if you look at japanese restaurants in google maps, most of them are rated at 3 stars. japanese never give 5 stars at most its 4, and they will give lower for even the slightest inconveniences. if you see 4 stars above then that means there’s a lot of tourists frequent there.

source, i’ve been there twice and was dumbfounded

Yeah if things are fine and I bought the game I don’t leave a review. Only if it’s exceptionally good, or I feel I need to warn others do I take the time to review.

Basically if I bought a game and put more then 5 hours into it and didn’t have anything to say, that is my positive appreciation signal

I’ve got 2000 hours in Factorio and haven’t left a review on steam…

This is the same culture that will absolutely not speak out or ask for a change in ingredients for fear of dishonouring the chef and the staff.

You don’t leave a le funny review on every game? No cake recipe or a picture of a cat? Are you even a real gamer?

if you look at japanese restaurants in google maps, most of them are rated at 3 stars. japanese never give 5 stars at most its 4, and they will give lower for even the slightest inconveniences. if you see 4 stars above then that means there’s a lot of tourists frequent there.

source, i’ve been there twice and was dumbfounded

This isn’t about Japanese games or devs. It’s about Japanese GAMERS.

People are always gonna people (be shitty) and that’s something thin skinned companies need to get over, and quick

Answer me this: Given the situation described in the article, WHY would any dev, indie or ‘AAA’, want to get into the Japanese market?

I’ve made the decision to never buy new games anymore because I’m too often disappointed. I hope the Japanese, and other gamers too, create enough aggregate reviews to help me enjoy the games I purchase.

Unfortunately, if you were relying on the Jap gamers, all you’d get is the number of negative reviews each game has as an indicator of popularity, since they aren’t leaving any positive.

Why is it so difficult to understand that the behaviour of the Jap consumers are breaking the review system as it stands? It doesn’t matter how great your game is, if there’s 0 chance for positive reviews.

This is the same culture that will absolutely not speak out or ask for a change in ingredients for fear of dishonouring the chef and the staff.

I agree with everything you said, but I want you to be aware that the term “Jap” has some extremely negative/slur connotations that I don’t think you intended related to US concentration camps during WW2. It’s not just an abbreviation.

When’s the last time you checked ratings on maps? I just looked at Sakata, a small city in Tohoku with no shinkansen line, and plenty of the ratings were above 4 stars. Seemed to be the same all over the place.

I don’t think japanese people are unique for leaving dumb reviews. Pretty sure you can find people in all countries saying shit like “store was closed when I went, 1 star”.

its pretty impossible to say a statement that blanket a whole country, but there is enough evidence to form the opinion

Honestly I’m not really a fan of how steam does it’s reviews with the requirement of text.

If it would just let me give a blank thumbs up that doesn’t show up, I’d be more willing to leave a thumbs up. Just that little bit of resistance after a day’s worth of work is enough to discourage me to do anything unless it’s something absolutely amazing.