Canada might get a lot of culture from down south, but we still know what we love.
Despite being the second largest country on the planet by area, about 90% of the Canadian population lives within 100 miles of the US border, and a full third of the population lives in four metropolitan areas (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa). This opens the door to a lot of mutiplayer gaming, which things such as StreetPass groups and local multiplayer meet-ups such as the Toronto NeoGAF meets turning into a giant Smash Bros. tournament.
Some of that is historic, as according to StreetPass Halifax social director Thomas Robertson, it's what made him a Nintendo fan: “They were fun times, the focus being on mutliplayer or how is your adventure different from mine? What's your best Pokémon?”
Haziq was quick to mention Nintendo as his sole source of local multiplayer: “This only happens with Nintendo games now though, which is kind of funny. Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart are usually the main ones that I play locally with people. Though with online play being such a huge part of multiplayer gaming these days, the local stuff really only happens when I have people over for a get together.”
The predominant online game genre for consoles is, of course, the shooter. Yet it seems that Canada would be less suited to these games, and according to former Nintendo World Report Director (and dual citizen of the US and Canada) Jon Lindemann, there's other factors for this.
“The military has a much higher profile in the United States than in Canada. When I was growing up in Canada I never knew anybody that was in the military at all. Joining the army wasn't really a ’thing to do.’ When I moved to the US it was an eye-opening experience, because I was suddenly working with many people that were ex-Army, ex-Navy, and so on. It was an everyday thing, which seemed weird at first, but you have to realize that the US has arguably the best army in the world, and being a part of that still holds a certain level of prestige.”
Jon also mentioned that the kind of stories told in the US lend themselves to running and gunning being more popular: “You have the mythology of the cowboy or outlaw, the Wild West, Clint Eastwood/John Wayne-type stuff. That's a unique part of American history so the tastes of gamers in the U.S. reflect that to a degree.“
In a nation that was founded on the principles of peace, order, and good government, it makes sense that we wouldn't care as much about shooters. Some recent episodes of Radio Free Nintendo (episode 425 and episode 426) have borne this out as Guillaume Veillete has explored shooters, and I myself have only played a few first person shooters since GoldenEye on the N64 (Bioshock, Call of Duty: Ghosts). The only one that's really appealed to me is Splatoon because at least when I miss a shot, I'm doing something anyway.
