It’s been a year since my last article. I meant to post a lot more often, including some positive articles on development in Japan but after a horrid job that left me livid and broken mess physically and emotionally. It’s been 8 months since I was in that situation and while my current one is still a bit crunchy, it’s nowhere nearly as bad.
I knew that Free to Play regulation was around the corner back in 2014 but I didn’t see Comp Gatcha getting outright banned and how hard it’d kick Gree and other companies that relied on it to milk their whales.
Mobile gaming has evolved as I’ve expected. While the “spin a gatcha for rares!” and fusing cards together to make better ones is still ever present, Japan’s top mobile games drastically increasing in quality. Shironeko Project is a brilliantly designed mobile-friendly Playstation 2 quality action RPG. Most of Japan’s top grossing apps are quality games.
Japan will continue to fall behind the tech gap for the saddest reason ever: software engineering is just not taken seriously in this country. Not even at top academic institutions. I searched the top 20 universities in Japan for software engineering programs and the results were dismal. I’ll publish my findings in my next post.
The Japanese market is still anyone’s game. The ability to put out an engaging mobile game with hit potential is within the means of a lot of Japanese creators. Whether some can get the means to muster up the funds and use them wisely enough to is anyone’s guess.