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Confessions of a Geek: Musings on Tokyo Game Market, November 2014

Posted by Simon Lundström

Convention Reports

19 Nov 2014

Simon Hammar

(Zimeon)

Sweden
Täby

Now who are these five?

Come, come, all children who love fairy tales.

The tables are filling up...

I hate Game Market.

It's a one-day event in Tokyo where several publishers (that would be regarded internationally as everything from mid-sized to very small) and half a gazillion independent self-publishers are presenting whatever they have for sale. For seven hours. And then it's gone, tucked away, and the next time the fair appears it'll be something completely else, with new games. (In fact, this is not wholly true, but true enough.)

I still have about one carton's worth of games that I maybe played once, or actually barely touched, since last Game Market (June 2014). In fact, I've got a grand total of about four such cartons at home, although I have to admit they're not all from Japan. But mostly. Count about fifty or so games that I have yet to discover, and that just might be really cool — or possibly half crap.

The reason that I, he who less than two years ago prided himself on knowing the rules for very game he owned, am sitting with fifty unplayed games — and sometimes even yet-to-be-discovered games — is...well, it probably depends on more things than just a lack of time, but mostly that. There is a physical limit as to how many new games you can handle within a specific time span, especially if you're studying full-time and working half-time simultaneously. Every time I open those boxes to check, I see before me hopes and dreams of a past life where I actually had time to...no, who am I kidding? I've never had time to stomach so many new games this quickly — not unless I triple my board gaming acquaintances and arrange gaming sessions at least four times a week.

When did this madness start? Oh, ever since the first time I went to Game Market. That's it.

Top row, from left: "I don't care if she's a zombie, I just want a wife!" (Hitoasokai), "Lemuria of the Stars" (Manifest Destiny),

"Dolphin Blade" (Oukokukan); bottom row: Flip Flop's table, Grounding's table, One Draw's table

Also, I'm quite poor. No, really, while not being in any actual danger of starving, I do have to count my expenses quite carefully and stop doing any impulse buys, and I'm pretty good at that. I don't shop to console myself; I never buy a hotdog because I'm hungry; I always take a lunch box instead of eating at the school diner — I'm good at keeping a lock on my wallet.

Except, it seems, at Game Market.

I hate Game Market.

Kogekoge Do's booth, Kirisuto Shinbun with "Bible Hunter" and Tea Club with "Princess Escort"

It's Spiel in Essen, Germany, only with more madness. With Spiel, you go to see which games are new, maybe you've checked some that you want right now, but basically you know that whatever you see, it'll be readily available, if not now, at least eventually. Also, it lasts for four days, which means that the initial "oooooooh shinyyyy" has good time to cool down, and maybe your pal is buying the game anyway.

With Game Market, you know for sure that whatever you see, it will never end up in the shops because this IS the goddamn shop, and tomorrow it's closed. And forget your pal getting it because he's sitting on a sofa on the other side of the globe, and probably isn't at all as hot as you are on some weird Asian undiscovered diamond, so you'll not play it with him anyway.

Some people who check out Japon Brand's booth at Spiel have complained about the games not being available after the fair. Well, Game Market is Japon Brand's booth — only about a hundred times as big.

Oink Games new submarine game, SNE's version of "Poison" and Imagine Games' new "Postman Race"

So, here we go. I have four cartons of unsorted games, I'm well and done, I've got games till my retirement, and also I'm poor, so let's not buy anything. Okay, sure, sure, THAT game sounds like it's really good. For real, so let's go for that one, but only that one. Okay. You don't have any money, remember? You're going to Game Market to WORK. You know, you were sent here to...oh, that's right, the business meetings are actually over, and you're only there to, you know, help out, maybe if you have time, but basically, check it out. But anyway. You don't need more games, you don't want more games (no, really, you don't want MORE games, you KNOW your gaming shelf is already paralyzing you when choosing a game), you're cured now. Just go there, get that game you wanted, and then don't frigging CARE about the rest. You.Don't.Want.More.Games.

[Substantial part of time spent in a mental state equivalent to being drunk in that way that you know, you don't really register what's happening, you don't remember too much of it, and you don't want to remember too much of it either.]

"Momonga Jump", Cygnus with their peripherals, and "Karesansui" by New Games Order

It's not just the "now or never" in Game Market that breaks down my cold sense of reason as if it were a wall made from one sheet of thin paper. Yes, yes, I am a longtime anime geek, and there's this sensation of larger-than-both with a combination of two hobbies that, at least to begin with, were unrelated. Anime was one thing, and it was great. Board games were another thing, and it was great. And there I am, looking at a card game that's probably nothing out of the ordinary, and my walls that I've raised against Unexpected Board Game Attacks are easily circumvented by the cute art that strikes home for a critical d20 worth of damage. Experienced in the field, I quickly assemble my forces to withstand any Anime Art Assault – a skill that I have developped after years of experience in Akihabara, the nerdiest districts of Tokyo – only to see the enemy forces running past them because they just morphed back into a Board Games Are Always Fun Strike Squad. This horrible enemy ability to change appearance at a glance turns my defenses into a scattered, erratic horde of unorganized lemmings, one reminding me that of course I am a big fan of nicely colored stones when they are supposed to represent candy while the other is screaming BUT DON'T FORGET THAT FANTASY BATTLE GAME WITH CUTE HATS!

"Forbidden Pairs" by MR Entertainment, "Friday – the Madoka Magica version" and "SARA" ("Plate")

But me being an anime geek is far from all. It's not just the art, or the fact that you buy it now or you will never see it again, and if you buy it, you'll also be the only one in your country to own it... It's not just that, although that's bad enough.

I'm weak against amateur initiatives and enthusiastic creativity — and Game Market has both. Squared. What you see here isn't publisher-polished products. It's not games in which the theme has been selected to fit the market, or some special rule has been taken away to make it accessible to a larger public. These designs are pure and unrefined, and they can be as wacky as a game can be. They can be absolutely crap, and they can be absolutely genius. They can also be the game that fits YOUR taste in a way that the professional games never can. This is the festival of Paris where everything is topsy-turvy and where a first-time amateur can out-design and out-sell the pro booths ten times over. This is the pinnacle of crazed, uncontrolled game design in which you in one game must plan how to best promote your team of overly cute pop idols, in the next find out how to smoke in public, in another one make your best of Jesus Christ in order to win your religious mission, and in the last, being a hopeless zombie without limbs, crazily fight the others for the last available leg. And oh, there's an expansion to that one, in case you wondered — only there's just four copies left and it'll never get reprinted. No, sorry, make that three copies left.

I hate Game Market.

Did I mention that you're buying all these games from the designers themselves?

I hate Game Market.

The small game manufacturer Popls was there to show off its abilities

Demo tables: Here "Lemuria of the Stars" by Manifest Destiny

And wargames – here "Feudal Lord" by Sunset Games

Future board gamers trying out some toys at the children's corner

Seiji Kanai with the new version of Love Letter and "Magi Arena", the re-edition of Cheaty Mages

"Bakafire" Ito of Tragedy Looper fame with his new title "Ruinous"

Hisashi Hayashi before a tower of Rolling Japan

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Wed Nov 19, 2014 5:00 pm

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Tokyo Game Market — Autumn 2013

Posted by Simon Lundström

Convention Reports

08 Nov 2013

Simon Hammar

(Zimeon)

Sweden
Täby

Now who are these five?

Come, come, all children who love fairy tales.

A small report on the Tokyo Game Market that was held November 4, 2013, and a history lesson on What Caused This to Happen

There is actually little to be said about Game Market in Japan that wasn't said in my previous BGGN post about this rather weird and unique show. Sure, it's the biggest board game event in Japan, but it's first and foremost a one-day marketplace for indie designers, big and small. Commercial publishers and shops are also there, but they're way outnumbered by the 200+ amateurs displaying both self-printed and professionally done stuff on a 40" x 20" table. As such, depending on your taste and your ability to read Japanese (or your ability to stand waiting for some enthusiast to do paste-ups), Game Market can be more interesting than Spiel in Essen, Germany because here you can find the most crazy things imaginable. No one checks what's going on here. There is no filter: no developer, no publisher, no one. Here, absolutely everything goes, barring perhaps blatantly illegal stuff — though I'd leave any copyright infringement managers at home as you wouldn't want them to die from overload...or maybe you would?

Arriving at Tokyo Big Sight; it's almost raining, which generally is good news

A caveat with this report: It's not comprehensive by a long shot. In fact, I didn't even make an effort to check for things beforehand and had next to no prior knowledge of what would be there. I guess it's technically possible to keep track on what's hot and going to be at Game Market, but in all honesty I don't. Also, I was a bit short on time, only coming to the market at noon two hours after it opened, so the games I eventually fell for were mostly games that had some sort of weird twist to the theme, something that made me laugh, despite the fact that I probably already have at least one hundred games of that type. Just so you know. A report about Game Market by anyone other than me would probably have only a tiny overlap with what I mention.

And yeah, the guy selling his game by shouting "We've got cute elementary schoolers fighting here!", which occasionally turned into "We're selling cute elementary schoolers here!", did make me laugh.

Entering the fair, typical demo tables at Game Market, and live streaming to Nico Video

Kanai Factory had brought 100 copies of a prototype for a cooperative game for 1–8 players...with 16 cards (!). Suffice to say they were gone in a blink, similar to the "Werewolf+Love Letter" prototype he brought for the show in April 2013, a prototype that has still to see the light of day, probably due to the fact that designer Seiji Kanai seems to suffers from Michael Jackson syndrome, finding it hard to beat his previous game Love Letter in terms of elegance and thus not wanting to release just anything. In this prototype, titled Eight Epics, the players were heroes differently skilled in three traits, and the game relied on the well-used mechanism of rolling dice, keeping one or more dice, rerolling twice, and trying to meet different goals determined by the most recently drawn card from a pile of threat cards. Each character had special abilities to use for help, but all player information was open, which meant the prototype also allowed for solo play.

Grounding, the "newcomer" (in fact, they've been around for a while) that experienced insta-fame at Spiel 2013 with Machi Koro and Sukimono, was present with its new game Candy Chaser, that I by a brain lapse failed to get. There were a few copies left of Machi Koro and Diamonsters from last year. Some of you might be surprised to hear that Grounding is in fact an independent software studio, having its awaited shooting game Crimson Dragon as a launch title for Xbox One.

Grounding's Candy Chaser and One Draw's new Lost Legacy

KogeKogeDo ("Burnt House"), which experienced its first Spiel this year with Skirmish! The Scrambles, Sushi Draft! and Witch's Coming!, had a prototype for a weird-looking witch-chasing "3 versus 1" game in which the witch pawns and their familiar pawns were tied together by strings of varying length.

Well-known OKAZU Brand had brought its new light filler Edo Yashiki to the fair, but it disappeared before I got there.

Lost Legacy, the "sequel" to — or should one say "variant game based on the same system" of — Love Letter is coming out in English from AEG, hopefully sooner than later. In the meantime, Hayato Kisaragi (One Draw) put out the second Lost Legacy box: Lost Legacy: Hyakunen Senso to Ryu no Miko, once again with two independent decks, together with a "prototype" extra deck that customers would have to cut out themselves and play with. With the similar promo deck from the previous fair, there are now a whopping SIX Lost Legacy decks to play with. AEG developers tell us that starting with the first deck is recommended as the second one is weirder and might feel too chaotic for people not used to the game's twists and turns. Remains to see whether this second box changes the mood of the game even more.

Though not a debut at this Game Market, but something for certain manga fans to drool over, One Draw also brought its Battle of Berserk board game, a battle game for two players based on the comic book my Kentaro Miura. One Draw has had previous experiences with licensed board games, putting out both Uncharted: The Board Game and the Japanese Code of Princess.

For Tragedy Looper, a success from some years back, BakaFire Party had brought the new tragedy set Another Horizon and a script collection which also contained two new characters for the game.

What I mention here is only what I happened to stumble over. Big variety in designs and visuals is the trademark for Game Market, and the creativity is overwhelming. My favorite-to-check indie publisher Manifest Destiny had brought a whopping ten new titles since last Game Market, including the solitaire X-Live, the RPG-simulating D.D. Dogma, the two-player brain burner Battle Mice, and The Ravens of Thri Sahashri, something as unique as a two-player asymmetrical cooperative game (!).

Manifest Destiny's impressive line-up, a sold-out Girls & Panzer battle game, abstract game Kings and Bombs, and Team Okokukan's Whose Cream Puff is this?

As I've mentioned before, though the majority of the exhibitors here are nothing more but loving enthusiasts doing their own games, the quality is impressively high; my rough impression is that more than half of all exhibitors here have their game in a nice box with offset print (or similar), looking no worse than a commercial game — an astounding feat at an indie level — but it hasn't always been this way.

Game Market started in 2000 as a marketplace for second-hand board games, arranged by one single individual, the game enthusiast Jun Kusaba; from what I hear when OKAZU Brand started telling me the story, homemade games were just a little spice to add to the flavor. Designers like Susumu Kawasaki, Naoki Homma and Taiju Sawada started selling their own handmade productions there only a few years after the start and gradually the home-makers increased until they started to become the majority in about 2006 — but it was still mostly handmade, self-printed and self-cut stuff. Game Market was too big to handle on his own, so the concept maker Kusaba turned to publisher Arclight Games to handle the show.

Team SAIEN's Mangrove, Hau La and

Dazzle (not from this year's show)

It was a few years after this point that the group Saien came into the picture. Though they have almost left the stage by now, they're worth a special mention because they brought something new into the picture: production quality. Saien was a group of visual artists and designers, and their games resembled nothing previously seen. Having access to professional tools, lathes and cutters, they could make their own cardboard boxes and wooden pawns; they cut their own cards from embossed paper. Their games were works of art. This pushed other creators to rethink the possibilities for production quality, and as with Japan's huge fanzine market for homemade comics — already a well-established culture of small press publishing — the step wasn't so big; it just raised the roof, not to mention the investment risk for the indie designers.

In retrospect, it's almost ridiculous in how many aspects Saien was ahead of its time. While all of its games are pretty to look at, a few of their designs are ingenious. Khmer was a 16-card game long before the "simple 500" and microgames existed as a concept, and the brain burner Dazzle still remains a highly unique design. Some of you might remember the tall cartoon-colored stacks at the indie collective Japon Brand booth at Spiel in 2010 – that was Saien's Hau La, a game in which you built a tower with bendable rubber sticks. Granted, it was more a piece of art than an amazing game, but it gave a sense of where Saien's ideas were – above the clouds. However, this was a couple of years before Japon Brand had the attention at Spiel it boasts today, and the game was a huge failure, with only a few sales at Spiel and lots left to carry home. That this was partly the reason why Saien stopped making games is painful to hear now; had they been just a few years later, their situation would probably have been highly different.

So the high-quality race at Game Market is younger than we might think, just a few years old. More and more use small-press card printers at high costs, a double-edged sword that makes better-looking games for the gamers but puts a higher financial risk on the designers' backs. Asking around the fair, the profit margin for most exhibitors was limited to a few dollars per game, with print runs varying from 50 for the no-namers to maybe 300 for the half popular — not even close to paying for the time and expenses to even come to the fair. Being able to take as much as double the printing cost for a game seemed to be limited to the big names only, and the few lucky ones who have managed to create huge hits.

This is truly a scene in which the participants are ready to pay for just having other people play their games, and the only winner is the printer. Previously mentioned Manifest Destiny brought ten new games, all professionally printed with high quality art, something that marketing managers would probably call the Stupidest Move Ever as the sheer amount of new things almost has the effect of chasing away potential customers. It seems designer Kuro doesn't care. He's not a salesman, he's a game designer. He's here to design games. His production cost for his $25 game?

$27. Per copy.

Zimeon, from Tokyo Game Market, Autumn 2013

The Grounding team

Hayato Kisaragi and his wife showing the new and old Lost Legacy

Home-molded, home-painted metal figures for sale

The veteran Schizoid Fox with his Hero Quest-inspired Dungeon Mania

Of course someone had an Attack on Titan RPG. What did you expect?

Game Market's most expensive game? A hand-crafted version of the abstract strategy Amen was $250 apiece

Okazu Brand booth with the new filler Edo Yashiki that disappeared before I got to the fair

The guys at BakaFire party, cosplaying characters from their game Tragedy Looper

Team Okokukan showing off its products

Kogekogedo's prototype of its next game in which pawns are tied together by strings

Boogieboard Werewolf; Werewolf is the current fad, and tons of exhibitors had their own version of the classic game

Small Publishing present with its Board Game Guide

Publisher and board game shop Sugorokuya's booth

More werewolf – here Super high school level Werewolf, based on the video game Danganronpa that in turn is based on...Werewolf!

Saikikaku's line-up of educational word dice games

Shogi professional Madoka Kitao showing off her latest game Seven Stars

Even a slight taste of Spielmateriel was present

After a while, you get a bit blasé from all great looking, weird amateur games, like Arcatype here

"We're selling cute elementary schoolers here!" A laugh can sell a game — at least it worked for this guy

Battle of Berserk board game

Lacour Colliseum by Misaki Factory

The new Lost Legacy

Soramimi Fantasy, which requires a shuffling mp3 player to play

The Ravens of Thri Sahashri, a two-player cooperative by Manifest Destiny

Japan's post office shipped away 200 cartons full of games from the fair – almost as many as they shipped here. Those boxes!

Five o'clock — closing up for this year

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Fri Nov 8, 2013 10:09 pm

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Tokyo Game Market — Spring 2013

Posted by Simon Lundström

Convention Reports

30 Apr 2013

Simon Hammar

(Zimeon)

Sweden
Täby

Now who are these five?

Come, come, all children who love fairy tales.

A short personal report from Tokyo Game Market, held April 28, 2013

Game Market is the biggest board game event in Japan, boasting about 5,000 visitors for this event – but visitors who come to Game Market expecting to see a "mini Spiel" or a "mini Gen Con" soon discover that it's something quite different from both.

Game Market started as a flea market for board games, and while remnants of that still remain, it's now mainly a fair for independent game makers. Hence it's closer to Spiel than Gen Con in being a marketplace for games and not a game convention. Though there are tables to demo games and some tables for free gaming, coming to Game Market only to play games is a miss. Here you come to shop.

But Game Market differs vastly from Spiel, too, both in scope and atmosphere. Of about 250 exhibitors at Game Market, 200 are independent makers whose games probably won't ever be sold outside of the fair. Game Market is, of course, much smaller than Spiel – just one large exhibit hall – but it's also highly concentrated; each standard exhibitor has only about half a meter worth of table space to display goods, some having an extra demo area double that space. Also, the fair is much shorter, lasting one day from 10:00 until 17:00, so there's no room or time for fancy booths. It's just table rows of exhibitors, one after the other.

But the most eye-catching difference from Spiel is neither the size nor the time span. It's the exhibitors themselves. Them being indie makers means that the games are both polished and not; you find photocopied homemade war games beside lavishly printed card games with five expansions. Also, "indie" usually means print runs are small and reprints are rare, especially for the nicely printed games (due to printing cost and minimum print run size). These indie exhibitors aren't businessmen; they're designers, and once one game is finished, they're on to the next. If something sells out, it's likely gone forever, so the feeling of "get this now or never" is very prevalent.

Of course, major (and minor) publishers and game stores are also present, having significantly more table space and larger demo areas for the commercial games, but nothing as fancy as the booths at Spiel. Game Market is a rough place both as far as fair layout and game design is concerned. One of the newcomers at the fair was Playdek, which came there to show off the demo version of the pad/smartphone version of Tanto Cuore. The auto AI wasn't finished yet, but the game was playable, and a lot of people stopped by to take a look.

Warlord Games booth, Arclight's game demo area, Lost Legacy, Tragedy Looper, String Savannah, Tanto Cuore digital

One of the biggest (amateur) titles this fair was probably Seiji Kanai's and Hayato Kisaragi's Lost Legacy, a small card game using the mechanisms from Love Letter but adding a bit of a deduction part at the end. Despite the cost/size ratio – almost $20 for a one-deck box – Lost Legacy sold out its 200 copies in 30 minutes. Kanai also had a roughly assembled beta version of his next title, a Werewolf-inspired game, but having brought only fifty copies, they were out before anyone could react, and his two hundred copies of Love Letter were gone in a blink.

Another big deal at this Game Market was BakaFire Party's reprint (!) of Tragedy Looper, a "time-traveling" game in which players repeat the same scenario several times in order to solve a mystery. Hisashi Hayashi (OKAZU Brand) was also present at Game Market with his sequel to the string games, String Savanna, and his cheap games Sail to India and Patronize for 500 yen (about $7) apiece. Designing "500 yen games" (the challenge that eventually spawned Love Letter) is now an established part of Game Market; everyone is free to use the logo for all games they manage to produce for that price.

The line-up for game makers Manifest Destiny and Misaki Koubou

And of course, my personal share of lock-on targets were at the show. Having missed Misaki Koubou's maid game from 2012, I made sure to get both Seven Force and Scepter (which, I learned, now had three expansions). Human Gameware Supplier (a.k.a. Hitoasokai) was present with their Gefallen. And last but not least, the crazed maker Manifest Destiny, set on churning out super weird card games at a faster pace than anyone can follow, had six new titles – and that was since Game Market in Osaka, only six weeks ago. This time, their main three titles were Promenade, a game about social dancing; Eureka City, a city-building card/dice game; and a pair-solitaire time-looping game called Last Seven Days. All, of course, only in Japanese.

Toho board game and an angry daddy

Non-Japanese speaking gamers shouldn't despair too much, however, as Game Market is gradually becoming a place to which Western publishers go to search. French publishers Moonster Games and Cocktail Games were present, together with Japanime Games, Alderac Entertainment Group, and probably more companies I simply wasn't aware of. Considering the fair design, I'd say Game Market is a fabulous place to look for rough diamonds.

But while we're waiting for more publishers to investigate and excavate this board game mine, it's obvious that certain games won't ever leave the fair: half-blatant copyright infringements like "Lapita", a bridge-crumbling game strangely resembling a certain animated feature film, niche games like the lavishly produced "Shrine Maiden board game", and last but not least, minor themes like in "Get away from my daughter, you!", a small one-deck card game about fathers trying to shoo away unwanted suitors.

Game Market is held twice a year in Tokyo – the next time being in November – and once a year in Osaka, in March. Any gamer who happens to be in Japan at that time should pay the fair a visit.