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Bibliography: "WHAT MAKES GÊMU DIFFERENT? A LOOK AT THE DISTINCTIVE DESIGN TRAITS OF JAPANESE VIDEO GAMES AND THEIR PLACE IN THE JAPANESE MEDIA MIX." (2015) by Victor Navarro-Remesal and Antonio Loriguillo-López


Navarro-Remesal, Victor, and Antonio Loriguillo-López. "WHAT MAKES GÊMU DIFFERENT? A LOOK AT THE DISTINCTIVE DESIGN TRAITS OF JAPANESE VIDEO GAMES AND THEIR PLACE IN THE JAPANESE MEDIA MIX." Journal of Game Criticism2, no. 1 (2015): 1-17. http://gamescriticism.org/articles/navarro-remesalloriguillo-lopez-2-1/.

In this study, Navarro-Remesal et’al suggests that gêmu have defining foundations, practices and trends in their use of mascots, cultural references, the general notion of Japaneseness, their game design, genre framing, and even their animation concepts, which can be traced and linked to the cultural inheritance and media mix, thus, gêmu evolved aesthetically from, or at least inherited traits from, manga and anime. The discussion is explored through two sections: a situating of gêmu along with manga and anime as cultural global goods in the Cool Japan tag, and a case study of manga and anime, that allowed for transferrable method of analysis that can be used to detail the features of Japanese video games. The authors note that there are three different axes through which Western perception of Japanese video games operate under: (1) character design; (2) game design; and (3) animation in the cinematic sequences, with possible addition of gender issues, identities and sexism.

It also gives special focus on the game design, where it builds upon the discourses of Picard (2013) who first suggested the separation of what he calls gêmu – that is, “the particular media ecology” which forms the Japanese video game industry – from Western video games, as “the complex geopolitical and socioeconomic negotiations” specific to Japan, and the prominence of cultural references, which according to Pelletier-Gagnon (2011) can be deliberately avoided to strengthen the “mukokuseki” aspect of games or “mukokuseki game design”, thus arguing that Japaneseness in video games is a concept that is always in motion and can be rearticulated in multiple ways by different game designers.

The notion of gêmu should not be a closed, unchangeable list of mandatory traits, but a practical idea that helps critics, designers and scholars obtain a better understanding of Japanese games both as part of their markets of origin and an international, transnational conversation at industrial and creative levels where transfers and influences are constantly occurring. Not only is it necessary to distinguish gêmu from Western games in order to understand them better, they should always be considered as part of a bigger, and deeply interwoven, Japanese media mix.

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