on january 15 i exhibited at tokyo game dungeon 2, an indie game event in tokyo, & it is honestly my favourite out of any event i've ever exhibited at, so i wanted to talk a little about why. i think the biggest point is the very real feeling of community i got, not as a developer selling to consumers but as a developer sharing games with other participants, both devs & non-devs alike - it really felt like an 'indie' / doujin event.

this is just me typing out my thoughts as i go & they are definitely not organised, but bear with me!

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first off, what is an 'indie' / 'doujin' event?

now, i could probably argue semantics all day, but i'm going to say here that i use both 'indie' & 'doujin' fairly similarly - but when i use indie or doujin, i am thinking of independent developers who generally are working solo or in very small teams. like, touhou project? that's doujin for sure, but for me, that's also indie. meanwhile, indie game studio with 30 employees? i wouldn't personally describe their games as indie. that's just the definition i'm going to use here, so if that doesn't work for you, that's ok!

when i use doujin, i mean the same spirit as my 'indie' with quotation marks. the phrase is written as 同人 in japanese, referring to like-minded people (making like-minded things for a like-minded audience). doujin is sometimes used in english to specify fanworks only, but i use doujin to encompass any self-published creative work. i don't have a good specific english definition for this, but anything that feels like it could be sold at comiket or comitia is doujin to me.

(i consider myself an indie dev rather than doujin i think, because it's just the label i picked up first, but even now sometimes since i feel there's such a huge gap between myself & what i see sometimes online for indie games, i don't know if the label is right for me... that's part of why i'm organising a zine anthology called 同ZINE / douZINE which showcases doujin/indie games from japan, to lower the hurdle of what can be indie & also share more doujin original works!)

all of this extends to how i feel about events - at least, that's something i've figured out after exhibiting at tokyo game dungeon 2. in addition to tokyo game dungeon, i've also participated in tokyo game show (video game event in chiba), bitsummit (indie game festival in kyoto) & digital games expo (indie & doujin game expo in akihabara).

tokyo game show

tokyo game show is very obviously not an indie or doujin event. most of the audience going is there for the big games - the big booths like konami & sega &c. will draw lines that will go as long as three hours. sure, there is an indie area shoved off to the side of the event (right next to the merchandise area), but the booths for each game are small, just one long thin black panel with one monitor & identical signs/lettering on top as the only way to indicate which company you're looking at. (if the dev applied as an individual, it'll literally just say their name on top of their booth.)

there's a very obvious corporateness to it all - the indie area is busier on the business days than the public days, because on business days you'll get the industry people coming in. tokyo game show is all business card exchanges, booking meetings, looking for publishers.

as such, tokyo game show is primarily a b2c - business to consumer - & b2b - business to business - event. there's nothing wrong with that, but it is definitely not indie.

bitsummit

now, bitsummit labels itself as an indie game festival. however, it has its roots as a small industry-only event, & i feel like that's pervasive even now as the event reaches its tenth year.

i exhibited last year & it was honestly a very good experience for me. a lot of people played my demo & it was great! but as somebody who's visited bitsummit for many years now, it feels like with every year the sponsor presence gets bigger, & the focus on indies gets smaller. at the very front of the venue are the big booths for sponsors, only after which you find the uniform black-tableclothed tables for each booth. the lights are all dimmed and there's a stage where famous industry people give talks. there are live performances too.

to get into bitsummit, you have to pass their application. the bitsummit committee takes an application fee for all entries regardless of if you get in or not. only if your game is considered to be up to muster can you show your game..

there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. tokyo game show does the same (though without the application fee) - you apply with your game info, & if the people in charge think your game is good enough by whatever standards they set, you're in. this guarantees a certain level of polish at the event & this is desirable for a consumer who wants to play 'good' games as such.

digital games expo

to compare though, let's look at digital games expo. it brands itself from the very start as an event for doujin & indie games - & i think it captures the spirit too.

applications are done by lottery, as common at many doujin events. what that means is in general, everyone has an equal chance of exhibiting. this gives you a much wider range of games to play because anybody can exhibit if they want.

similarly re: feeling equal, digital games expo carries the long tradition of doujin events where everyone is a participant. the devs who are exhibiting the games are not exhibitors - they are circle participants, circles being a sole person or group creating work to share at events. meanwhile, people who go to the event but don't exhibit aren't visitors - they're regular participants. without both sides, the circle participants & the regular participants, you wouldn't be able to have an event.

digital games expo has sponsors, but looking in from outside the event with its huge windows facing the street, the first booths you see are just regular exhibitors at their tables. there is also a lot more variety in how people decorate their booths - since the tables are just plain tables at the start, everyone brings their own tablecloths (some nicely printed, some just bought from the 100-yen store), & in general there's just so much more variety.

also, when talking to people at their booths, it was much more likely that you would be talking to the dev of the game, showing their own game, than somebody that had been hired as staff to show it.

exhibiting at tokyo game dungeon 2

now to actually talk about exhibiting at tokyo game dungeon 2!

tokyo game dungeon labels itself as an indie game exhibition. it's run by iwasaki, an indie dev who also organises a recurring unity dev event where devs meet up & work on stuff individually but in the same space. the first event was done by lottery, but the second was done first-come-first-serve, so literally anybody could apply to show as long as they were fast enough.

i've never been at an event where the organiser was as involved as tokyo game dungeon 2. iwasaki was constantly answering everyone's questions on discord while also updating us with how the exhibition prep was going, like what stuff was printed & even how many tickets had been sold at the time. it also turns out he had photos taken of every single booth at the event which he shared with the devs, which was so sweet because i didn't actually have a photo of the event with me in it.

the event also had a communal flyer place which anybody could put their flyers on, as well as poster spaces (these were limited to first-come-first-serve). trailers of every single game at the event were shown on a big projector.

as mentioned above slightly, communication was through discord. at first, honestly i thought this was going to be annoying - i didn't want to have to post any questions i had in a public channel! but actually, now that the event is over, i think it was really nice, because a lot of the questions people had were also questions i had, & i found myself replying if i could help. some of the questions weren't event-specific but more like, 'hey, does anybody have a good printer they'd recommend for flyers?' & it got people sharing & talking & felt a lot friendlier than when i had to email tokyo game show asking why their indie game online 'exhibit' was just a pdf listing all the devs exhibiting...

for the event itself, as the event at this point actually doesn't have any sponsors at all, every booth space was equal in size. you could decorate your booth however you want & it was really nice seeing how everyone did things differently!

i unfortunately didn't actually get a chance to walk around much - i only ended up leaving my booth space with fifteen minutes left in the event & played just the one game - but it was honestly just such a different experience than tokyo game show or bitsummit or even digital games expo, which is the closest in feeling. i love digital games expo too & i'm definitely going to apply to show my game again this year, but tokyo game dungeon really felt like a love project by a guy who loves indie/doujin games & wants to give people a space to show the games they're working on no matter their polish or sellability.

for me, it was just a breath of fresh air. when i look at indie game dev stuff online, sometimes it feels like everything is all about how to sell your game, how to market your game, how to reach your audience, &c. &c. &c.

that's important too since we live in a world where we need money to live - but for me, having that fill up my head just makes me want to cry because it's not why i want to make games.

tokyo game dungeon 2 had full-time indie devs, but also students making games, at least one parent & kid combo just making stuff together, devs working on their stuff after work, hobby devs who aren't interested in making games for a living but just want to share the games they're working on, & more... it reminded me that you can make games however you want, for whatever reason you want.

for the regular participants you had a huge range as well, from other indie devs checking out what people were making, people who just wanted to look at games, parents with their kids... i had a lot of fun conversations with people who were excited to see a gamecube & gameboy printer from their childhood along with people who'd never seen a gameboy printer or even a gamecube before!

at tokyo game show & bitsummit, i never felt like i was in the same group as the other devs because it all felt so much more commercial. tokyo game dungeon 2 was so much more approachable for me. (digital games expo was also approachable, but tokyo games dungeon 2 had the added bonus of literally having a discord server as a community where people actively participated.) everyone was equal at the event as people wanting to share games & people wanting to play them - & that i think is really the heart of indie & doujin. just individual people who really care about something & want to find a community that cares as much as they do.

tokyo game dungeon's the first event i've been to which actually felt like a good fit for me - which is also why for the very first time ever, i've stuck a sticker on the back of my laptop... i'm hoping i'll get into the next tokyo game dungeon so i can add another sticker to my laptop soon too!

so what? after all this talking...

none of this post is to say event a is bad or event b is better - it's just a reminder to me, really, & perhaps anybody else who needs it, that if you show at an event & you don't feel like it was a good experience for you, maybe the event's just not the right one for you.

for me, i've been working on a very silly game for gameboy called famires date where you go on a date but only have 2000 yen for your meal, just because i want to make a game on gameboy where you use the gameboy printer. there's no real target market for this (people with gameboys & gb printers in this day & age, i guess), but i wanted people to play it & print stuff.

i don't think my game as it is would have got into tokyo game show or bitsummit, but thanks to tokyo game dungeon, i got to see so many people's faces just light up when my little gb printer printed out receipts for them after they played my game demo. (i also got to notice a few bugs in my demo, but that's all fixed up now... i have the updated demo build for famires date up on my patreon now.)

this made tokyo game dungeon the event that was right for me, as somebody who considers themself an indie dev. i remember showing at tokyo game show & just being frustrated, & bitsummit, while i enjoyed the experience overall, was incredibly draining.

anyway, what i want to say is that if you are an indie or doujin dev who doesn't like the events you see, maybe you just need to find your own tokyo game dungeon - or start one yourself!