Japanese indie games festival Bitsummit gets bigger each year
Developers from around the globe flock to four-year-old event gathering in Kyoto to connect and seek inspiration
One of the original goals of BitSummit was to help push independent Japanese developers into the spotlight both in their own country and abroad. The event has done this, but it has hardly been a Japanese-only affair.
“Our intention was not just to shine a light on the Japanese indie scene,” says John Davis, one of many who helped usher the show into existence in 2013. “We wanted to bridge a gap between the East and the West.”
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Developers came from the United States, South Korea and a few places in between at this year’s BitSummit, which was held on July 9 and 10. Most were part of the Indie Megabooth, a programme that works to help indie developers show their games at various large events.
“They’ve been really awesome to us,” says Rachel Monteleone from Grimm Bros, a multinational studio that was displaying Dragon Fin Soup, an action role-playing game. “We’ve done a couple of things with them, so we’re really, really excited that we got to come here.”
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The BitSummit set-up benefits both overseas and domestic participants. Foreign developers get to tap into another market of gaming fans and interact with like-minded Japanese. Meanwhile, the international presence helps brighten the spotlight that BitSummit shines on domestic companies while giving them the opportunity to discover more about the industry outside of Japan.