University of Tasmania, Australia

Craig Norris

Expectations denied: Industry-audience conflict around the localisation of the Japanese video game 'Yakuza 3'.

Craig Norris is a lecturer in Journalism, Media and Communications at theUniversity of Tasmania. His paper examines the conflicting expectations betweenindustry and fan around the localisation of the Japanese video game 'Yakuza 3' intothe Western market in 2010. To answer the question of why this localisationdisappointed so many fans, this paper focuses on the three central identities adoptedby fans online: those who identified with the 'Yakuza' video games' motifs, those whodefined themselves through specific video game practices, and those who framedtheir disappointment in terms of broader new media practices. This paper examinesthese identities in terms of the broader struggles by industry and consumer to dealwith an increasingly integrated global media market which needs to be understoodnot only in terms of financial flows, but also in terms of the emotional investments ofaudiences in branded, world-building media franchises.