A Westerner's guide to the Japanese games market

[Music] hello everybody thank you so much for coming to this talk a Westerners guides to the Japanese games market so I knew the quality Caroline the co-founder of arcane circus a two-person game development team based in the Netherlands our current games project is hijacked card attack a haiku team doodle card game for iOS Android and switch scheduled to leave sometime and this year next year maybe the game is also played a little meeting details so if any of you haven't play to get then please go past either I'll be there or my partner Eric the co-founder of the company arcade Circus is a big believer in primary resources and experiencing

subject matter first time when developing games due to hijacks of bahattin haiku media which is a japanese film genre as well as our desire to bring the game to japan high tech has been an opportunity for us to learn about Japanese culture in development there I get to know the envelopment scene we visited Japan several times last year and today I'm going to share some of the things that we've learned at the beginning of our adventure into the Japanese market because why wouldn't you need to bring your game to the Japanese market with headlines like these the Japanese mobile game market is one of the fastest growing markets in the world also has Japan opens up more to the outside world this morbid desire for Western media it's also a limit developer's dream to release the game in Japan whenever game the capitals of the world so you're something to help you today after this introduction I'm going to

give a little bit of an overview of the mobile game development scene in Japan as well as said mobile game landscape then I'm going to give you five tips for Ryu or western game to Japan and some final thoughts at the end just a quick disclaimer I do not know more than Japanese developers or developers based in Japan we wouldn't know anything if it wasn't for how open kind and willing to share their knowledge experience and culture developers in behind were with us if I know for pets that there's people at this moment right now you know way more about to reach out to those people and you could speak with them but what I have to offer today is an outsider's perspective as they are trying to break in to Japan so let's experiment so Japanese mobile game companies tend to be no more than ten years old you have your big players like sigh games and delight work scenes their cans are to talk to the charts however I wanted to take this you know platform today's highlight some of smaller developers face of Japan like in

the rest of the world the mobile game or the audience that mobile games frame that create a lot of opportunities for smaller developers such as architects artists but also these Japanese developers I highly encourage you to look into these members of the interest there's also me in five billion onion hotel which put a little bit of attention in the West because Jim sterling had covered it on his YouTube channel there's also the games like gifts ten industries so here is Morse Teresa these are extremely charming games that card and hybrid games that kind of mine named Jack box or maybe the great works of a dandy ol and there's also the very me I'm dishes are fiji time by desk for games it's a company based in osaka this is games coming out this year how explain if you can't wait for this game

now let's go over the mobile game landscape good news it's much simpler than china it's basically the same as you may be familiar with the west near be google play or and I wish store though something important to know is that the iOS store has a lot more market share in Japan it's standard to have an iPhone as your phone and a macbook and computer Apple to separate something for people who are into instant game you should this line it's extremely popular it basically propose the same use whatsapp does in the West communications that I lost when we were there he heard a lot about opportunities for instant gaming so if that's your bad and you're interested in Japan I highly recommend opportunities with mine when it comes to launching your life in Japan really honestly you need to prepare like you would any other country you need to contact the platform holders in order to get future you to visit them to showcase that developer

events and you need to reach out to the media and the content creators it's just you have to do that through Japan which of course means is maybe barricades you can say language battery or maybe it's closer you're not familiar with but that doesn't make me seem less important you need familiarize yourself with this landscape or brand a company or an individual in to do this for you now you have to give you five tips for bringing your Western game to Japan number one avoid the gaijin football it could be pretty old word China Network we communicate with somebody who made this assume languages you maybe you don't share the same culture but really a lot of people don't bother to make an effort to do that so you will stand out if you try and by our experience visiting Japan and speaking with the developers there's people were really excited to tell it to tell us about their culture and their experiences as developers but it's said that though you really do need to have somebody with experience all of Japan involved in a project somebody who's lived there even

better if somebody was born there and bonus points if they already have a network in the games industry there it's possible that this person may be you in which case you don't have to worry but if you don't have somebody who kind of close this brief from the team you need to find somebody it can be a developer if your smaller team it can be a company compute external external party but this this isn't really all you need to have this we need somebody who you could include you know spot go to flow cause in your game or so when you can test your assumptions number two please please don't be superficially to Japanese influences don't you sound an anime style because you think that will do well don't chase trends with themes you think oh they like that in Japan if people know when they're being kinder to like for example I'm Irish and I'm not going to play super mr. leprechauns

potato famine puzzlers just because I hired I plant some things it's amazing how often I see people who seem to think that just kind of I'm sure sound like literal elements to their games will make it work in lab and I will turn but really all these hoods in its demonstrate that you know nothing about that culture in fact really we've kind of found that the opposite it's true in Japan as defined opens up more to the outside culture that's media there's a hunger for media that it's clearly not Japanese in fact it's kind of trendy our friends in every sleep their games have done very well in Japan and they're very European thing and you can see it another new year as well común and our girl is big cool and adventure time our obscenely popular in Japan now you could argue that some of these are influenced

somewhat by Japanese sweet yet but they're clearly not made by a Japanese hand and I believe that thank you both because of that rather than in spite of that number three Japanese business is built on long term relationships we were advised when we first started trying to bring the project to Japan but when you're doing business it's much slower you require more meetings but those relationships will be a lot stronger this is something I knew about this but I didn't really feel until I've been in Japan for a month and had only done business with developers based in Japan and then I went to a game developer Meetup now there's nothing there is nothing wrong with the European Way of networking but I kind of had week flash it almost how aggressive Western networking is for example people would ask what I do would tell me what they do propose working together work conveniently leave the conversation much much quicker than when I was dealing

with developers based in Japan so just something to keep in mind you have to go a little bit slower but the relationships you develop may be stronger in the long run number four translate your game into just abuse and do it properly you need to get a reputable localizer to do your translation then you need to pay that one before it have you ever played an easy game where they clearly just put the language through Google Translate it doesn't get better if you do it the other way around it's not only does the perceived what like the perceived value of the game but also the players immersion is just accurate if the translation isn't good so do this right finally number five if you're going to bring your game to Japan really you need to visit Japan if you if you're learning about Japan from the outside you're limited to the information that's made accessible to you there's a lot of day-to-day culture and trends and I've

activity going on that you are just aren't able to experience unless you're experiencing it firsthand but actually do know what no visiting give you visiting Japan isn't even enough if you don't take the effort to reflect on culture and your own culture and analyzed a new culture and see the differences observed how the culture affects its media the media affects its culture really you're not going to learn very much in fact this is a skill that I feel is underappreciated when it comes to making answer any target okay it's not just for Japan and I could bonus tip when you go to visit Japan and if you happen to be in Tokyo you must visit the Tokyo Indies which is every month at the five half day in Korea this is us presenting hijack in August of last year and it's an opportunity for local developers and visiting developers to showcase what they're working on and it's a very good networking opportunity they only need to get feedback from students maximum game developers who are

visiting but we also spoke to some publishers while we were there so highly recommended so here's a summary of the five points this is for anyone who wants to take a photo and just have all the information in one place okay yeah all right I need to I need to move on you are nothing to make my conclusion three two one relax Japanese people are chilled the stereotype that in Japan is very much about order and everything we've done a very specific way it's exaggerated I wasn't really working about this the first time I took Japan because you know I want to be I want to be polite and respectful but really people were unbelievably patient and very kind and sharing and and also in Japan it's known

that the culture is quite specific to that country people don't hold it against you that you may not necessarily understand how things go one of the childrenís people that I spoke the first time out of Japan was your hero camera from any games and we met for lunch and talked about the differences between individual employer in our developer in Japan and honestly we were submitted by the similarities in our experiences making games marketing games and publishing games Yoshio some talked about making into the world and I feel this is an important lesson to keep in mind when you're making a game for our culture or perhaps less familiar with I wanted to end my presentation with something told me when we met lunch make games for people culture and fashion history media those are different for country there are so many convenience for people thank you very much for listening

very much do we have the key questions couple of innocent to do that there's any questions we'll be proud about for our pink surface and there it's a stretch mr. Specter if you telephone me just a little bit about the bank name so you may use these contact what's the occasion so like high tech you say is a hydrazine car cane right the player uses one of three kaijus they do they rampage through a city and attempt to take over territory from other kaijus doing problem in fact in this world the kaiju are indestructible so when they quite like Godzilla Sol nobody wins so the Chi do you move into the card game which is a clear winner in user to determine who gets the territory

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