Hey! I’ve been here for at least 10 years, nice to meet you!
I decided to quit my job and start a joint indie game arcade/cafe in Tokyo (Ikebukuro?).
I’ve been terrible at communication, but I thought I’d post about it here in the output category since any input I can get would be valuable.
I’d like to work with a variety of devs, but my hope was to get a good representation of local Japanese developers to start out with - does anyone know of any Japanese devs/games that seem like they’d be suited for arcades?
So far I trawled the BitSummit site, dlsite, booth.pm and twitter under a couple hash tags but I feel like there should be a bigger indie arcade game scene… I can name tons of kind of easy-pick-up non-japanese games.
this sounds cool! unfortunately i don’t know any japanese indie devs off the top of my head (is there much of an itch.io presence in japan?), but i’m part of a local indie games uhh thing (coworking space, gallery, beyblade league, etc.) based out of melbourne, and we’re literally right this very moment organising a game swap with a NY equivalent venue. so if that kind of thing is something that sounds useful/appropriate i can put you in contact with the relevant people.
Thanks for the ideas btw! And a thing is basically what I’m aiming for too I think.
What’s a game swap? Like trying out eachothers’ games? I’m 100% not the outgoing type, but I’m pretending to be atm so I think I’d like to say yeah, I’d like to talk with everyone and see where it goes!
I’ve seen a number of Japanese devs linking to itch.io, but the tagging on itch is really awful (no language tags/search, no country tags/search). That’s really the perfect place for these sorts of games though.
Meteor in Kichijoji had meetups and game jams until the pandemic and i know similar to yours projects existed around. I’m sure you know most of them got shut down because it is absolutely illegal to “rent” games and having a selection to play at a bar counted as “renting” in the eyes of Nintendo.
The best I can say is you gotta be boots on the ground and shaking hands at BitSummit and Comiket and other such events. There was some Retro Game Event a few weeks ago that I wanted to go to.
Despite everything, Japanese Twitter is still very active. So plenty of people to bother there if you just look into Indie and Doujin Games.
I went to an “arcade bar” in the under-tracks at Akihabara near the DX? building and it was like that, cabinets and tvs set up with gamecube hooked up and stuff. Yeah… I couldn’t imagine that being strictly above the table, but they weren’t charging for play at least I guess?
Okay good point. I went to BitSummit last year and talked with a few people, but it felt like outside of university groups the majority of the games were foreign. But for indie games in general I think that’s a good point.
Isn’t Comiket all fan works, or is there original stuff there too? I wanted to go to Comitia which is all original but I was busy with other things that day.
In any case, thanks for the ideas. I have a twitter account from last time I went to BitSummit, I should revive that and start connecting with absolutely everyone I think.
Are you referring to the similarity to gamon/jamon pork leg or whatever? I’m not super familiar with it so I was hoping it wouldn’t be too strong a connection. I got it from backgammon and looking it up apparently it just means “game” in old middle english or somewhat. I think it doesn’t have any common synonym in Japanese and the synonyms it does have are inoffensive.
I’m not sure if it’s a good name… the only other ideas I had were
You’re probably already familiar with freem.ne.jp and フリーゲーム夢現, but hunting through the games there to find someone making stuff you think might fit in at your arcade might be a worthwhile exploration
And you for sure ought to be at Comiket at the end of the month. It’s mostly circles producing fan works, but it’s not strictly fan works. And if it’s legal, which I expect it would be?, having some Touhou fangames at your arcade probably wouldn’t be a bad thing
It’s been some years since I’ve been in Japan but hitting up places like MelonBooks and Toranoana would be a potentially good way to scout for indie/doujin games that makes their way to disc, which last I checked was still popular
Nope, never heard of either lol. Well okay, that’s quite a site! I’ll check it out. It looks like flash game type stuff?
I think the main risk with fan games is like being able to mention the original IP in marketing materials, but maybe that’s not an issue? For Touhou IIRC you need to get an OK from Zun, but maybe that includes marketing rights or something. Good point.
Okay disks… yeah I just assumed everything was digital now. I don’t think I’ve ever been into MelonBooks or Toranoana TBH. Another thing to check out!
Thanks for all the ideas! It’s sounding like Comiket is something I’ll need to do in any case.
There’s a huge range of stuff. A lot of it is silly, funny, hastily put together, etc., but some of that’s awesome, and there’s a lot of variety beyond the stuff that is most prevalent.
I’ve not been to Japan post-Covid, but my assumption was that distro at places like Comiket was still primarily physical and that while things have been going more digital overall, physical media is still a huge part of the doujin scene.
Heads up: There’s a fair bit of porn and eroge at both those stores you’ll have to sift through lol
in our case a game swap is: we send over a few games made by people from our local scene, and in return we receive games made by people from their local scene. then we each show them off for a while, and hopefully foster some international interest and friendship!
Thanks! That looks super useful.