by so so
The beginning of my experience came from one picture posted in the board game community in Korea, a picture posted by designer Lee Ju-Hwa, who participated in Tokyo Game Market in 2018.
At that time, I didn’t know what Tokyo Game Market was like, so I thought it was just a crowd at an ordinary event. I was shocked when I realized that the things people were so focused on were games from indie designers. It was a surprise to discover that the energy of the indie games themselves was what fascinated people, and also to discover the energy of the crowd looking for pleasure there.
I’m a person who lives without energy like a used phone whose battery efficiency has fallen to the 10% range, but for a moment, I felt a thrilling current as if I was charged to 75%.
In early June 2022, I heard that Korean game designers would be going to Tokyo Game Market in October with a joint booth called KTDA (Korea Tabletop game Designer Association), and I immediately applied for participation as if I were possessed by something, even though I’ve been to Japan only for a two-day trip and I can’t even say “Hello” in Japanese.
Fortunately, thanks to designers who have participated in Game Market before, I was able to get a lot of help in preparing, even though I really didn’t know anything.
It was an enjoyable challenge to implement the game that I had imagined in the form of a product. I couldn’t predict the quantity to sell in advance, and also I couldn’t load a lot of luggage on the plane. Therefore, there was no choice but to produce a small amount. It was like a kind of difficult puzzle to figure out how to produce small quantities on a limited budget.
After developing the idea of games to a large extent, I’ve been thinking about how to create attractive publications while saving as much money as possible. After much consideration, I came up with a form that included a game and its original soundtrack in a DVD package — with music that I wrote myself, of course. I think the experience of having produced a record while starving myself was quite helpful.
Youtube Video
It’s awkward to add a soundtrack to a board game, but I think mixing fun things up sometimes creates new fun, so I sorted 5,000 cards one by one, counted 2,000 tokens and coins one by one, folded 100 rulebooks one by one, and burned 100 discs one by one.
Al-Khazneh and Quack-Quack, Corrupt Ducks
During the packaging process, there was a possibility that the fur of my cat Springmarch (two years old, male) would become attached.
Also, the excitement that I felt over and over again.
Springmarch, a reading cat
About three weeks before the event, I introduced the games in Japanese on the Game Market website and Twitter with the help of a translator. Then, surprisingly, gamers began to show interest and reserve games one by one. I think I felt a little more comfortable hiding myself behind an unfamiliar language. I am not good at English, so in a sense, even at this moment I am hiding myself.
I prepared a lot of images in advance because I cannot speak Japanese
At the same time, I checked the information of the games that were constantly uploaded and checked the games I wanted to buy excitedly.
There were officially 890 booths that participated in Game Market Autumn 2022. Among them were event booths and some booths where teams allowed participation, but most of the booths were for individual designers to sell their own works.
I’m telling you, all sorts of extraordinary works were uploaded to the Game Market website: a mystery game with cassette tapes (tape player sold separately), a game with magic tapes, a dexterity game with blocks stacked with trick-taking, a game with a super-real fried shrimp figure, a 100-yen game and a 10-yen expansion pack, a board game poetry book, a magazine, a research paper, etc.
Most of the production cost was probably spent on the shrimp figure…
Why are they reserving my game when they don’t even know who I am? Thinking that way, I also reserved the games of designers I didn’t know either. I was arrogant for a while due to more reservations than I had anticipated, so I took a total of one hundred copies.
When I got lost in Ueno on the first day, I thought about abandoning my heavy carrier and flying away to Korea. Anyway, I was finally able to participate on the first day of Game Market on Saturday, October 29th, in a good morning.
Tokyo Big Sight, the venue for the event
A normal ticket for Game Market is 1,500 yen and an early pass is 3,000 yen. I was wondering what kind of psychology would be required to spend an additional 1,500 yen in order to enter an hour earlier, but the number of early-pass visitors in the opening hours was overwhelming. I felt their willingness not to miss out on the expected works that sold in small quantities without reservation.
The crowd on the first day
I couldn’t speak Japanese, so I was standing there timidly whispering only “Irasshaimase”. However, the interpreter who helped us had great skills, and his voice was sweet like honey.
People would come and talk to me to take the reserved games; people would pass by and ask me to explain the rules. I communicated through my poor English, hand gestures, and eye contact, so the six-hour event on the day was not boring. Sometimes gamers and YouTubers from various countries looked around the booths.
I was so glad to see someone who speaks Korean from time to time that I wanted to give them something, but I didn’t have anything — then I wanted to force them to buy the games…
Time passed like that.
KTDA booth
KTDA showed various games at Game Market 2022:
• Dieson Crusoe
• Pocket Farm
• Mazeling (Website)
• Romantic Crocodile
• Skin Scuba
• GrillHolic
• Nazca (Game Market listing)
• Nigehachi (Game Market listing)
• Al-Khazneh
• Quack-Quack, Corrupt Ducks
• Because the Lonely Novice Hope to Enter the Dungeon…
• Eight! HALLOWEEN
• Matarnia (Game Market listing)
• PATATA BATATA
• Intrude (Game Market listing)
• Piggy Bank Snitch! (Game Market listing)
• Card Archive Deck Box (Game Market listing)
• Stereo Mind
• Tasso Banana, and other games…
Given the continuing presence of Covid-19, I had mainly talked online with people, so I greeted some of the Korean designers in person for the first time that day. When there were no visitors, I was able to sneak into the corner of the booth and talk a lot with them and broaden my horizons. When I thought about the event after I returned home, I think these times that I spent putting down the pressure of sales for a while are precious.
On the return flight
After finishing the event at the end of the second day, most of the games went to new owners. As soon as the event was over, I returned home by night flight because I was worried about Springmarch at home. Other designers stayed in Tokyo, more relaxed now and enjoying the trip.
I felt sorry about what my schedule would have been like if it were more flexible. In fact, it is the most regrettable that I couldn’t eat the monaka ice cream that was recommended. The reason I’m participating in Game Market again in May 2023 is to eat the ice cream that I couldn’t eat then.
It should still be on sale.
It has to be.
The treasures I acquired
After the event ended, many designers expressed their thoughts on Twitter or on the Game Market website. Most, including me, regretted not seeing more of the other designers’ booths. In fact, it was difficult to play games at the venue, so there were many cases of purchasing games without much information. For this reason, despite did not receive much attention at Game Market, there seem to be many games that have become popular after the event.
I was also very grateful that there were gamers who were interested in my game by sending me email in Korean. At first, I thought it was because of a series of strange coincidences, but now I think it’s a little different. That’s because, in fact, there were people who discovered the wild charm of indie games and actively introduced them to their friends.
As is the case in the world, the popularity of board games in Korea is hotter than before. Most of the new works from SPIEL have been localized. Large-scale fairs (Board Game Festa, Board Game Con) are held 2~3 times every year, and many people visit to play or buy games. A separate indie game area is allocated for these events, offering about twenty tables to indie designers. Designers can introduce their games and sell them, if they want. It’s attractive that anyone can introduce their game, but compared to the enthusiasm of designers, gamers’ interest is still weak. The prevailing perception is that proven masterpieces are enough.
However, I feel that there has been a wind of change recently. I’ve observed a few recent fairs, and more and more gamers are visiting the indie game area to play the games. The number of indie designers who want to participate in the fair has also increased, and the competition for applications has been fierce recently. In this regard, I think the base of indie games will grow more and more in Korea.
Award winners at SPIEL ’22
The game that won the innoSPIEL at SPIEL in 2022 was Hey Yo by Takashi Saito, seen at actual size on the left in the image above. This game is a remake of Five Lines, which the designer submitted to Game Market in 2019.
After returning from Germany, Saito, like many other indie designers, sat behind a small table in Game Market and introduced his new palm-sized work, OPEN. It was a scene that compressed the energy I felt in Game Market — imagining anything, making even a small amount of it oneself, and sharing the joy with someone else while making eye contact.
Now I’m back with another picture, this one taken by Mikine Kurinose, an officer of Honu Games. I once had seen a picture taken in the same place, so I had this strange experience. As such, I carefully hope that this one picture will be an inspiration for someone else to experience something new.
I think all of us who can imagine something new and support it are, after all, co-creators.
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Jupiters Club is an indie publisher located on Jupiter.
In an endless thick gas cloud, what an infinitely secret pleasure!
We imagine games, books, records, etc. that would not be very popular on Earth, and sometimes publish them.
