Yu-Gi-Oh! Online International

International news and rankings in Yu-Gi-Oh! Online

When You’re Big in Japan

Posted on | July 17, 2009 | No Comments

japan“May your reign continue for a thousand, eight thousand generations…” begins Japan’s national anthem and it seems like it may be true in Yu-Gi-Oh! Online. But why? YGO Online International takes a detailed look at the birth and assisted rise of Japan’s dominance.

Japan controls the world of Yu-Gi-Oh! Online without opposition. As competitiveness is what breeds interest in such things as ‘world rankings’, that’s not a very nice thing for me to admit but it’s true.

As the news piece “Kimi ga Yo” in this sites weekly “News in Brief” mentioned, 742 of the 1,000 internationally ranked TP duelists for the week ending July 12 were Japanese. In other words, 74.2% of the top 1,000 are Japanese, and when you calculate the TP, 74.6% of the TP gained this season has also been from Japanese duelists.

But while that explains the facts of Japan’s dominance of the global game, it does not explain the how or the why.

The reason is quite simple; Japan is the nexus point of all things Yu-Gi-Oh! and so has an inherent advantage. If we imagine Yu-Gi-Oh! as, say, a lake, with many rivers and creeks flowing from it representing all the different nations then Japan would be, well, it would be the lake itself. Because, you see, almost without exception (the only major one I can think of is the 4-Kids produced Duel Capsule Monsters mini-series) Japan IS the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise.

Japan gets all the cards, it (obviously) gets all the anime first, it gets the most TV time and, so far as I know, it is the only nation that has actual TV commercials for Yu-Gi-Oh! Online. The only big push in promoting Yu-Gi-Oh! Online outside of Japan that I can recall is when Shonen Jump in the US gave away a disc back in February, 2005.

So you see, it isn’t just the case of Japan having advantages. It’s the fact that each advantage feeds of another one, multiplying the effectiveness of each until the game in Japan pulls so far ahead we can barely see it any more.

The Yu-Gi-Oh! anime, as well as the rest of the franchise, is tailored almost exclusively to a Japanese audience, meaning its cultural relativity and appeal is greatest in that nation. The franchise, as a whole, also has a much earlier start in Japan than anywhere else in the world, giving Japan a head start that must not be overlooked. These are obvious points, perhaps, but they show the foundation given to the franchise in Japan over many years that the rest of the world had to erect in a hurry.

Now, if this natural advantage was not enough, when Yu-Gi-Oh! Online was being produced and beta’d, the majority of news released, the majority of beta testers and so on, were of course, Japanese. So we see more and more advantages piling up and Yu-Gi-Oh! Online hasn’t even been released at this point.

And so, when the game was finally released, and all the print media for it was circulated in Japanese magazines with far higher circulations than their international variants, when TV commercials for the new game were broadcast from Wakkani, Hokkaido to Taketomi, Okinawa and with this all focused not on a brand new questioning audience but one with a very strong idea of what Yu-Gi-Oh! is… well, it caused an initial explosion in activity that the rest of the world has been struggling against ever since.

While that explains the reasons behind Japan’s early dominance, you may be wondering why things are the same in 2009 as in 2004. Wouldn’t growing international interest in the game eventually erode Japanese dominance, even if just a little? It could, that’s true, but it won’t.

You see, save for a very occasional interest in the game in Korea, the Japanese game of Yu-Gi-Oh! Online is the only game in town as far as Konami are concerned. Everything else is just trimming. Therefore, while Konami pumps money into promoting Yu-Gi-Oh! Online in Japan, with continued features in magazines, TV commercials and so on, the international market is very much neglected. This means that the amount of players coming in from elsewhere in the world is minimised while Konami continues to ensure the opposite is true in Japan.

In other words, Japan’s dominance of the game globally is being artificially maintained because, in reality, Yu-Gi-Oh! Online only pays lip-service to the idea of truly being an international game. And that is the one reason, which encompasses all the others, why Japan rules the world of Yu-Gi-Oh! Online; because Konami ensures that it does so.

But before we get too depressed, let us remember that these things only apply on a grand scale. There is nothing to stop the individualist, the single duelist, from any nation, from becoming a great player and winning the YOC. With only 7 of the final 16 duelists in the Summer 2009 YOC being represented as Japanese nationals and with 6 of the 12  YOC winning duelists being nominally from outside of Japan (Yes, GREATENPEROR is actually Japanese, but I didn’t select his nation, did I?) we see that while the individual finds it impossible to fight economics, it can fight against another individual duelists no matter where they’re from.

Category: Asia, Japan

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  • News in Brief (August 16)

    • In and Out New Zealand plummet from 36th to 52nd as their lone representative drops out of the TP rankings. The once powerful Oceanic nation now looks a spent force in the online game.
    • Rise of Empire Great Britain (5th) is now only 3,271 TP behind 4th placed Italy. If Britain can overtake by season's end, it will mark the first time they've reached 4th since Season 7 around this time last year.
    • Seychelles Smashers The mercenaries of Seychelles continue their rise, reaching 12th this week, just 508 TP behind 11th placed Australia. The pressure is now on Australia to maintain their renaissance since Season 9.
    • Seventh Heaven The total accumulated TP spluttered across the 7 million mark this week with 7,252,670 TP being recorded. Accumulation rates have slowed dramatically and it is likely we will end the season with a TP recession.
    • Point Droppers United States (-3,698), Greece (-2,006), Gaza Strip (-4,098), Albania (-4,706) and New Zealand (-4,758) all dropped TP since last week.