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Article 6: Myths about the OCG

I have just read Mr. Edo Hrzic's latest article on his site, titled: "Go, Parallel Rare...Burst Lady?". In the article, Mr Hrzic touched on the ever-sensitive issue of the long time feud between the TCG and the OCG. He briefly commented on how one UDE official gave his opinion about the OCG players which started a series of conflicts on the Pojo message boards. After reading the article, I am prompted to write this article, to expose the various myths about the OCG and the people who play it.

Myth 01: All (serious) OCG players are from Japan.

This is the biggest myth of all. Asia is an entire continent, comprising of many different countries. Japan alone is not Asia. Besides Japan, there are many other areas in Asia that play the game, such as China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand just to name a few. It’s surprising to see how people overlook the other parts of Asia; to think that Hong Kong, after winning a few World Championships isn’t considered an OCG powerhouse. And of course, there are also quite a number of OCG players outside of Asia. Just because they’re not Asians or the fact that they don’t play with the Asians themselves doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be considered OCG players.

For example: If Konami decides to release the OCG in a small area in the West instead of UDE’s TCG, the players over there may not get the chance to spar or communicate with the people in the East. Does that mean they can't be considered OCG players?

This stereotyping of OCG players being Japanese needs serious correction. Just don’t diss any OCG player simply because they are not Japanese and keep an open mind, will you?

Myth 02: OCG players play “original” decks.

In casual play, there will definitely be all kinds of decks being played. However, when it comes to tournaments, Chaos Goat-Meta Control decks are still the most widely used deck in many OCG tournaments. Unoriginality is a universal problem, which more than half the fault lies with how the game is created. It is not TCG’s problem alone.

It is true that OCG players play a bigger variety of decks compared to the TCG (even in tournaments). However, we have to consider the fact that the OCG side has a much larger card pool. And while OCG players have the opportunity to experiment with new deck ideas/cards first (since new cards will be released for the OCG first), the TCG players only have to copy the best results from the “experiments” of their OCG counterparts. Most TCG players will, without a doubt, choose this easier way out.

Due to this very reason, the TCG has adopted the policy of net-decking very strongly. Right now it is simply a TCG culture to net-deck other people’s decklists. Most OCG players do not netdeck because they HAVE TO try everything by themselves and haven’t adopted the culture the TCG has. If we compare the net-decking TCG players to the OCG players (who are the first to create and try new deck-types/cards) the OCG player will definitely seem more original.

Who knows if the cards are released for the TCG first, the situations may be reversed and OCG players will become the notorious net-deckers??

Myth 03: “True” OCG players should use official card names and pronounce them correctly in Japanese.

As I mentioned in the first myth, the Japanese are not the only OCG players on this planet. A large number (almost everyone) outside of Japan are non-Japanese speaking, or in other words, Japanese-illiterate. So why must we force everyone to change their nationalities and become Japanese just because they play a game called Yu-Gi-Oh!, which comes from Japan?

Okay, I’m putting it too seriously so I’ll ask again: Do we need to learn Japanese just because we play the OCG and not TCG? The answer is a definite NO. Even the Asian players outside Japan use their own native or preferred languages. The Chinese use Mandarain (Pu Tong Hua), Hongkongers may use Cantonese and the South Koreans use Korean (Hangul). Does that mean they aren’t “true” OCG players?

Since even most Asian OCG players do not use the “official” Japanese names or play the game conversing in Japanese, why should we expect the OCG players outside of Asia to do that? This is where fan-translators come into picture. The fan-translators help their fellow Japanese-illiterate players to understand the meaning of effects and names of the Japanese cards. (For those who don’t know, Chinese Yu-Gi-Oh! Sites also provide translations in Chinese.) The fan-translations are sufficient information for a non-Japanese player to play the game. It is something most of these OCG players will appreciate (except for some Japanese-literate ones) because it makes playing the game so much easier.

Dissing people who use these fan-translations just because they are not “official”, writing off people who don’t play the game using the “official” Japanese language is as good as not acknowledging ALL Japanese-illiterate OCG players (whether they are Asian or not). Keep in mind that these players make up a HUGE proportion of the OCG population.

If Konami seriously wants everyone to play the game in Japanese, they should start preparing Japanese classes for all the non-Japanese players. Otherwise, they should provide the players with “official” translations of the cards on their site or else fan-translations will continue to be trampled by the elite “official” Japanese-speaking lot.

As Mr. Edo Hrzic mentioned in his article, in the history of OCG outside of Japan, he and Mr. Kelvin Koh of Duel Monsters Central are truly the pioneers in OCG card translations and I’m truly grateful to them for that. To all the people who provide accessible and understandable OCG knowledge to the non-Japanese public, I salute you!