![]() ![]() He decided to show how social games are moving away from their antisocial tendencies with players teaming up to play games in public - which just so happens to be one of the key features of Monster Strike. The third image comes from Ogata Yuichi, an artist at Mixi working on mobile smash hit Monster Strike. He decided to play up the idea that Japan has some of the most famous developers in the world but those developers keep making the same types of games, so he drew them as if they were on a Star Wars poster. The second image comes from Muhan Ogikubo, a pen name for an artist who has worked on some of Japan's biggest game franchises but requested we not use his real name. He describes his piece, showing two schoolgirls playing in the foreground and the fallout from Fukushima's nuclear disaster in the distance, as a way to show young people as the industry's future with the baggage from the past lingering behind. The first image comes from Takeshi Oga, who was the lead concept artist on Gravity Rush (you might know him from the game's box art) and has contributed to the Siren series and Final Fantasy 11. Rather than sum things up ourselves, we asked a handful of artists currently working in Japan's game industry to give their take on the industry. ![]() Instead, think of it as a sampling.Īnd it starts on the cover. Inevitably, we couldn't get to everyone doing interesting things, so this isn't meant to be a comprehensive look at what's going on over there. So we decided to highlight some of the most interesting games, people and companies in Japan, to discuss what they're working on and look at how that work ties into Japan's game industry as a whole. Summer Lesson is deceptively cruel - at least, the Chisato episode is - but as an immersive, virtual reality horror experience, it kind of works.Takeshi Oga art (click each cover thumbnail for a high resolution version) Muhan Ogikubo art Ogata Yuichi art Kazutoshi Iida art Vin Hill art Maybe this was how I die, I thought.īut then the demo was over with a colorful “To be continued,” and I walked away and laughed and tried to ignore how fast my heart was beating. As the up-close-and-personal Chisato repeatedly dug a sword in the general direction of my kidney, I cringed and squealed and sat stricken with fear, mortified. Swords that she plunges into your body.Īgain: What a fool I was. The girl lives in a creaky, Victorian style mansion, seemingly alone, and her interests include. It turned out that hanging with Chisato wasn’t the fun ego boost of (Japanese inscrutable) compliments I hoped for. I laughed out loud out of nervousness several times I also backed away in my chair, almost knocking into the demo attendant.īut the new episode of Summer Lesson didn’t just test the limits of my physical boundaries. Every response drew her closer, and closer, and closer still. Chisato circled around me, asking me questions that I could only respond to with a nod. What followed was five minutes of claustrophobia. Without a controller in hand or an on-screen virtual avatar to look at - Summer Lesson is played using only head movements, looking at the girls in the eyes - I felt trapped in my own body. ![]() The experience paired me up with privileged teen Chisato Shinjo, and right from the start I knew Summer Lesson would be a special brand of unpleasant: Chisato sauntered toward me, getting right up in my face. When I tried out the upcoming installment of Bandai Namco’s PlayStation VR conversation sim, Summer Lesson, at this year’s Tokyo Game Show, I expected a calm, cutesy palate cleanser. Of everything I’ve ever done in VR - like shooting madmen in the face, exploring abandoned houses and dodging bullets in slow motion - signing on to tutor a Japanese schoolgirl is by far the most uncomfortable. ![]()
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