Bushido

BUSHIDO is a Japanese word used to describe the way that a samurai should act. It is very close to the English word "chivalry" but with certain differences. "It originates from the samurai moral code and stresses frugality, loyalty, martial arts mastery, and honor unto death." (Wikipedia) Japan is a small country in size. However, this country is ranked as the second largest business country, right between U.S. and China, both of which has a size ten times bigger than Japan. According to my research and personal analysis, I think Bushido is one of the biggest contributing factors of Japan's tremendous success in the business world.

History and Content

Just as Johanna, Ryftenius, and Randy Z. Shoai pointed out in their article, "Japanese Bushido is the cornerstone of Japanese business culture". However, before analyzing the Bushido in Japanese Business Culture, we firstly need to have a detailed understanding of the original meaning of Bushido. Bushido was developed since the 9^th century. Being viewed as the soul of Japan, Bushido was very widely practiced during several major ancient eras by the samurai class. In Bushido, Bushi (warrior) should always keep certain virtues in their life. There are seven core virtues that are commonly accepted, which are: Gi (Rectitude), Chugi (Loyalty),Yuki (Courage), Meiyo (Honor), Jin (Benevolence), Rei (Respect), and Makoto (Honesty). (S. Peterson). Even though the varied in different eras, these seven core virtues have never been changed.

Bushido comes from Bushi, and Bushi serve the country in war, therefore Bushido is primarily a series of military disciplines. It is quite simple but effective. Nowadays, business is
often as fierce as wars. Compared to the social norms and virtues in western country, Bushido is based on the shame culture in Japan. With more than a thousand years' history, it is no wonder that Bushido concept is so deeply rooted in Japanese people's blood. For Japanese people, Bushido is no doubt the most preferred method to run their business.

The Online Battle Arena Games: Episode 2__LOL

As I mentioned earlier, League of Legends is quite a similar work to DOTA. It is actually inspired by the whole idea of DOTA and was shooting to supeirize dota.

It is interesting that the game was released between the era when DOTA  reached to its mature stage where the number of players comes to a constant or even declining, which actually provided a great opportunity for LOL.

Then what is new about LOL?

First of all, the business model is completely different. Even though it is free to create a Riot account and download and play LOL. The customers can only play the "heros of the week", if the customers wants to use the rest of the heros they like, they have to purchase with game points, which can be earned by playing more games or simply through purchase the Riot Points with their dollars.
If a player like a particular hero, he/she can spend some extra points or money to by a themend skin for their heros. The skins will make the heros look different than the normal model but will not affect the fairness of the game because the skins wont change any property of the gameplay.
I think this is a good model for LOL to be a merchandised game and generate a lot profit for Riot.

Another thing that differs LOL from Dota is that there are 3 different types of game mode, Field of Justic, Dominion and Persistance Meta Mode. The players can team up and play differnet modes to free their mind from the battles of the 5 vs. 5. These different modes also help the players to better define the heros they poccess. For example, there are certain heros who are not so powerful in the Field of Justic mode but are extremely useful in Dominion Mode.

From a personal perpective, the gameplay of LOL is still no better than DOTA. But the business trend and other types of promotions really present the game much more attractive to players who haven't tried either of the games.

The Online Battle Arena Games: Episode 1__DOTA

DOTA (Defense of the Ancients) rose up in my high school era and stormed the entire cyber game world, especially for Asian people, particularly for 
In my sophomore year, my roomate Mark Zhou recommended me another game, League of Lengends (known as LOL).
In fact, before writing this blogpost, I didn't even know how to categorize these two games. I wikied it and found out the two games are categorized as Online Battle Arena Games.

The reason I want to compare these two games is because there are so many similarities between the two and yet so many differences that the developers promote this game to players. Today's post is about DOTA.

"Defense of the Ancients (DotA) is a multiplayer online battle arena mod for the video game Warcraft III. The objective of the scenario is for each team to destroy the opponents' Ancient, heavily guarded structures at opposing corners of the map. Players use powerful units known as heroes, and are assisted by allied heroes and AI-controlled fighters. As in role-playing games, players level up their heroes and use gold to buy equipment during the mission"(Wikipedia)

The game is about balancing the strategy, team work and personal ability when fighting with the opponent team. At the beggining of the game, 5 team members were assigned to 3 different lanes, in order to defend against the opponent team. There could be different strategic arrangement for the players, such as 212, 311, 2111, etc. When it comes to the later era of the game, the players begins to start ganking (teaming up to catch and kill a single player) to gather the first move advantage of the game. At the end of the game, the teams comes to a 5 on 5 group fight and terrant pushing, until one party loses its Ancient.

This game mode is pretty much the same thing to LOL.
What I am really focusing on is the way the developers promote it.

Dota is dveloped by ICEFROG, which were lately purchased by Blizzard.
The map (not the game) is free to download. And since all the potential DOTA players already installed Warcraft III, there is absolutely no cost to play this game. This explain why there are so many people still playing DOTA despite the fact Blizzard released DOTA II already. 

What Would You Do

The ABC showWhat Would You Do is about setting up everyday scenarios that reflect on how people react, why they react, and what they decide to do. Normally, these little cases test the people around us over certain issues, such as racism, discrimination on homosexual people, disordered children, etc.

I like this little show not only because these scenarios reflect real-time social issues, but also because there are also so many kind-hearted people who is caring about others and are brave enough to stand out to speak for those who needs protection.
The following are several YouTube video links of the show.

When Unreal Comes Real

If you like video games, and have a particular interest in first-person RPGs, then you must be familiar with this icon, 

no matter what operating system you are using.
So what is this mysterious Unreal?
The Unreal Engine is a game engine developed by Epic Games (Another familiar name,hah?). There are four versions of this game engine, and UE is currently being through the evolution from UE3 to UE4. UE takes 80% of the market share in the game engine category
UE is famous for its elaborate design for images and scenario creation. It is also good at curving the details of the character's face and facial expression, including hair style, action, muslce, micro-expressions.
In a word, "Unreal really made the games Real."
If you are a fan of ios games, you must be familiar with Inifinite Blade I and II, one of the most popular ios games in 2012. Despite the initial sales price of $6.99 on Apple's App Store, Infinite Blade got a extremely high popularity among ios players. 
There are some other games that was 

If you like to play your game on a PC, then you must have been astonished by the elaborate designs of these games, Mass Effect 1, 2, 3, Devil May Cry 4, D.M.C Devil May Cry, Medal of Honor, etc.

Giants in Game World, Episode 2 ----EA

Electronic Arts, Inc. (EA) is an American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games.
Currently, EA develops and publishes games under several labels including EA Sports titles, Madden NFL, FIFA Soccer, Other EA labels produce established franchises such as Battlefield, Need for Speed, The Sims.
(Part of the following descriptions are from Wikipedia)

"The Sims is a strategic, life simulation video game series  It is one of the most successful video games series of all time. It  is also the best-selling PC franchise in PC history."
The Sims series creates different social and hitorical backgrounds for players to put their virtual citizens (called "Sims") in the created world. Each "Sim" can have their own house, family, job and social activities.
For example, in Sims Medival, you can actually portray the king, the wizard of the kingdom, the blacksmith, the knight commander, the spy, the merchants or the priest.
It is a quite interesting and unique expeirence.


"Mass Effect is a series of science fiction action role-playing third person shooter video games developed by the Canadian company BioWare. "
The whole storyline centered around Commander Shepard, a human command who had been through death and resurrection (in MassEffect 2). After completing a long period of vairies missions, Commander Shepard finally saved all organic creatures from their enemy, the reapers.

Unlike the first two series of games, EA Sports is not a game but a subsidary brand of EA.
EA sports mainly develops real life sports games to players who are sports fans. It released games such as NBA LIVE, FIFA, Madden NFL etc. Among these games, Madden NFL is the best selling one of the EA Sports products.

Giants in Game World, Episode 1 --- Blizzard

I think most guys of my age will be quite familiar with Blizzard company and EA (Electronic Arts).
The products of these two companies has accompanied us with our middle school, high school, and even today.
Just an hour ago, I was surfing in the space world created by Mass Effect from EA. I have to say that both of the two giants in video game world is still important to teenager's world today.They are both so important but distinct so obviously.

Blizzard mostly focused on RTS (Real-Time Strategy) Games, such as Starcraft, Warcraft 3, Starcraft 2. The internet platforms such as Garena (known as GG), Stream and other local platforms really gathered the gamers all over the world, which eventually pushed these games to the peak of success. Even since the year of 1993 when Starcraft was released, the successing step of Blizzard became almost unstoppable. It is unbelievable that Starcraft remained popular for ten years, until the first phase of Starcraft II was released. Asian gamers, especially Korean gamers was obssessed with this game.

At the beginning of the 21st century, Blizzard threw another bomb on the game market, THE Warcraft III, Frozen Throne. This raised another tide of Asian RTS gamers. This time, the Chinese gamers are winners. Many Asian gamers have won the WCG champion for Warcraft III.
Besides RTS games, Blizzard also gained great success on its MMOG (Massive Multiplayer Online Game), World of Warcraft. Up till now, World of Warcraft is still the most successful MMOG in the world.