A Japanese game designer has been considering expanding his game distribution to Iceland, as he feels Iceland’s gaming community is “too narrow”.
Independent game creator Jun’ya Ota is currently vacationing in Iceland. After spending a week at Þórsmörk, he decided to spend his remaining week in Reykjavík. The Grapevine caught up with Ota to ask him about his stay here so far.
“It’s a nice country,” he said through an interpreter from the Japanese embassy, “Everyone’s been very friendly and welcoming. I’ve tried some Icelandic food, too. I have to admit I wasn’t a fan of shark, though.”
Ota said he knew about EVE Online, the MMORPG hosted here in Iceland, and was genuinely impressed with the work the company has done. However, he believes the gaming community in Iceland is “too narrow”.
“In Japan, you can buy games for every possible interest and genre,” Ota said. “There are obviously a lot of great minds in this country. You should maybe consider expanding beyond spaceships and spreadsheets.” Ota believes Icelandic game developers need to expand their vocabulary.
To that end, Ota will be demonstrating his games, Touhou Project, at Café Babalú at 17:00 today. All who show up will get a chance to play these vertically-scrolling shooter games without charge.
While Ota’s games are normally not distributed outside of Japan, he says he hasn’t ruled out shipping games to Iceland. “It’s not outside the realm of possibilities, anyway,” he said in closing.
UPDATE: Happy April Fool’s Day.
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