TIGSource Forums

as quasi-american independent games "creator" i feel that I am to address the 'japanese question' of whether there are japanese independent game makers.
are there any japanese independent game makers?
and if so,
do you feel conflicted as a japanese games creator within the scheme of a larger independence posed by an intimidation of american indepence?
i understand there is growing hatred between 'independent vs large' and that one will often see this as 'america vs japan'
as japanese, do you feel placed badly?

what

nani?

I actually wonder if we got any japanese indie dev on these boards.

I haven't noticed any of the "prejudice" that Hamletz is refering to. Isn't Pixel Japanese?

I don't know about on these boards but I own a whole SHELF of independent Japanese games, and quite a few downloads. I would even go as far as to say there are probably more Japanese indie games for sale than American ones.

There's Pixel, Ikiki and Nigoro whose games are all well loved here and that's just off the top of my head. To me it seems like Japan had a independent gaming scene longer than most countries.

It sounds like Hamletz is wondering if there's a tendency to blur the line between "AAA Games" and "Japan", given how much of the industry is based there.. I think?
If that is the case, it's not something I've seen.

Since when is EA japanese?  ???

I think America is the only country that can produce independent games because they are the inventors of independence and freedom as we know it today. Other countries like Japan could never live up to the standards set by America in terms of independent game development because they don't understand true independence, having never experienced it.

This topic makes me wonder how much of a Japanese indie game community there is and if Japanese indie games are held to the same views as they are in English-speaking communities. Especially on TIGS, "indie" seems to be more of a club than a manner of game development. I wonder if they debate "art games" in Japan too... It makes me want to learn Japanese just to see first hand what their indie scene might be like.

mr_fun (author of Dink Smallwood, Novashell, Proton and Legend of Red Dragon) now lives in Japan... just ask him?

He hangs on the Ludumdare channel (he is one of the ops) during the japanese workday (thus, night in the west).

:cavestory: <- This is an emoticon on our forums.

Lol.

I seriously hope this was sarcasm.

You haven't been here long have you?

He's been here longer than me actually.

So how come I'm only level1? Stupid forum software is probably japanese.

Isn't the japanese 'doujin game' scene basically their equivalent of the indie scene? I mean, recettear was well received outside of Japan.

As far as I know, Japan has a indie scene probably as big as the western one, it's just that we don't get to know much of the stuff that's released there. For example, Touhou is extremely popular in Japan, yet there are people in this forum that don't even know who the main character is. It's the same thing for other less-known titles, such as Kamui and Big Bang Beat[with many people never having heard of those].

Another thing I think is interesting to note is that a big ammount of the japanese indie games are shmups or fighting games, with there being fewer plataformers than in the western indie game scene. Mind you! That's only as far as I know. Maybe there are more plataformers there and I am just misinformed.

I've just saw a article on Gamesauce magazine about working on japan.

The author (that is now a indie in japan) claims that even if you are a wapanese otaku that is fluent in japanese, all that you see from japanese games are the "tip of iceberg" because they don't care about making local releases, or even regional releases, maybe there are for example Okinawan games that only people from Okinawa knows and if you ask someone of Tokyo if the know, they probably don't.


The shmups and fighting games are known to us because you don't need to know japanese or the particular dialect that was used to write text in them, now go play dating sim without knowing japanese :P (dating sim is a huge genre in japan, Yahoo! Japan for example made a research on the most popular games on japan, and although there was things like Mario and Zelda, in fourth place there was a japanese only dating sim)

thankyou for all the great replies! :)


yes sinclair  this is my understanding, but it worries me that an american may feel great worthlessness at the cold feet of the japanese.i have noticed many recently that the atmosphere is thick among concerns appertaining to the 'the japanese vs america debate'. personally i think we have to accept that japan is 'creating' large and better games and we are making smaller and less interesting games.
i will restate that i think we must pretend to be allies with the japanese so that they will reward us with knowledge of games creation

as i have said earlier:


remember, america is only 200 years old and we are growing as the second rises so we shoudnt feel need to discriminate upon the japanese who enters the american indie games field (though be cautious and do not assume they are here on good will).

 :-\

Hamletz, sinclair was kidding...

If we eat their brains do we gain their powers? (Just wondering...)  :o

Your nationalism disgusts me, OP. :facepalm:


I couldn't find much on the side of Japanese indie forums/communities, both from searching Google in English and in Japanese.
I've inferenced that the Japanese indie game scene is much less united than ours, at least by the web.
That, or I was searching wrong.
(One bad search led me to hentai based results  :facepalm: )

I found this while browsing Google: "Inside Japan's indie game development scene" (http://www.gamepro.com/article/features/217453/inside-japans-indie-game-development-scene/)







Also, "Doujin game makers discuss doujin game scene" (http://zepy.momotato.com/2009/05/11/doujin-game-makers-discuss-doujin-game-scene/)






And another, "HardcoreGaming101: Doujin Games" (http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/doujingames/doujingames.htm)






And of course, "Wikipedia: Doujin Game" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doujin_game)







One more, "[PC] Doujin Game Master List" (http://www.gamingforce.org/forums/video-gaming/8803-doujin-game-master-list.html) which has a bunch of pictures of various Japanese indie games. A little research can go a long ways.

Given his other posts I think this is a persona of some sort.

if you read timw's blog (indiegames.com/blog) every once in a while he'll post a japanese indie game; probably around a few times a month.

some of the most popular indie games are japanese; not just cave story but also la mulana, guardian of paradise, warning forever, kenta cho's games, dot fighters, fraxy, gigadeep, houkaimura, rose and camelia, the teppoman games, tower of the sorcerer, the grow games, arm joe, blocksum, yume nikki, etc. etc.

i think it's even safe to say that tigsource was largely founded by fans of japanese indie games: cave story, la mulana, and kenta cho's games were the major games that early tigsource circa 2006 and 2007 was covering and talking about all the time

so it seems kind of weird to me that people would wonder where japanese indie games are; they're everywhere, new ones are released every day. now japanese indie game *developers*, they don't come around here much because most of them don't know english and they have their own sites and forums. but there's still some interaction; derek did interviews with pixel for instance.

http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2009/09/freeware_game_pick_journey_to.html

so, y'all're pretty serious about things

http://vimeo.com/13851395

Seems pretty active to me.

A pretty active Korean community, you mean?

Something that helps is the fact that the "japanese internet" is kind of separate from the rest of the world. I know few japanese that "venture" out of it.

Japan seems pretty isolated from the rest of the world in general, at least culturally, which is probably the reason for their "mythical" status among Western nerds. ;)

It also means they're the most indie of all cultures.

North Korea?

It's kinda sad that you equate indie with segregation though...  :concerned:

I'd say the two biggest problems between the Japanese indie scene and the English-speaking indie scene is that Japan indeed likes their boxes and games sold only on Comiket and the likes, with maybe a change of ordering a high-price boxed copy through online shops for the foreigners, and that requires knowledge of the game's existence in advance. The other is indeed the fact that Japanese kinda stay in their own sites and communicate mainly in Japanese, thus knowledge about their indie games rarely gets out to a larger part of the internet.

Which is pretty sad, because I'd really like to see more Japanese indie games without having to randomly stumble upon them by incident and then having to usually pirate them to be able to even try them out. Just getting some sort of digital distribution shop up for them with demos and short English descriptions would help a lot.

There's also the whole language barrier issue with the games themselves. Not that many people outside of Japan speak Japanese, so most people would be limited to shmups, fighters and other genres that don't require reading. Of course, some games get picked up by amateur translators (like La-Mulana or :cavestory:) but those are also rather scant and mostly don't bother with indie games.

Finding Japanese indie games is serious business  :handshakeL: :apoplectic:

I kid~
I found a website similar to Miniclip for us. It even had Heli Attack 3 with a scant Japanese translation attached to it.  :lol:

also: Anamanaguchi  :-*
vegan skateboards bahaha~ I love that song. Hilarious mock rap.

Watchu talkin' 'bout.

Anamanaguchi has, like, zilch to do with Japan wat?

Actually Twitter is pretty huge because it doesn't have a "Japanese version" that most modern social networking sites have. For example they don't use facebook, they use mixl etc.

Twitter is a good bet for getting in touch with Japanese devs etc. if you know a bit of Japanese or use Google Translate. I've talked to numerous Japanese game music composers this way :)

Corpus's user motto.... thing
"Vegan skateboards, etc."

It's from one of their songs.  ;)

My personal text is from a song too, but a better one.

through twitter i've met japanese fans of my game immortal defense, so yeah, twitter is actually the first time i've ever seen anyone from japan on the internet

I know that some people from 2ch have community wikis dedicated to stuff like browser games, and many of the stuff there are not japanese. Territory Wars is one of their favorite picks iirc.

Though I have searched for western indie gaming on the boards there and found nothing...

I know Japanese, but here it's almost exclusively North/South American and European.  Plus two people from Australia.

here is a japanese shop that also sells indie games.
for example zombie driver etc.

http://www.digretto.com/

note:
google translate (http://translate.google.com/) is pretty helpful...

moreover here are some more japanese shops...
http://www.interq.or.jp/saturn/takuhama/ga.html

yes i agree - the indie commune was once regarding of the japanese as merely 'japan' but it seems we have now experience the japanese as an invincible terrors.
perhaps we somehow contact the main japanese and extend our hand this cannot go on.
but hey, games will be games :) we have need to learn to defeat the japanese ethically and free of violence.

thankyou
hamletz

GUYS....

I FIGURED OUT A NONVIOLENT WAY TO DEFEAT THE JAPANESE ONCE A FOR ALL.

WE'LL ALL START SPENDING ALL OUR TIME PLAYING JAPANESE VIDEO GAMES......

THEN......

DOMINATE THEIR ONLINE HIGH SCORE BOARDS. THEY WILL BE HELPLESS TO OUR ENGLISH-SPEAKING MIGHT. THEIR PRIDE SHALL BE CRUSHED.
AS AMERICANS, THIS IS OUR ONLY OPTION.

SI SE PUEDE!  :whome:

What? What does this mean? I'm sorry Hamletz, but I have no idea what you're talking about. Are you anti-Japan? Are you joking?  ???

We have to stop the giant japanese nuclear robot who is on its way to the United States of America at this very moment!

Goddammit Kojima!

Japan will take over the world. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JapanTakesOverTheWorld)

so yeah, I am doing an interview with a doujin/indie game makers. I wonder what kind of things to ask him. As I ask many developers, I will see if he recommends other doujin games and devs to talk to.

I would like to open the doorway so that more doujin can receive good int'l coverage.

(it's Project Aja of the new Koumajou title).