Saying ‘sayounara’ to Tokyo
The International Game Design Practices students reflect on what they learned and gained during their week in Japan.
“Watashi no namae wa Rauschu Emma desu.”
Over and over again, I practiced introducing myself.
“Yoroshiku onegaishimasu.”
I struggled through, “Nice to meet you,” before finally getting the entire sentence out as I handed over my business cards.
After two days of relaxation, it was time for the International Game Design Practices students to get to work. Monday through Friday, we met with developers from ACQUIRE, AMATA, GEM DROPS, Yomuneco and the International Game Developers Association, as well as animators from SOLA.
Throughout the week, we learned about the developers’ struggles with making games for local and international audiences, what it’s like to work with companies like Square Enix, and task expectations for Japanese game designers. It was invaluable information, especially for a group of students looking to enter the game industry as a profession.
Seniors Kaleb Eberhart and Steven Self agreed that it was enlightening to speak to the game developers, or devs as they were informally referred to.
“This week was very enlightening to how Japanese developers operate and how they go about structuring their games,” Steven said.
“Not only did we learn what was different about development,” Kaleb added, “but the things that they have in common with American game development.”
Specifically, the developers discussed their company structures and what allows the designers to make large-scale, higher quality, polished projects in a comparatively shorter amount of time.
“However, while they can make things efficiently, they also discussed how many of their games are less adventurous in their designs,” Kaleb said. “The Japanese market is strongly tied to a single game mechanic, the Japanese version of loot boxes called Gacha(pon). The mechanic sells well with audiences and encourages continual gameplay, but the devs admitted people are starting to get bored of it, so it’ll be interesting to see how this influences their future designs.”
Not everything we learned was what we expected.
“The most surprising thing about meeting these devs is the freedom they all have to hold multiple positions and not just do the same job,” senior Ryan Reske said. “One thing American devs have to worry about is having too much experience in one position, getting locked into that role and never (being) able to branch out.”
In the end, we hope we did what we set out to do: build a bridge between IU’s game design students and Japan’s game development professionals.
“The whole focus of the trip — not just my focus, but what (lecturer Richard “Rush” Swope) set out to do and what the game design department set out to do — was to build a relationship with international developers here in Japan in a mutually beneficial way,” senior Alex Bowling said. “Essentially, we wanted to build a bridge between the two sides of the industry. While we learned from them, they also set out to understand how we design games on our side.
“As Rush said, this was like the ‘first date’ of building this relationship and hopefully make it long lasting.”
