Bemani series is a “thing-thing” (89) relation. It is therefore definitely the case, that one must consider the rhythm game - and the arcade space by extension – as an interesting space of media commodification.
Perhaps it is the fact that rhythm games are a simultaneous engagement with a variety of media forms that lack a significant narrative that makes Japanese rhythm games an interesting topic of discussion in terms of media culture and the implications that this has when defining a broader, “national” gaming culture. Ultimately, however, perhaps this is simply the consequence of postmodernity: the hybridity in form and hybridity in consumption in Japanese rhythm games like Bemani makes it such a fluid and malleable medium subject.
Works Cited
»Header image
» Amyuzumento sangyoukai no jittai chousa アミューズメント産業界の実態調査. Rep. Japan Amusement Machinery Manufacturers Association, 2011. Web. 7 Oct. 2015. http://www.jamma.or.jp/reference/data/survey_h23.pdf.
» “Chuugoku de mouretsu ni aisareru nihon no isai ramen 中国で猛烈に愛される日本の異彩ラーメン店.” Toyo Keizai Online 東洋経済オンライン. 東洋経済オンライン, 15 June 2015. Web. 07 Oct. 2015. http://toyokeizai.net/articles/-/73152.
» Dena, Christy. “Beyond Multimedia, Narrative and Game.” New Perspectives on Narrative and Multimodality. Ed. Ruth Page. New York: Routledge, 2010. 183-201. Print.
» Jenkins, Henry. “Searching for the Origami Unicorn the Matrix and Transmedia Storytelling.” Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York UP, 2006. 93-130. Print.
» Steinberg, Mark. “Material Communication and the Mass Media Toy.” Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Characters and Toys in Japan. Minnesota UP, 2012. 87-132. Print.