At GDC, Namco project manager Kouichirou Taninami gave a lecture about the process of localizing Counter Strike for the Japanese market. A lot of it has to do with player matching and creating a LAN experience, but the most interesting portion of it was about changes to the game itself that were made to appeal to the typically non-FPS-fan Japanese gamer.

The gritty, burly character models Americans love so much just don't fly in Japan, so Namco hired artists to "anime them up" (see here). Further, Taninami decided a game where terrorists can win might not be best in Japan, so they replaced the teams with the factions CSF and NEO, whatever those are. This choice strikes me a bit odd, as I think I've seen worse in Japanese games. You can ally yourself with Satan, kill God, and end the world as you know it in Shin Megami Tensei but you can't let terrorists win a match?

More interesting, though, were the changes to the game itself, beyond simply the look:

There's also the issue that basically all people do in Counter-Strike is shoot each other – which should get boring after a while – so Taninami added a suite of single-person missions and mini-games; completing these modes gives a player special prizes. There are also a number of in-game events timed to various holidays and seasons, such as cherry blossoms that cascade in the spring. As for the game content itself, "we didn't want to change it; we didn't want to ruin it."

The next time you get into that debate about why Japanese games always have these kinds of characters or this kind of gameplay, just remember: Yes, our cultures really are that different.

Source: Gamasutra