Chris and Kaiju Pop hold a special place in my heart. He was the very first reviewer that felt A Dark Room was worthy enough for a video review. What's absolutely insane is that the video review came out only a couple of weeks after the games launch (unsolicited).
As an indie game developer, these are the small wins you have to look for. It's these little things that keep you going. Take some time to watch Chris's other video reviews. He really does care about this craft.
How old are you? What's your professional and educational background?
I'm 32, I live in Yokohama where I'm an elementary school teacher. I have two young children. I also podcast and write about Japanese pro wrestling, including in my 2015 book.
Want to share any history/background with regards to Kaiju Pop?
Kaiju Pop sprung from a community for expat gamers living in Japan called gaijingamers. In the early 360/PS3 days it was essentially a pair of lists to say which 360 games were region free (some weren't) and which Japanese retail releases had English language support. It then grew to encompass general gaming thoughts, a trading marketplace and threads about Japanese life.
A few of us thought it would be neat for GG to have an editorial arm, and that became where does godzilla poop? in 2012 (the name wasn't my idea). The site outgrew the forum, and after typical message board drama and a name change, Kaiju Pop was Kaiju Pop.
There will be a lot of indie devs reading this. With regards to contacting editors/reviewers to get a game reviewed, what's the absolute worst thing for a dev to do/get him on your instant ban list?
We don't and wouldn't deny anybody coverage on any kind of principle unless you're making something ludicrously hateful. What any dev should realize though is that unless you're talking to a lucky (very) few, it's unlikely your game would get covered for someone's job. If you're sending press releases or review code unsolicited, that's a great idea but you have to bear in mind it'd fall low on the list of priorities, especially if it doesn't leap out as anything different or interesting.
There will be a lot of indie devs reading this. With regards to contacting editors/reviewers to get a game reviewed, what's the absolute best thing for a dev to do/get him in your graces?
We're all people, and all enjoy having our egos stroked. It's nice to know a dev's looked at the site before getting in touch, and if feedback we give seems honestly appreciated and taken aboard, it makes the site seem worth doing, and makes us want to cover the next thing you do.
Got a funny story about an interaction you've had with regards to an editorial you've published (and the game devs involved)?
Being an old Amiga nerd, I was a huge fan of Gravity Force 2, a multiplayer space dogfighting game. Around the 20th anniversary of GF2, I tried to get in touch with the two guys that made it. One was Jens Andersson, who as it turns out has a namesake who worked on The Darkness among others. This Jens mistakenly had GF2 on his Mobygames credits so there was some confusion when I asked him for an interview. As it happened though, the other Jens was a big GF fan as well. When I finally found the actual devs I managed to forge a friendship between two Swedish game vets.
The other nice thing about that was these two guys Jan and Jens only made a couple of these games as students and went on to 'proper' jobs. The retrospective we ran and the response to it inspired them to make a new GF, gravity force 20 on iOS Android and PC.
What are your thoughts on premium games vs free with IAP? Why is it so hard for consumers to fork over $3.99 (or any amount of income) for a premium game? Have we just become numb to ads and energy bars?
There've been tons of think pieces going back as far as the start of the App Store about the race to the bottom potentially killing the space. Broadly speaking they turned out to be on the money. There was a brief period in 2011-2013 when a lot of interesting people were making a lot of interesting games for very cheap indeed, and that was great. At the same time though it created a lot of entitlement, and the frequent ridiculous anger of '5 Dollars? No game is worth that!'.
So the bottom fell out, (and piracy was a factor on Android) in a very similar way to the mid 80s home computer scene in the UK. Of course free to play was the last step in that race to the bottom. There are many more millions of phones out there than consoles, and most people playing games on them aren't gamers in the traditional sense. I like music, but I never sit down and listen to it, and if I have headphones in my ears, it's to listen to podcasts. So I haven't bought any music for a few years, even then to support a friend's band. It's the same for a lot of mobile game players I think.
So then visibility became a big problem, and then a lot of those really interesting people went elsewhere. Six, seven years ago, mobile game was a derisory label, and I think a lot took that as a challenge, to show that an emotional connection was platform agnostic. That might have been proven, but the people that took that challenge then had to admit it wasn't financially viable for them.
I'm starting to release unfinished games and then iterate on them publicly (A Noble Circle, which you have personal experience with throughout its progression). The first couple of months, the game is free, and then I start charging for it after it's more playable. Believe it or not, it's working! Am I insane? How would this affect editorials and reviews?
Similar models have had success in the PC space as well, although the early access model has been exploited by some. Starting free gives people a no risk chance to be on the ground floor and those early adopters can vouch for the game when it's paid.
The issue, especially for indies might be in coverage. Even big sites haven't really settled on a way to cover the more fluid and public nature of game dev we have now so there'll be questions of how best to cover a game. For sites stretched for time looking at a low profile title that may turn a review into a brief video, a podcast mention or a news piece. The upshot to that is you have writers in 'preview mode' so to speak, and most coverage will be neutral or positive - flaws will be 'things we hope they work on' not unforgivable travesties.
What do you think the future of mobile gaming holds for indie game devs? Doom and gloom? Bright future?
It's not looking good. The proponents of premium material, on the consumer and dev end have left or are leaving, either due to finances or just the dev environment (Aliceffekt made his last iOS game after four years, saying he'd expected the tools to get better and they just didn't) and even if you want in on the free to play space (don't get me wrong, there's great free games too, from Crossy Road to Tomb of the Mask) it's a very tough thing to make money on.
Yet there are millions of 3DSes out there, and as much as it failed, millions of Vitas too. There is a demand for paid content that's handheld. How the NX does remains to be seen, but I'd say there is a market, it's just incredibly hard to reach at this point.
How can game devs better support editors/reviewers (and more specifically Kaiju Pop)?
As soon as we get into talk of support it all goes into gross discussion of editorial autonomy. I read about Touch Arcade's issues and their subsequent sticky wicket with their Patreon with interest. The fact is that games editorial is largely dead as a thing you can make money on, and most, us included just want it to keep going as a means to get thoughts out there and because we like talking about games as much as playing them. For us then, it's just a matter of being open with review codes and interview requests. That's pretty straightforward, but any more than that and you're going into murky waters.
Is Japan everything you dreamed of it to be? If I go there, will people high five me for wearing DBZ and Evangelion tshirts?
No, you geek. ;) I joke that when I came I was drawn to video games and wrestling, and arrived at the nadir or pro wrestling in Japan, and right at the end of the PS2's life which was arguably Japanese gaming's last really big hoorah. Japan is home. Like the UK and the US there are genuinely frightening elements in high positions of power that make me worry about the world my kids will grow up in, but home is where the angst is. Love it warts and all.
What are your thoughts on the wrestling scene in Japan?
Wrestling is in a tricky transitionary phase right now here. It's pulled out of a long slump, but now the business has to consider growth in a very tricky world market dominated by wwe. It's similar to the Japanese game space ten years ago, in that there's a risk of Japan appealing to the western world by trying to adopt sports entertainment tropes. We need more wrestling Dark Souls and no wrestling Lost Planet 3s.