Tokyo’s scene is still reliant on its Western expat progenitors.
From gamesindustry.biz: For better or worse, Akihabara isn’t what it used to be. The last remnant of the old maze of tiny stores selling electronics and components, from which the area’s semi-official title of “Electric Town”, clings on to a patch near the station, but it’s clear that it’s on life support, as are the remaining small stores selling videogame, technology or manga-related curiosities. More of them shut every year, often followed by the demolition of the building they inhabited to clear ground for another gleaming tower. The gentrification of an area that was once a thermocline between thriving subcultures and Tokyo’s true underworld marches inexorably forward.
One of the most obvious outcomes of that gentrification is Akihabara UDX, a towering office and conference space that has sprung up alongside a new paved square outside Akihabara Station’s Electric Town exit. It’s here, in a small glass-walled exhibition hall facing out over the second floor walkway, that the inaugural Tokyo Indie Fest was held last weekend, bringing together several dozen indie developers to demonstrate their games on the busy show floor.
Read more at gamesindustry.biz.
