I say tomato. You say it’s a warm day

Ren Reynolds

According to Prof Richard Nisbett, Westerns and Asians think in different ways. What does this tell us about MMO design and the relative success of existing MMOs?

The story was spotted my friend of the show Matt ironrealms Mihaly, me and probably half of you. Prof Nisbett has sure been working the media this week.

One of conclusions of Nisbett’s work is that given an image a Westerner will tend to focus on prominent details where as someone from Asia will take in the images as a whole and the relationship between things – they tend to give a more overall, complete account of a scene.

Here is Matt’s take:

It makes me wonder if the reason Asians are willing to tolerate, en masse, online worlds with relatively primitive graphics (Lineage, for instance) is partially explained by the cultural difference this study demonstrated. To a Westerner who focuses immediately on the individual models, Lineage may seem far more primitive than to someone who may try to focus on the image as a whole. I really have no idea if that’s true or not, but there’s no doubt that there are certain fundamental differences in how the two cultures look at the graphics in games (much less look at gameplay). It also makes me wonder what Blizzard has done that appeals so strongly to both Westerners and Easterners in terms of visual style. I won’t presume to guess, but it’s an interesting thought to think.

Another point that Nisbett makes is that Westerners tend to assume linearity but Asians assume circularity. For example he gave in a recent interview was a stable set of circumstances a Westerner will tend to think that this signified a trend and that things will continue in the same fashion but an Asian will tend to think that it is indicative of the potential for change and ultimate return to some pre-existing state

He also cited an example of a contract between a Japanese company and an Australian one for a commodity to be bought by the Japanese at a fixed price. The story goes that when the bottom dropped out of the market and the price of the commodity fell, the Japanese assume that the contract would change to follow suit, the Australians assume they were looking at a big profit. 

In some of the discussions I’ve had about entering the Chinese market, I’ve been given similar examples. Nisbett’s work seems to suggest this is a tendency rather than a well socialised urban myth.