Success as an indie developer is hard. For every game that receives critical and commercial acclaim, another ten projects will not bring profit to the creators who put years of their lives into their art.
Behind that are another ten projects that dream of a shot at commercial success, but lack the experience needed to polish their prototypes into a finished product, or lack the connections needed to reach out to publishers who can raise the profile of their games over the seas too – running. Game incubators are one way to bridge this gap.
Programs like the MENA Hero Project or the NYU Game Center Incubator are run with a single goal: to transform small indie game projects into enhanced, launched games, connecting emerging and smaller creators with industry veterans and investors. Workshops, co-working spaces, and even funding are usually provided through these programs so creators can spend more time refining their work for commercial release.
Especially in developing regions or regions with a smaller indie scene, incubators can be a way to grow the industry and provide a platform to put a country on the map. As Japan's indie scene continues to grow, it should come as no surprise that new game incubators want to support ambitious creators who want to take their games to the next level.
The Indie Game Incubator was founded in 2021 as a joint initiative led by Marvelous Entertainment, Ludimus (an anime, manga and game consultancy) and Head-High, a development tools maker founded by indie creator Takaaki Ichijo. They also manage the Indie Developers Conference and Japanese indie game news source indiegamesjp.dev.
“The Japanese development community is very invisible internationally”Sho Sato
This six-month incubator includes mentoring and workshops, and a publishing event that will connect incubated developers with publishers from Japan and around the world, such as Room6, Devolver Digital, and TinyBuild. In addition, it focuses on bridging the language gaps that have typically prevented Japanese games from reaching a global audience, and helps developers explain the appeal of their games in English.
According to Sho Sato, CEO of Ludimus and co-founder and general secretary of India Game Incubator, these language barriers were a major factor in the decision to create this Japan-focused incubator.
“Most Japanese developers don't speak English, so they can't apply to many international incubator programs,” he tells us. “The Japanese development community is very invisible internationally, and when I was a researcher in developing countries [covering video games development]I understood the importance of these incubators and therefore helped to create them.
“[At the end of the Indie Game Incubator] we have 30 game publishers participating in our demo day in Shibuya, with about 70 publishers participating online. We'll have people like Tiny Build or other Western characters here, as well as Kodansha, Japanese game publishers, Chinese publishers like Gamera Games and more.”
The Indie Game Incubator is currently in its fourth wave of supported titles and has already seen some results from its first onboarding titles. In the first batch of early 2022 titles, Ninja or Die was published by Marvelous, while NeverAwake was published by Phoenixx and won the best game award at the 2022 Bitsummit showcase in Kyoto. Death The Guitar from the third stage of the incubator won the same award in 2023.
From the second batch of titles, the rap-filled action title Sonokuni won two awards at the latest edition of Bitsummit 2024 for sound design and media sponsor VGC, and will be published by Kakehashi Games in the future.
The Indie Game Incubator also helps the developers themselves find renewed confidence and a platform for future success with other projects. Developer Kotake Create participated in the third edition of the incubator with Strange Shadow and continued to improve the game for over six months before taking time to work on other projects. One of those projects was The Exit 8, a biting Tokyo subway walking simulator with a disturbing twist that later went viral.
While this incubator does not provide additional funding for games in development, it does provide support and assistance from global mentors with a promised 400 hours of lectures and mentoring over the six-month plan. The program also gives games a chance to showcase themselves at major events like Bitsummit, where all the latest titles had a chance to introduce their games to the public and publishers.
While many of these titles have appeared at other events – R-ta's Reso-Seeker is a game that I personally watched with great interest as a metroidvania set in a hotel resort that underwent a major art overhaul and improved its core mechanics. numerous demos at events large and small – for many, this was the biggest platform these games had received to date.
In addition to this initiative, there is also So-Fu, which focuses on games further in development. So-Fu, which is run by Games Incubator India in partnership with Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, was originally founded in 2022 in partnership with Nothing New to help film projects in the early stages of development, and this year expanded to include additional support . gaming industry.
So-Fu is the first time the Japanese government has stepped in to help the indie gaming scene and encourage its growth at a time when interest in Japanese games is growing globally. As an incubator, So-Fu promises to support up to ten mid- to late-stage titles with 5 to 10 million yen in funding and game and production consulting.
“About four or five years ago, there was little interest from the Japanese government in supporting creators”Sho Sato
It's a big move that shows the government recognizes the importance of the games industry to Japan's global influence, and how important it is that the industry remains strong at all levels, not just for big companies like Nintendo. According to Sato, “About four or five years ago, there was little interest from the Japanese government in supporting creators. That changed last year [political business lobby] Keidanren posted a proposal where they think the government should increase support for creators.
“It changed their minds a lot. [On the first day of Bitsummit]The Economy Minister came to Bitsummit and interacted with some of the developers and visited the Indie Game Incubator booth. So things are changing.”
The published proposal mentions the wider entertainment output of the Japanese economy for games, anime, manga and the importance of the industry for exercising soft power at a time when its economic potential is also growing.
Between 2012 and 2021, the Japanese entertainment market outside Japan grew from 1.4 trillion yen to 4.5 trillion yen. Yet they are also struggling to establish themselves or find the growing global influence enjoyed by K-pop or aspects of Chinese media, despite the longstanding audience for anime and Japanese pop culture. As a result, Japanese entertainment has actually enjoyed a shrinking percentage of the global market in recent years, despite the monetary increase in revenue that Japanese media has generated on the global stage.
In the document, the lobby group argues that by moving away from past strategies such as Cool Japan, which sought to promote the concept of Japanese media over actual creators, direct investment in those who create art will encourage more diverse voices to surface, such as one way to grow the market to triple or quadruple current global revenues by 2033.
At the same time, the document specifically mentions examples such as Sweden Game Arena and its work in creating co-working centers, supporting small creators in education and funding, and more, as examples of just some of the things that the government should be doing. improving the long-term health of their entertainment industry as well as allowing more and more diverse work to reach a global audience.
This global approach can even be seen in the games selected through So-Fu for incubation and funding. CitalesGames' Witch the Showdown is an anime-inspired deckbuilding roguelike aiming for release on both PC and console in 2025, while Sonokuni developer Don Yasu Crew's Rizdebi combines card game strategy with rhythmic timing and technical details. Hell Hell, meanwhile, is a co-op stealth action game set in an amusement park in Hell.
The documentary also cites the ways in which the studios themselves have entered into some of these jobs, with positive results. Square Enix sent developers to talk to university students, and the paper argues that the government should continue to invest in things like this that improve grassroots support and help bring new creative minds into these industries.
Through So-Fu and the Indie Game Incubator, we hope that indie developers can reach the level of global indie producers and bridge the language gaps that hold them back.
So-Fu has really tried to bring in mentors from both Japan and the global industry to ensure that these diverse voices and perspectives, as well as knowledge of what each region is looking for, are shared with Japanese developers looking to create a greater global impact.
“Japan has many talented independent game developers. I hope this can be another initiative to help cultivate that spirit.”Samantha Low
Samantha Low, journalist and public relations manager at Neon Noroshi, is one of the mentors selected to support developers through So-Fu. They hope the program will be a chance for these indie creators to gain wider recognition before they get to work supporting this inaugural series of titles.
“Japan has many talented and serious indie game developers. I hope this can be another initiative to help cultivate that spirit. It's been heartening to see the amount of support the project has already received from the local scene as well as the international game development community, and I'm really looking forward to it , when I support creators on their journey.”
The Indie Game Incubator and So-Fu are major initiatives working to give indie games from Japan the global attention they deserve, and they come at a pivotal time in the development of the scene. More publishers like Room6, Yokaze or Shueisha Games are entering the scene, Bandai Namco's GYAAR Studio and others are running regular indie game competitions that try to elevate smaller titles and provide funding to the winners, and events like Bitsummit are celebrating record attendance. and it gets bigger every year.
This is a key moment to bring these games into the limelight, but many need both funding and support to get them over the line. Perhaps incubators like this are the crucial first step they need to achieve that goal.