By Alan Wen

Takaaki Ichijo was working as a salesman for Japanese middleware company CRI when he first discovered Unity, which had established its Japanese subsidiary in 2011. At first, it was his job to try to sell his company's products to the engine-maker: "It was when I started trying Unity that I then realised I could make my own games with this engine, so I quit my job!"

He eventually used Unity to make and release his own game, Back In 1995, a 3D action adventure game that was a tribute to the low-poly survival-horror games of the PS1 era.

Released on Steam in 2016 and consoles later on, it was, for Ichijo, "a small hit" considering he was a solo developer. Yet the experience also left him burned out. "I felt a lot of difficulty doing everything as an indie developer in Japan," he explains. "So, rather than continuing as an indie dev, I started to support other indie devs, from friends to upcoming devs."

Ichijo may not be well known outside of Japan but he has played a crucial role in his country's growing indie game dev scene. He was the author of the book The Indie Game Developers Survival Guide, and helped start up community events such as Tokyo Indies. In 2021, he co-founded Japan's first incubating program for indies, Indie Game Incubator (IGI), based on GameBCN's incubation program model, and supported by Japanese publisher Marvelous. As of 2023, this model has also been adopted by the government-funded game acceleration program So-Fu, for which Ichijo also advises.

IGI has already seen success with alumni including Nao Shibata, the solo developer of Ninja Or Die, whose recent release Berserk Or Die was published by Vampire Survivor creator Poncle, as well as Kotake Create, creator of The Exit 8 (which was actually working on another game during the incubation program). So-Fu alumni behind the games Finding Polka and Mount Lomyst were also among the prize winners at BitSummit, Japan's largest indie game festival, which just concluded its 14th edition last weekend with a record-breaking 68,000 attendees.

It's interesting to view Ichijo's achievements in the Japanese indie dev space alongside BitSummit's exponentially growing popularity. Yet while IGI is among the sponsors of the Kyoto-based festival, where its graduates also have a booth to showcase their games, when we meet with Ichijo at BitSummit, he has a more stark view of how the event represents the Japanese indie game dev community.

"BitSummit will say they started a Japanese indie event and are the Japanese indie scene, but I don't believe that," he says. "Of course, it's a great event, and anyone can join it, and you can find lots of great games there, but it is an international event with international developers."

It's a potentially controversial perspective, not least given that the game industry has always been extremely international in nature. But Ichijo also considers 'indie' "a word that was imported from overseas," overlooking the history and culture of hobbyist game creators (or 'doujin') that have existed in Japan since the 1980s. For instance, one of the most successful doujin games is Cave Story, created by Japanese solo developer Daisuke 'Pixel' Amaya in 2004, which preceded the release of Braid by four years but is often overlooked when discussing the rise of indie games as we know them today.

There is of course a difference, in that 'doujin' developers tend to make games out of their own passion alongside day jobs, whereas 'indie' is increasingly viewed as a business model, albeit one with more individual creativity than triple-A allows. Ichijo isn't necessarily saying one is better than the other, but he wants local developers to have that choice. "A new student team making their own game to release on Steam might wish to become a company to get more funds and connect to the international scene, but if they just want to be hobbyists, Japan has another way to continue their creativity," he says. "The developer can choose both or a mix."

What Ichijo finds frustrating is that there are opportunities available to western developers based in Japan that aren't accessible to local developers, but are still considered part of the Japanese indie scene. "I feel BitSummit or any other event or award run by foreigners is from their friends' circles rather than related to the actual Japanese indie scene," he continues.

Even while the indies chosen for official selection at BitSummit cover a diverse range of creativity, Ichijo also criticises their location – away from the shinier sponsors' booths, in a small, dimly lit space, with rows of small tables bunched up together. He points to Taipei Games Show as an example of a better model, where half of the space is reserved for domestic developers, and recommends the Digital Games Expo held in Akihabara as a place for the "real" Japanese indie scene.

Nonetheless, there are improvements across the region's indie movement as a whole. Japanese indie publishers continue to grow in number, joined recently by Toei Games, from the animation giant behind Dragon Ball and One Piece. Meanwhile, just ahead of BitSummit, Square Enix announced a new game contest for residents in Japan, with a total prize pool of ¥1bn ($6.2m), contrasting with the Square Enix Collective headquartered in London, which Ichijo had bemoaned as an indie initiative that was not open to developers in Japan.

"Ten years ago, Japan didn't have a choice in connecting with the western world, but I, along with friends, have built an incubation program, written books, made events, and that bridge is getting built," Ichijo says. "My motivation for running programs like the incubator and government accelerator is to give the same opportunity and know-how to Japanese developers as those in the western world."