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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 19, 2024

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No, the OP is talking about which cultural paradigm is better. Hence why it is Eastern vs Western media while trying to characterize the products as culturally eastern even when only their production or publishing is, and not Eastern-made Western media versus Western-made Western media

I don't think your interpretation is correct. The fact that the OP also responded to your comment with essentially the exact same point I made, that the fact that Elden Ring is Western through and through despite the Japanese developers only reinforces his point, indicates that his point indeed was one of the devs, not about cultural paradigms.

What does this category 'Stature' mean beyond 'I respect it, and I think a lot of other people do too' versus 'I don't respect it, and so it doesn't matter how many others do'?

Yes, obviously any talk about influence of fictional media is subjective. It's not infinitely subjective, but there's no avoiding subjectivity, and certainly objective numbers can't override it, though it can contribute to it.

It's not like there's lack of established western franchises that meet your broad categories. Far Cry, Assassin's Creed, Red Dead, and Grand Theft Auto are all open world action games of note, some with far more RPG credentials that Elden Ring which is JRPG in the mechanical build sense rather than story-changes-according-to-actions RPG. Depending on what you mean by 'stylish' action games, Helldivers, God of War, Fortnight, Gears of War, or even Doom. Call of Duty has been a spectacle shooter for over a decade at this point- is that not stylish because it relies on gunplay and grenades and setpieces rather than melee combos and stylized cutscenes?

I find this paragraph pretty ridiculous. That these games aren't in the same genre as Elden Ring or DMC isn't some result of gerrymandering, it's the result of people categorizing these games based on how gamers perceive them based on their interests and styles and such. Assassin's Creed and GTA could be said to fit into the same genre as Elden Ring, but the former has been shit on for over a decade already for being formulaic, while the latter's core combat and movement based around guns and cars places it ina different category. This isn't gerrymandered, this is the consequence of people noticing that these games differ in critical, important ways that directly affect the structure of the game and the way the players interact with them. Same goes for first person versus third person, which is a pretty major and meaningful differentiator, which is why DMC and Doom don't fit in the same genre (though I'd argue that Doom brought a lot of the feel of DMC from the third person format to third person), even before getting into the difference between shooter and melee combat.

I do think that the default presumption should be that any observation of differences here between East and West is an artifact of different countries being better at different genres. However, the fact that so many of the Eastern successes rely so heavily on Western culture - even the anime-style Genshin Impact is heavily influenced by Western medieval fantasy - only strengthens the point that the original comment was making.