Shueisha Games' quest to become the "Japanese Devolver"

gamesindustry.biz:

Sign up for the GI Daily here to get the biggest news straight to your inbox

One year ago, Japanese manga publishing giant Shueisha announced the opening of its dedicated games branch.

The idea was borne from Shueisha's Game Creators Camp, which western PR manager John Davis (who's also the co-founder of Kyoto-based indie games festival BitSummit) describes as "an incubator for indie developers in Japan."

Since then, it's successfully released a handful of games, including Kenei Design's Oni: Road to be the Mightiest Oni last month and Tasto Alpha's Arcana of Paradise - The Tower last week. And most of Shueisha's titles came out of its Creators Camp.

"The natural progression was for us to go from supporting indies to actually publishing and funding indies," Davis tells GamesIndustry.biz.

"The main goal of Creators Camp is not just for us to be able to cherry-pick the best stuff," executive officer, director of marketing and corporate Michiharu Mori continues. "We want to create a community. We have developers, artists, engineers, influencers, game hobbyist media, come into one area and create this community that not only Shueisha can go to and talk to people about projects, but other publishers and developers around Asia can find resources for.

"So, of course we're going to be on the lookout for anything great coming out of the Creators Camp, but it's more of Shueisha investing back in creating creators. We want to build these people up and give them opportunities, and of course, if we can work together, that's great. If they want to go and work with someone else, that's fine as well. It's just more about building a community."

Shueisha Games' first published project was Momo-pi's Captain Velvet Meteor: The Jump+