pointless backstory
I was born in the 80s and some of my earliest memories where the Karate Kid films. If anyone here is in their 40s, they'll remember the obsession with karate. Kids were signing up for karate lessons left and right. I recall something on TV where kids were demolishing a house using karate (obviously it was staged by whatevs).
Then the 90s happened, and the West got paranoid about Japan taking over. Pop culture produced absurd books about Japan taking over the US, and people literally feared it happening.
I like anime. It's definitely better than most white culture shit. It just feels like the #1 theme or trope for a video game or series (that isn't the West) is Japan. I'm just utterly bored to death of Japanese schools, Japanese feudal themes, yakuza shit, Tokyo streets, etc. Yes, it's 1000 times cooler than New York or Texas. I'd rather play Ace Attorney or a Yakuza game than COD or Modern warfare. I'd rather watch JoJo's Bizarre Adventure than Family Guy. Japanese stuff is often cooler than Western stuff.
God I can't complain if Japanese developers want to make something that they know with the language they speak. My big gripe is non-Japanese developers imitating Japan because that's what sells. Think Genshin Impact, Battle Realms, or Blue Archive. My steam recommendations are filled with Japanese themes made my non Japanese developers. No, I'm not offended. I'd just like to play a game, once, that doesn't have samurai and geisha. It would be neat to learn about another culture that isn't Japan. Maybe go to another continent.
Wouldn't it be neat to play a stealth game in Nigeria or Bolivia, and not yet another game with Samurai.
I can’t get extra mad at all of those Tokyo games when there’s also all of those goddamn New York and LA games. I wish studios would set their stories somewhere that isn’t the same four or five places over and over again, but a big corporation isn’t going to subvert the forces of cultural imperialism. Quite the opposite, really. This is all part of the cultural industries reinforcing the global cultural hegemony.
After all, many of the big games set in versions of US cities aren’t even made by US studios (eg GTA, Cyberpunk). Just like how many of the films set in the US are actually made in Canada. This is all part of cultural production under capitalism. The market logic says that people already watch films and tv shows and play games set in New York, LA, Tokyo, and London, so therefore all films and shows and games must be set in New York, LA, Tokyo, and London. You want to set your story in Tonga or Malaysia or Chile? No, that’s not allowed, it must be in New York or LA or etc etc.
TBF that’s more to do with studios wanting a certain baseline of familiarity than an explicit desire to make enforce cultural imperialism hegemony. The global audience has at least a surface level grasp of the cultural nuances of the big urban megalopolis’ like Tokyo, LA, NYC, London, etc. Whereas they have next to no grasp on a place like Tonga or rural northern Alabama, which means more time explaining and less time entertaining. Of course, that greater understanding of major cosmopolitan centers is a side effect of capitalism.
Kind of a "the purpose of a system is what it does" thing though isn't it
Sure, just distinguishing between conscious reinforcement of a system versus unconscious.
It’s not familiarity thats just a byproduct of the cycle. It’s because New York (and Tokyo, London, etc) is important to capitalists and to capitalism and is one of the centres of global power. So the big studios set their stories in New York, people around the world see films etc about New York, people are made to be familiar with New York, so then stories are even more likely to be set in New York because it is important and people around the world are familiar with it. Or rather, they are not familiar with the real New York, they are familiar with the mediated representation of New York. They know New York from watching Friends and Seinfeld, neither of which were filmed in New York.
Originally the studios themselves were in NYC (still are to an extent), as that’s where capital was. Also, actors, writers, songwriters, art builders/designers, but all of that is also a byproduct of capital being there. And if we go back to first causes, it’s NYC being at the mouth of the Hudson and thus central for the flow of goods in the Northeast that made it a place capital wanted to be.
So yes, the familiarity is a byproduct of where the centers of capital are. But it’s not a tautology where NYC is important to capital because it’s important to capital. It’s important to capital because of its material contexts. Even with LA, yeah it formed as a result of filmmakers escaping Thomas Edison’s lawyers, but it also had a lot of barns that could be easily converted to sound stages, and it was a 1-2 drive from locales that could convincingly pass for nearly any biome on film. It served their material needs.