It is August sixteenth, 2008. The eleventh Touhou sport, Subterranean Animism, releases right this moment at Comiket, making an attempt to purchase a replica is an intense one. Folks queue within the sizzling solar for hours earlier than being crammed into the Tokyo exhibition corridor’s cacophony of stalls. Tons of of hundreds of individuals will flock right here over the following few days, each one among them sizzling, bothered, and totally dehydrated. Discovering Touhou creator ZUN’s desk amongst this flood earlier than his inventory runs out is a feat in itself, however it’s well worth the sweat and exhaustion for the reward: a freshly pressed CD containing an incredible shmup that. Braving the group and warmth in particular person is the one positive option to get one.
Doujin video games are the ‘Why not?’ response to the broader gaming business’s ‘Why?’
XSEED govt VP Kenji Hosoi
It is now 2022. Immediately, you, sat in your comfortable desk chair—or maybe curled up on the couch along with your Steam Deck—purchased and downloaded Subterranean Animism in underneath a minute after casually searching the a whole lot of different doujin video games out there on Valve’s retailer after which carried on along with your day. For anybody who adopted Japan’s doujin sport scene within the early 2000s, it is nonetheless surreal to see a number of the most underground video games constructed for tiny, insular communities now a button click on away on Steam.
Lengthy earlier than the indie sport increase of the final decade, Japan’s doujin video games served as its personal kind of indie scene. “There are a lot of opinions on the definition of doujin, however I imagine… 同人(doujin) means people or teams who share the identical pursuits and preferences,” says Piro, consultant director of small Japanese writer Henteko Doujin. “Whereas ‘indie video games’ are categorized by the dimensions of manufacturing as works that don’t belong to a serious label, ‘doujin video games’ are categorized by the aim of manufacturing as works for folks with the identical tastes.”
Or to place it one other means: Doujin video games aren’t a style, they’re an angle.
However has that angle modified now that doujin video games have gone from being home made media bodily handed over to fellow followers to one thing out there worldwide to nearly anybody on the click on of a mouse?
By followers, for followers
Generally manually burned at dwelling onto unbranded CD-Rs, generally professionally pressed onto DVDs with slick color labels, doujin video games have at all times been charmingly unpredictable. They might be wholly authentic works—ZUN’s ever-expanding sequence of Touhou shmups and the aquatic warfare of Ace of Seafood—or they might be fan video games that, ahem, “borrow” present mental property. An ideal instance is Densha de D, which mixes Taito’s practice simulator Densha de Go! with the well-known manga Preliminary D, letting you drift race trains by means of Tokyo at 160 km/h.
XSEED Video games’ govt vp Kenji Hosoi describes doujin video games because the “Why not?” response to the broader gaming business’s “Why?”, explaining that for these maverick builders the standard guidelines needn’t apply. “The rationale may be ‘simply because,’ which I believe is what makes a few of these builders provide you with fascinating concepts,” Hosoi says. “While you’re not fascinated with sport growth based mostly off of particular viewers buckets and consumer developments, all the world turns into your potential viewers.”
Doujin’s optimistic can-do method has led to video games like Battle Crab, an area fighter the place crustaceans with swords and weapons duel to the demise, and the playable nightmare that’s Corpse Social gathering and its unusually interesting mixture of bloodsoaked halls and cute pixel schoolkids. The one fixed in doujin gaming is the shortage of consistency.
For a very long time this all-you-can-eat buffet of creativity was nearly unimaginable to play outdoors Japan with out both:
- Paying inflated sums to retailers so small their web sites had been merely text-only descriptions and an e-mail tackle
- Following hyperlinks of doubtful legality on a specialist discussion board and praying the eventual end result wasn’t riddled with malware
That every one modified in 2010, when Recettear: An Merchandise Store’s Story made its Steam debut.
Carpe Fulgur’s trailblazing localisation of the shop-running sport could not have been a extra good introduction to doujin video games. Recettear was like nothing else on the time with somewhat little bit of motion, a number of coronary heart, and a localisation eager on sounding heat and pure to English-speaking gamers—a world away from the fierce and infrequently untranslated shmups that had been historically the doujin gamer’s style of selection.
However as very important as all that was, it was the supply technique that made doujin gaming explode.
I do not assume an excessive amount of about gross sales, however quite prioritize releasing video games which are new to the world
Henteko Doujin director Piro
Japanese PC video games of all genres and sizes had been launched in English earlier than: even Recettear’s developer had one among its earlier video games printed on disc in a minimum of 5 languages. The one downside was these launches had been so small it usually took blind luck simply to study they existed, and shopping for them, particularly within the small window of new that helped publishers fund additional daring releases, was nearly unimaginable.
Steam not solely did away with needing to scour eBay and obscure boards for doujin video games, however the uniform look of its retailer pages additionally made Recettear—and by extension doujin gaming as an entire—the perfect form of extraordinary. For the primary time ever this import-only area of interest of a distinct segment was reasonably priced and out there to a large viewers, requiring no second-hand experiences from doujin extravaganza Comikets and no larger effort to purchase than the clicking of a mouse. And the shop was infinitely safer than emailing bank card particulars to an unknown particular person and hoping for the perfect.
Carpe Fulgur’s pioneering effort had a snowball impact on all the business, and right this moment Steam has a whole lot of doujin video games to select from, encompassing all the things from dense ‘sound novel’ sequence Higurashi When They Cry to the continuous bullet-dodging motion of Crimzon Clover, to Touhou Genso Wanderer’s vibrant tackle dungeon crawling. It is a joyful scenario that is solely made the method of getting doujin video games on Steam simpler for everybody concerned.
“It does assist having printed titles like Sakuna and Corpse Social gathering when talking to doujin/indie devs,” says XSEED’s Kenji Hosoi. “Due to the top quality of those titles, it conveys a sure degree of belief in our pedigree as a writer.”
There is not any signal the doujin scene will do something apart from proceed to flourish on Valve’s retailer. The lately launched Gradius-like shmup Drainus at the moment has a “Very Constructive” ranking after receiving a whole lot of consumer suggestions, Touhou-themed Castlevania-like Koumajou Remilia: Scarlet Symphony is receiving a cross-platform multilingual launch after showing to be misplaced down the doujin cracks eternally, and each doujin-friendly writer’s “Upcoming” web page has a number of video games simply ready to be wishlisted.
These video games have gone from being uncommon novelties to fully built-in into Steam’s ecosystem within the house of a decade, to the purpose the place XSEED now not makes the doujin distinction when it releases new video games. Why would not a doujin sport do effectively on Steam? Why could not one thing as uncommon as Sakuna: Of Rice and Break promote amongst the fixed stream of big-name hits from infinitely bigger studios?
“On the finish of the day, crucial factor is the standard of the sport and the way the sport is accepted by the followers,” says Hosoi. “Sakuna was a type of uncommon titles that everybody on our workforce loved taking part in. It was unanimous that all of us favored the characters, paintings, gameplay, story and it was only a no-brainer for us, even when ‘rice making’ was a distinct segment idea to market.”
Industrial and significant success is present in each style and at each value level for doujin video games, as Piro factors out. “Usually, doujin sport builders are very happy with the response from new markets and enthusiastic audiences.” Newfound worldwide acceptance has solely strengthened the inventive facet of the scene, the sheer dimension of Steam’s consumer base giving doujin publishers with doujin mindsets the house to thrive.
Comiket, the occasion you as soon as needed to attend to search out uncommon doujin video games, circa 2008
“Our coverage is to work within the spirit of doujin, at the same time as a writer. I do not assume an excessive amount of about gross sales, however quite prioritize releasing video games which are new to the world and that even a small variety of folks get pleasure from enthusiastically. Even so, we’ve got achieved good outcomes by way of gross sales too,” explains Piro.
It is a system that appears to work for everybody concerned—for now. Is there a hazard this greater viewers will change the spirit of doujin, that the need for worldwide acceptance will see the emergence of safer video games with a much less distinctive persona for gross sales’ sake? Hosoi does not assume so.
“I don’t assume the core idea has modified because it’s at all times about making stuff you like,” he says. “There could also be new concepts popping out of the tradition, however that’s additionally at all times been a part of what defines it… I believe it’s going to be stronger than ever, with extra potentialities, and an ever-growing viewers.”
