where we talk about game marketing in Japan, development challenges, and the state of the scene
Interview with Siter Skain, Part 2
Interview: Douglas Schules Translation: Douglas Schules and Hugh Wilson Nettelbeck
Daedalus Machine
What have you done so far to market your games? SITER SKAIN Back in 1999 when we were making Kamui, I posted developer diary entries on my blog. We didn’t even have an official circle website. Back in those days the people who consumed doujin games used to have to go out of their way to find information about new projects. One company circulated the game for us and the version of the game with 2 stages was sold in 100 yen shops. The game started gaining popularity from there. For RefleX (2008) AND ALLTYNEX Second (2010) we had an official website, and we also had advertisement banners on various game news websites that linked directly to our site. We also got a number of doujin shops to host information about our new games on their websites. NyuMedia told us they’d like to sell English versions of our three games internationally. They conducted advertising on Facebook and hosted a crowdsourcing campaign for us. We haven’t come close to finishing Heavy Dragoon Dragon Arms yet, so aside from our Twitter posts and Comiket announcements, we haven’t really started promoting the game yet. Daedalus Machine Have you considered platforms like Twitch or Niko Niko Douga? SITER SKAIN We haven’t considered using them for our games, but they could be used for promotion. However, to be honest, I’m a bit uncomfortable with broadcasting my face and voice publicly. Daedalus Machine I find a lot of Japanese indie developers are interested in distributing their games on Steam, but my impression is that they use it to reach overseas players rather than Japanese ones. Why did you choose to use Steam? SITER SKAIN In Japan, consoles are much more popular gaming platforms than PCs. People who game on PC are in the minority. The PC provides an easy environment for individuals to develop games, but the truth is that by doing so you’re losing potential consumers. We decided to start distributing our games through Steam when NyuMedia offered to help us develop translated versions. The number of doujin stores in Japan has been declining and we were looking for ways to increase our sales. In contrast, lots of Japanese indie developers these days decide to distribute through Steam, even if they aren’t intending to provide international versions of their games. It seems that the number of Japanese language games published by Japanese developers on Steam is on the rise. Daedalus Machine How popular do you think the platform is with Japanese players? SITER SKAIN I’m not sure of the actual numbers, but in the last few years it seems that the majority of people playing games on the PC are using Steam. Just a few years ago it was impossible to imagine how popular it would become. I have a feeling that the recent rise in Steam’s popularity has been accompanied by a sharp drop in physical PC game sales. Daedalus Machine You’ve mentioned NyuMedia a couple of times. Can you provide a short explanation of what they do for the overseas readers, and also tell us how you got involved with them? SITER SKAIN NyuMedia is one of the earlier companies to start publishing English versions of Japanese doujin games for an international market. They contacted us and said they were interested in publishing our ALLTYNEX series abroad. They had already had success publishing a number of other Japanese doujin titles for an international audience, and the head of the company was very proficient in Japanese, so we really didn’t have any worries about teaming up with them. Daedalus Machine What are the biggest challenges you face when developing and promoting games? SITER SKAIN When it comes to development, there’s never enough time. It’s difficult to make the game you really want to make under time constraints. As a result, it usually takes us a few years to develop a single game. Back when I was a student I had way more free time. When it comes to marketing our games, we provide doujin stores with various promotional materials like videos and screenshots, but it’s easy to get overwhelmed when you’re trying to handle that while you’re in the final stages of developing a game. Every time we release a game I lament the fact that we started work on the promotional materials so late. If we started working on them earlier I feel like we could put out something of a higher quality. Daedalus Machine Based on your experience so far, what do you think the future holds for Japanese indie game developers and their games? SITER SKAIN I think that it’s way easier to get into independent game development these days than it used to be, because of the increasingly wide-spread availability of accessible pre-existing game engines. Distribution of games through platforms like Steam has become remarkably easy in recent years. As a result, I feel that consumer expectations for indie games have also increased, meaning that developers need to provide a higher quality product if they want their game to sell well. At the moment, consumers demand games with good graphics and large quantities of content, which is causing game development periods to get longer and longer. In contrast, I think it might be better to prioritize games with unique ideas instead. Daedalus Machine What advice do you have for those people who want to develop games? SITER SKAIN I’ve already provided my my main tips in regards to promotion and marketing, but I think the most important thing is to make the kind of game that you want to make. If you don’t do that, I don’t think you’ll be able to make a game that you’re ultimately happy with. Also, even though our group always spends many years developing a single game, I don’t really think that that’s a good practice. You should try to complete development of your game as quickly as possible.
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