Knowing nothing about the speaker or subject matter for this talk, and attending only on a hunch I was absolutely delighted with a whimsical and offbeat look as games as culture, art and entertainment in Japan.
Speaker Machiko Kusahara from Waseda University presented theory and examples of unique japanese games with playful attitude and wonderful sense of humour.
Highlights include an exploration of strange japanese pet “growth” games, the latest craze of a virtual pet email program. Think Animal Crossing as an email application. Your virtual pet will deliver your email to your friends if you keep them happy, but if you neglect them they will stop sending your email or run away. The program is amusingly broken, while your pet is out delivering email to your friend, you cannot send any other emails. If your friend is not running their copy of the game your pet may wait at the door to your friends house for a long time, during which time you cannot send email. If you stop sending emails through the program, your pet will start sending emails to your friend’s pet such as “What is your owner doing? I havent seen my owner lately!”. One woman was shocked to check her email box and find that her pet had been sending emails to her ex-boyfriend months after they broke up.
Other themes explored included games as art, the cultural basis for the love of games and play in Japan and some history of how this came about in Japan because of the closed borders policy while the rest of the world was undergoing industrial revolution.
More details can be found in her essays online.