Devblog #14 - Tokyo Game Show!
over 2 years ago
– Wed, Oct 05, 2022 at 01:27:08 AM
Dear Sparks,
I promised I would share more from our trip to Tokyo for Tokyo Game Show, so here it is, finally!
First of all, the trip was incredible.
It was fantastic to experience the lovely Japanese culture, and it was very exciting to show off the game.
We had a shared booth called "Norwegian Games", with 11 game dev companies from Norway.
The booth was present for 4 days, where 1.5 of those days were business days with press and meetings, and the rest were consumer days.
Read about the Norwegian Games Booth and Girl Genius in the Japanese media "4Gamer" here.
The writer unfortunately misunderstood a few things about Girl Genius in the short amount of time we had with him, but it was good to get the attention anyway, since the magazine is one of the largest media for games in Japan.
We showed off the game, both on PC and on the Steam Deck.
We also brought a Nintendo Switch build that I didn't show off at the booth, but used during meetings.
While we did not have a massive queue for Girl Genius like the Asian games, we had players playing all the time.
My big takeaway from showing off the game was that people enjoyed playing!
It is certainly not guaranteed, because art style and gameplay preferences can be quite different in the Asian countries.
I felt very proud to show off Girl Genius and the game to Asian people, and seeing them enjoy it.
My favorite moment was when a Japanese mother and her two children, aged around 8-13 I think, played the game. I thought it was so cool to see them laugh at the "right" moments, pointing at the screen and telling their mother how cool the little Dingbot is.
That was special to me.
Other than showing off the game for the players, we also had some really good meetings.
First of all, I got a meeting with Nintendo Japan, which is not something that happens everyday, to put it mildly. I showed them both Girl Genius and Teslagrad 2, and got good feedback.
Also, the Norwegian Embassy in Tokyo visited the Norwegian Games stand, and they were really excited to see how big Game Development is, and also that so much quality content is produced by Norwegian developers.
We got invited to a spectacular reception at the Norwegian Embassy Residency in Tokyo. What an experience!
It was an intense week, where most of it was work. But we also got to check out some sights in Tokyo before TGS kicked off.
We visited the Zoo, in the park close to the Studio Ghibli Museum.
We also visited the Studio Ghibli Museum. Weren't allowed to take pictures inside unfortunately, but it was really cool!
Here's me and Lars Erik visiting Fuglen, a cafè from Norway that opened up in Tokyo as well. I am quite destroyed in this picture, as I just came in the door from 100% humidity and heat, and a Typhoon outside the door.
The last day before leaving Tokyo, a typhoon came in. We flew out of Tokyo through a lightning storm.
Yep.
It was an incredible trip.
The TL;DR
- Players enjoyed the game at the booth!
- Looks promising for the game in Asia, even though it is a Western IP.
- I don't think it will go "wild" in Asia, but I think there will be players.
Thank you for reading!
- Kenny
Twitter: @raingames_kenny & @rain_games