I've been to Gifu Prefecture in Japan once, and it's not far from the big city of Nagoya, and it takes less than an hour or two by train to get there. The towns of Gifu Prefecture are surrounded by mountains and rivers, and the scenery is beautiful, and the movie "Your Name" was filmed here. Historically, Gifu had an important position, and Oda Nobunaga had his own castle tower here, which began the wild hope of "Tenjin Bubu". However, gifu castle was actually built with reinforced concrete during the Showa period, which is less historically heavy and has become a scenic spot for climbing high and looking far. In short, Gifu is a small place with beautiful mountains and rivers, and it is not noisy.
"Your Name" was filmed at Hida Furukawa Station in Gifu Prefecture, and you can see the rolling mountains from the station aisle
Gifu is not only a scenic spot, but also a stage for player adventures in popular mobile RPGs. Open the mobile app store and you can easily find the game Gifu QUEST (Gifu クエスト) made by Blazeworks.
On the surface, this is a pixel-style magic RPG game that can be seen everywhere, and what makes it special is that the characters in it are all from the local culture of Gifu - specialties, mascots, historical celebrities, and all kinds of things that can represent Gifu can be seen in the game. Players need to join hands with the famous people of Gifu and the past to travel through 42 cities and villages in Gifu to save the destroyed Gifu Prefecture and become the "best Gifu Prefectural Residents".
It is worthy of "Gifu QUEST", and the local elements are full of it
Japanese players are quite happy with the game. First of all, gifu, which has been "destroyed", is quite attractive to the apocalyptic presentation of familiar scenes; secondly, the historical celebrities who appear in the game are mixed together, and Oda Nobunaga, Mitsuhide Akira, and Takeaka Hanbei fight side by side, which is simply a "chaotic party". By the way, the game can also learn a lot of gifu knowledge, after playing, players lament that they know gifu better - in their words, "gifu power" greatly improved.
Why make such a game with extremely high "Gifu Power"? In the developer's own words, he had relatives living in Gifu, and he went to check the relevant local information, and he felt that it was very interesting to use to make games, so there was "Gifu QUEST". In the next step, he plans to follow the law and produce a "Triple QUEST" on the stage of Mie Prefecture.
<h3>To save the reputation of the place, let's make a game</h3>
The birth of Gifu QUEST is not special in Japan. In the past 10 years, in order to promote local culture, games with the theme of various places in Japan have appeared one after another, and it can be said that a new game theme and even genre have been formed, which is the "local game" I want to talk about.
As early as 2005, GMO Media launched the action game Miss Tricycle 2 (チャリンコレディース2) featuring Tsuruzaki Shopping Street in Oita City, Oita Prefecture. The shops that appear in the game are all from real-life shopping streets, and various sacrifices that appear at local festivals, kiyomasa Kato, a warrior of the Azuchi Momoyama period who represents Tsurusaki, also appear in the game, and even the characters in the game speak the local dialect.
Miss Tricycle 2 can be said to be the origin of many local games in Japan.
"Miss Tricycle 2" was launched when it was still a popular era for feature phones
Since then, there have been some games with local elements on the market. Hokkaido Yurencho Ranch (Hokkaido ゆーにんふぁーむ) is one of the more representative, as the name suggests, this is a farm operation game set in Hokkaido Yuren town. However, at this time, local games were not yet popular, and what really made such games popular in Japan was the popularity of Gunma Nobuki (ぐんまのやぼう).
In 2011, on Japan's national television program King's Breakfast, a student interviewed mentioned that Gunma Prefecture was the 47th most popular of Japan's 47 prefectures— the last. This shook a single developer at RucKyGAMES, a game company from Gunma Prefecture. At the suggestion of netizens, he decided to make a game that promotes Gunma and lets everyone know Gunma, that is, "Gunma's Wild Hope".
The name of the game is "Wild Hope", the gameplay is also very wild, and the goal is to conquer the universe. Guided by the policy of "if only we could conquer all of Japan and turn all of Japan into Gunma Prefecture", players need to work hard to harvest Gunma Prefecture's specialties of green onions, konjac, and lettuce. The more specialties you harvest, the faster you can conquer Japan, and the conquest of Japan is not enough, and then there is the whole world, and the entire solar system. Eventually, the entire solar system became Gunma Prefecture. Of course, as a local game with the goal of publicity, players can also naturally learn about the terrain of Gunma Prefecture and the names of each city and village, and learn a variety of knowledge about Gunma Prefecture during the game.
In "Gunma's Wild Hope", realize Gunma's dream of occupying the whole world
The game received a huge response after its release, and it also appeared on Twitter hot search. Gunma, who is always used as a joke, has a chance to be truly understood by the public. In 2012, gunma prefectural tourism property division announced that more than 1 million people had played the game, and the publicity effect on Gunma was immeasurable, so they awarded the author the title of "Gunma Prefectural Tourism Envoy".
Gunma's Wild Hope is arguably Japan's first successful local promotion game. After that, Japanese game developers began to pay attention to their hometowns, and a whirlwind of local games was quietly blown.
<h3>Turn players into tourists thanks to magical GPS</h3>
Using the streets of their hometown as a stage to make a puzzle or RPG game, you can let players across the country know their hometown, this model quickly got the attention of government tourism classes around Japan, and many places played such games, hoping to attract more tourists.
However, it is somewhat difficult for some strong people to casually want to make popular and good games, and even drive tourism projects. Most of the local games are not highly invested and not large in scale, and it is conceivable that there are not many works that really have a wide range of influence. How to make local games more attractive at a limited cost has become a seemingly insoluble problem. Later, the emergence of the Rocadia Chronicle (ローカルディア・クロニクル) and the "Local Creation RPG" project provided a good solution for these sightseeing classes who wanted to rely on games to drive tourism.
The Rocadia Chronicle is an on-phone adventure RPG launched in 2016 by Ino truss house and set in the cities of Saitama and Kawagoe in Saitama Prefecture. There are rich BGMs in the game, the main characters have voices, and it takes at least 45 hours to complete the level at a time. Even if not as a local promotional game, Rocadia Chronicles is a fairly complete RPG game.
On the surface, the Rocadia Chronicles is a ubiquitous magic RPG
What really sets Rocadia Chronicles apart from past local promotional RPGs is the GPS positioning system introduced in the game — many powerful items require the player to go to a specific place in the real world to gps the location to obtain. At the same time, you can get some shop coupons in the game, which can be used in the real-world Saitama City store.
In fact, in the early years, SCRAP already needed players to come to a specific location to locate in the mobile GPS puzzle game "Heian Girls' Academy Who Killed the Dragon" (平女院誰がドラゴンを殺したか) launched in Kyoto. The innovation of The Rocadia Chronicles lies in working closely with local shops – after all, you've already got a coupon, and if you want to enjoy the game, the best way is to actually go to Saitama. While playing while traveling, the real travel consumption can be discounted, and the game can also get props, killing two birds with one stone.
If you want to play "Heian Girls' Academy Who Killed the Dragon", you have to run around Kyoto with your mobile phone
Restaurant coupons obtained in The Rocadia Chronicles can be used in reality
The Rocadia Chronicles received good feedback, with more than 450,000 downloads and a certain amount of publicity for local tourism. Izuya hit the iron while it was hot and launched the Local Tronic RPG Program. Government publicity departments that want to promote local history and culture and promote local tourism can cooperate with Izuya to develop it. With the experience of developing The Rocadia Chronicles, Inoue Truss house can complete this kind of local game at a lower price and faster than other companies - it only takes a few million yen, half a year, and any small place can have its own local RPG. These include Awaji Island: Awaji Island Japanese Heritage RPG (ははじまりの島 -Awaji Island Japan Heritage RPG-) from Awaji Island, Hyogo Prefecture, and Sakura no Sakura: Samurai RPG of Sakura City, Chiba Prefecture (天倫の桜 -佐倉市サムライ RPG-) in Sakura City, Chiba Prefecture, all of which are the products of the local RPG program.
The local RPG game in Sakura City is based on the theme of local samurai culture
<h3>Connect the future, the future of local revitalization</h3>
Games, which are usually used as entertainment tools, also shoulder the responsibility of tourism development and local revitalization, mainly because the past publicity methods can no longer attract today's young Japanese people. In a highly aging Japanese society, small places like Gifu simply have no way to retain young people. Whether looking for a school or a job, young people always go to big cities like Tokyo, where the population is decreasing year by year, schools are abandoned, and shops in the town are closed one by one. When I came to Gifu City, I learned that it was clearly the day of the holidays, but the shopping streets in the city center were empty, most of the shops were closed, and some of the signs had fallen into disrepair.
The anime Sakura Quest portrays the revival of the township as easy as a family, but the reality is not so simple. In this case, the use of young people's favorite games to complete local revitalization by attracting tourists to the local tourism has become a powerful and feasible way for people in various small places to restore the vitality of their hometowns.
Over the past few years, the animation industry has been promoting the concept of "Holy Land Tour", introducing real-life locations in animation production, and forming a win-win situation through cooperation with the local tourism department. Of course, the game industry also has some examples of holy places to visit, such as "Ghost of Tsushima" details the customs and customs of Tsushima, which has attracted many tourists during the epidemic.
The beauty of Tsushima Isle is fascinating
Of course, the examples of video games that use real-world locations as stages, and even develop in cooperation with local governments, are still a minority compared to animation. Most of the games that are directly aimed at local revitalization are not highly completed, and there is a big gap between them and the popular games on the market.
If you want to further expand the influence of local games, it may be a good choice to cooperate with more powerful manufacturers. For example, in the DS love game "Love Together", during the in-game tour with his girlfriend in Atami, players can also use specific mobile phone applications to take photos with their girlfriends in the real-life Atami. The game "Sword Dance" and the museum's joint activities are also worth emulating. In 2015, the Osaki City Museum of Art in Miyagi Prefecture and the Marukama City Museum in Kagawa Prefecture held an exhibition on the theme of "Sword Dance". In the museum, players can see a variety of Japanese swords that appear in the game. The linkage between these realities and games is also beneficial to publicity everywhere.
The cooperation project between "Love Together" and Atami has attracted many players to travel
Today's situation is different. The pandemic has been going on for more than a year, and tourism across Japan has been affected a lot. In order to attract tourists faster after the epidemic is over, there will surely be more places to launch their own games. During the epidemic, the Marugame City Tourism Association of Kagawa Prefecture produced "12 Princesses Imprisoned in Marugame QUEST" (まるがめクエスト~Prisonerわれの12姫). Since there is no way to develop tourism during the epidemic, it is always possible to make a local game first.
The characters in Marugame QUEST's Captive 12 Princesses actually come from existing local revitalization projects
Each of these unique styles of local games is full of people's love for their hometown. After playing a few games, I also want to see the real Gunma, and I also want to use the coupons I got in the game in Saitama. Overall, japanese local games are not difficult to develop, compared to the cost, the effect is quite good, which is quite worth learning - each part of our country also has its own unique and interesting cultural characteristics, historical folklore, they are also very suitable for making games, with a younger and more popular way to attract a wider audience. In such a huge land, there is always a place that will be the first to open the atmosphere.