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Indie and Dojin Games : a Multilayered Cross-Cultural Comparison
Abstract
The article provides a comparative account of two paradigms of independent videogame production: the Japanese dojin (doujin) games and the increasingly global indie games. Through a multilayered analysis, it expounds the conceptual metaphors associated with indie and d jin games, traces the two movements respective histories, situates them in wider media environments, and compares their characteristic traits.
... Con la popularización del juego dōjin también ha aumentado el interés por conocer sus dinámicas locales de producción y distribución [6]. Y es que, desde hace años, numerosas campañas de marketing han tratado de presentar estos juegos a mercados occidentales como "indies japoneses" [7]. ...
... Con todo, sería necesario un tiempo antes de que pudiera disociarse completamente de los juegos eróticos. En años recientes, el trabajo de campo llevado a cabo por Hichibe y Tanaka [13], Vogel [14], Helland [15] y Fiadotau [6] ha sido determinante para atestiguar cómo el propio término ha ido modificando su significado hasta la actualidad. Tal y como recoge Fiadotau en particular, la noción de juegos dōjin entre desarrolladores japoneses refiere a la producción independiente y amateur de una porción de videojuegos, cuya motivación artística y público reposa más en visualizar esta actividad como un hobby sin ánimo de lucro. ...
... Si algo ha permitido que estos espacios hayan acabado incluyéndose ha sido precisamente porque se les ha acabado asimilando bajo la etiqueta indie, pero ese reconocimiento puede ir a costa de aplanar sus particularidades e idiosincrasias. Volviendo al caso del juego japonés, Fiadotau identifica que los principales elementos demarcadores que sirven para separar el juego indie japonés del dōjin es si el contenido aborda temáticas sexuales o grotescas [6], que se asocian a un público minoritario y se tratan como aberrantes al consumo "normal" de cultura japonesa. Sería interesante comprobar qué elementos podrían hacer al juego español o catalán ilegítimos a ojos del discurso dominante. ...
Esta ponencia lidia con las maneras fluctuantes en las que el ecosistema mediático en torno al juego japonés ha sido percibido a lo largo de los años. Empleando el marco conceptual articulado por Mia Consalvo y Christopher Paul en su obra Real Games, así como el trabajo de campo ya realizado por autores como Mikhail Fiadotau, Michael Vogel y otros, propongo la idea de que el término indie en Japón es una construcción discursiva empleada para distinguir la producción japonesa entre espacios normativos y no normativos. A pesar de que la creación de juegos independiente en Japón ha venido arropada durante décadas por el término paraguas del "Dōjin Software", esta distinción es un efecto reciente surgido para facilitar la proyección internacional de determinados juegos japoneses independientes. Este hecho queda evidenciado en las estrategias comerciales de empresas como Playism y festivales de juegos como Bitsummit, que seleccionan muestras ámbito dōjin y las promocionan como obras indie. Los valores e ideas que vienen asociados a este término acaban, por tanto, traspasándose al ecosistema mediático japonés y creando un cisma entre aquellos grupos que se respaldan bajo este nuevo paraguas conceptual o se siguen aferrando al antiguo. Para algunos creadores, esta distinción es necesaria para aunar su proceso creativo a las imposiciones ideológicas que cada etiqueta implica. Para las agencias comerciales y el público general, es un método con el que separar entre los juegos japoneses que se acoplan más fácilmente a paradigmas de diseño normativizados y anti-normativos.
... It would take another decade before new frameworks started to appear (McInerney, 2019), and by then, a greater historical interest on local development scenes had already developed (Picard, 2013). While Mia Consalvo focused on triple-A Japanese titles (2016) and Loriguillo and Navarro-Remesal studied geemu's ties to the Japanese media mix (2015), authors like Hichibe and Tanaka (2016), Vogel (2017), Helland (2018) and Fiadotau (2019) treated doujin games as a local phenomenon. Their work set the ground for current studies in doujin games by distinguishing them as their own cultural field. ...
... It would take another decade before new frameworks started to be applied (McInerney, 2019), and by then, a greater historical interest on local development scenes had already appeared (Picard, 2013). While Mia Consalvo focused on triple A Japanese titles (2016) and Loriguillo and Navarro-Remesal studied geemu's ties to the Japanese media mix (2015), authors like Hichibe and Tanaka (2016), Vogel (2017), Helland (2018) and Fiadotau (2019) treated doujin games as a local phenomenon. Their work set the ground for current studies in doujin games by distinguishing them as their own cultural field. ...
This article concerns the changing reception of the Japanese gaming media ecosystemm from the 2010's until today. It draws on previous fieldwork done by researchers like Mikhail Fiadotau, Michael William Vogel and Christopher Helland, historical accounts of the Japanese industry from Martin Picard and Yusuke Koyama, and conceptual frameworks of legitimacy and deviance in gaming by authors like Mia Consalvo and Christopher A. Paul. I suggest that the term "Japanese indie," as it's being used in English and Spanish gaming media today, repackages a sector of the Japanese independent development scene, commonly referred to as doujingeemu within Japan, for a globalized audience. Although independent Japanese games are usually understood as any work that self-publishes in Japan, the marketing developed by companies like Playism and BitSummit foster a distinction between works that are made following a hobbyist ethos and those that want to reach international audiences. The values and ideas associated with the English term indie have been imported to the Japanese development scene and effectively split it in two, with some studios embracing the new paradigm and others clinging to the old one. For some creators, this division is murky at best and is mostly used to dissociate their work from the ideological implications that the indie label imposes. For agencies and audiences, this distinction exists to distinguish between commercially viable titles, which are usually those that fit standardized forms of gameplay, and non-viable titles, which are considered niche or unpalatable to a global audience.
Indie games are a relatively novel phenomenon in the Japanese video game industry. Despite a rich history of hobbyist games and dōjn communities, the development of the indie scene was hindered by social and political factors. How indie, as a genre, became prominent in Japan can be better explained by exploring the foreigner communities of indie developers. Indie communities appeared at the beginning of the 2010s as grassroots events organised by homesick foreigners. Despite linguistic barriers they built a flourishing indie scene that welcomes both Japanese and foreigners and helped create a mediator between local developers and Western markets through Bitsummit and Tokyo Indies. This article explores the involvement of foreigners in the popularization of the indie games by analyzing twelve interviews with foreigners involved in all areas of game development. It then contextualizes their experiences by introducing the role and history of Kyoto Indies, Tokyo Indies and Bitsummit and their complicated relationship with the mainstream Japanese video game industry.
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