me me me! i'm a gamer!
In one of the opening shots, we see Japan's console dominated gaming market. Our main character is visiting a gaming store to pick up a game or two.
Or three... or four...
don't rush yourself with those jokes
This guy is prepared to drop some serious cash on the nine games he has in his arms. He later adds a tenth. Now, we later see that these games are actually a part of a bargain deal, but let's still do some math for the fun of it.
A new PS4 game in Japan can retail for around 5,000 to 8,000 yen, which converts to about $44 to $71 using the exchange rate $1 to ¥112. In America, the average price of a new AAA console game tends to hover around the $60 mark. So if our main character is buying these games fresh, he's looking to spend an upwards of $710 dollars. Now, these games are discounted, but even at 50% off he's going to be spending up to $355 this trip.
Let's move on to the next thing I want to look at.
So the premise of the anime involves our loner main character gamer joining up with a bunch of other gamers in a gaming club. I've been in gaming clubs before and have had varying degrees of fun. Let's see what kind of club our main character walks into. A dimly lit room, a good start.
Are all of those cases on the shelves games?! I hope the ones on the bottom shelves are books or something.
D R A G O N, another top seller in Japan
We get a panning shot of even more games. Here, some of the titles can be made out. Oh nice, they have "T H E P T A"! I can never find that one.
zing
So the lights turn on and we can finally assess the full picture. There are about 77 games on the top shelf of the bookshelf in the back left. There are easily over 300 games in this room not to mention the consoles and PC gaming set up they have. By the way, I only see one tower for those three monitors. On the far left we see some trophies and a bookshelf loaded with what I'm assuming are board games and those can get quite pricey as well.
Maybe the 300 games were all super bargains too. At $10 per game we still come out to $3,000 and at the assumption of $30 per game we arrive at a whopping $9,000. Everything included, this gaming club may easily have over $10,000 worth of games, equipment, and accessories.
if you say so
So it looks like Gamers! has an eSports angle to it. The original light novels were published in 2015 so the context makes sense. I have a general feel for the eSports scene in the West where MOBAs and whatever Blizzard decides is going to be relevant tend to dominate. But what does eSports look like in Japan?
According to esportsearnings.com, fighting games are the big payers in Japan. In the top 100 earners, the first FPS comes in at #66 with $3,686 and of course, it's Overwatch. The conclusion I'm drawing is that eSports in Japan is primarily developed around the fighting genre with little growth in the other areas. This means whoever plays the fighting games is the real club breadwinner and everyone else is a freeloader.
Will awkward main character get the blonde haired, green eyed love? Yes—these things have a way of working out in anime. It'll be interesting to see if the show makes any comments about gaming culture in Japan or if it just gives us the usual fare in the cliche-ridden anime industry but with a gaming backdrop. See you in the next one.
