I’ve made it a habit of kicking off the new year with a post that tries to address what I’m looking at in terms of the coming year, and I’ve used it over the past couple of years to announce some personal projects — both the launch of SNOW Magazine in 2010, and then the closure of the site in 2011. This year I don’t really have anything specific to announce yet, so this is going to be a short list of things that I have on my mind and wishes for 2012 — a state of my union, if you will.

The biggest change I think that I’ve experienced over the past year is that I’ve fully transitioned into working full-time on PechaKucha. My role as Executive Director sees me doing so many interesting things in relation to the PK community and network, and it’s one that I relish — I so enjoy the fact that I’m constantly in contact with people from all over the world who are producing PechaKucha Nights in our 460+ cities. 2012 is going to be an even bigger year for PK, with lots of cool things already in the works, and I can’t wait to share them with you all.

Something that also relates to PK is that I have it in my mind to organize something that would be gaming-related — to quench my thirst for doing something in that world, since it’s been quite a while since my days as a writer for Wired‘s Game|Life and the Arcade Mania book. I’m hoping to team up with some friends on this, and we’ll see how it goes. Expect it in the second half of the year though.

And speaking of Arcade Mania, there may be some developments with that this year, but nothing that I can talk about or promise for now — stay tuned.

On the SNOW Magazine front, when I closed the site I said that it was actually going on “hiatus,” and by that I meant that I would still love do something with that again, but that I just don’t feel like a regularly updated website works. I’d love to maybe do it as an irregular magazine on iPad, but since I want to keep this all indie and not have to depend on anyone (and can’t pay anyone), that means me trying to do it myself, which is a lot of work — the release of Mag+ for singles did give me hope that it might be doable. 

Codex, my music podcast, has been back for a few weeks now, and I look forward to getting back on a regular schedule with it this year, now that I’ve found a setup that works for me (for recording a show live while using Spotify as my music source). Over the next few days (maybe even today), I’ll release two episodes with my favorite music of the past year. And my other obsession, magazines, will continue to be covered over at The Magaziner. I wasn’t able to do a magazine-related event like I did in 2010 (the SNOW Magazine Cafe), but I hope that this year I can produce or participate in some cool new magazine projects.

PauseTalk also continues its run — 2012 will see it celebrate a 6th anniversary — and I have a few PT-related developments in mind as well, but I’d rather have them more concrete before I share them.

This past year has also seen more active — in a physical sense — than ever, both in terms of cycling (with the occasional bike commute to go work at the Klein Dytham architecture office in Ebisu) and with me and my wife’s mountain trekking lifestyle. On the bike front, I’ve slowed down a bit with the cold weather, and also because I’m really hankering to get a regular sized bike (not the foldable BD-1 that I’ve been using). As far as the mountains go, we’ve been adding bits and pieces to our equipment every month (since we can’t afford to spend much), and next up on our want list are sleeping bags and a tent. I also need to post photos from the last two snow treks we did over the past couple of week in Nagano.

The last thing that I’d like to see happen this year (at least for now) is that I would like to try and write some longer pieces, something a bit more thought-out than my regular posts. I don’t quite know what I’d like to write about — and hey, maybe I could try fiction for a change — but it’s something that I certainly have on my wishlist of things I want to do in 2012.

So there you have it, a few reflections as we transition from one year to another — here’s to an amazing 2012!

It’s Sunday night, and although the Tokyo Game Show (TGS) officially kicks off only on Thursday (for the first of two business days, followed by public days over the weekend), the fun stuff — and by this I mean the arrival of friends coming to town for the show, as part of the industry (press, development, and publishing) — has just started. I’m also very much looking forward to the annual 8-4 party on Tuesday night, a big bash organized by Tokyo-based localization company 8-4. It’s always a hell of a lot of fun — with good ol’ Milky (of EGM and now Q Entertainment fame) in charge of the tunes — and brings together most of the people that you’d want to see who are in town for TGS.

And even though I no longer do any regular gaming-related coverage — and it’s been a couple of years now since the release of Arcade Mania — I’m lucky enough that I still get to go on the business days (I need to thank my good friend CheapyD for that), and you can bet that the first thing I’ll do on Thursday when I enter the hall is make a bee line for the Sony booth to try out some of the insane number of PlayStation Vita titles on show.

Here’s a to wonderful week-long celebration of something that is so near and dear to me — GAMING!

Update: And here’s more on what Milky plans to play at the 8-4 party (hint: you’ll be very happy if you like Lumines).

Every month or so, Warren Ellis puts out a post on his site in which he explains where you can find him on the web and elsewhere — sort of a monthly updated FAQ on what he’s up to — and I figure I should do one as well, since I’m sure that someone who has just arrived to my site for the first time might have trouble understanding what exactly I’m up to these days.

First off, this week saw the launch of my latest project, The Magaziner, a new site that will cover the growing push of magazine into the digital world — something I’ve been covering here for a couple of months now, but realized it made more sense to create a proper space for it. It is also accompanied by a Twitter account, which I’m now using for my magazine-related tweets, and has a Facebook fan page too.

Last month I also launched a new weekly music podcast I call Codex. It’s usually me playing a selection of 10 tracks, but I’ll have the occasional themed shows (like the next one), guest episodes (soon), and I’m also going to start adding what I call the Codex Coda, short guest mixes. You can download all previous episodes here and subscribe to an RSS feed — it’s in the iTunes Store too.

Radio OK FRED is the long-running music podcast series I do with Editions OK FRED‘s Yoshi Tsujimura and Audrey Fondecave, and although it’s been on yet another extended break (apologies for that), it still pops up every once in a while, and I’m hoping we’ll be able to make 1 or 2 new episodes this month.

Then there’s PauseTalk, my monthly creative talk event that takes place at Cafe Pause here in Ikebukuro. We’re on a bit of a break this month and the next (due to the holiday slowdown), and so the next edition will take place February 7. If you’ve never been there, it’s a very casual salon-like atmosphere, where a bunch of “creatives” basically get together and discuss topics that affect us, share projects, ask for advice, etc.

SNOW Magazine is the natural extension that was launched at the start of the year for all of the Tokyo/Japan-related art/design/culture coverage I used to do on this blog for many, many years. Although most of the content is provided by me, it does include the occasional guest columns and feature. SNOW also has a presence on Facebook and Twitter.

That means that this place, JeanSnow.net, is again a hub for all of my activities, so don’t come looking for Japan-related news, really. I’m on Twitter as well — where some say I actually tweet too much — and of course Facebook.

On the book side of things, while I’ll remind you that my previous contributions — Arcade Mania and Tokyolife — make for great holiday gifts, next up will be the release early next year of the fifth editions of The Rough Guides to Tokyo and Japan.

And although it doesn’t get updated as much as I’d like, my little gaming corner — simply called GAME — still features a host of games that I like a lot. I’ll try and get back to adding a few each month.

The PLAY series, where I would spin virtual discs at Cafe Pause every once in a while, is also on hiatus, and I think it has pretty much been taken over by Codex. I actually want to occasionally record some live Codex shows from the cafe.

You can also still catch my monthly design column for The Japan Times, “On Design,” which is published on the last Thursday of every month. It focuses on product design, and each one usually has me recommending five new items. I also contributed two items to the Japan Times‘ holiday gift guide piece, which was published today.

And even though I don’t really contribute anything in the written sense, I would say that I’m a “spiritual” contributor to Néojaponisme, David Marx‘s web journal that covers social and cultural aspects of Japan, which explains my editor-at-large title. Although the site has slowed down a bit this year in terms of new content, expect a bunch of great year-end reflections to appear later this month.

I’m also a proud member of Luis Mendo’s Goodfellas Network, and more specifically part of the GOOD Inc. Japan team. If you’re looking for a terrific group of people to work on a magazine-related project (print or digital), then please get in touch.

Last, but CERTAINLY not least, I continue my work as Executive Director of PechaKucha, where my role is mostly behind-the-scenes, but I also provide a public face through the PechaKucha Daily blog, and on Twitter. Local PKN organizers from around the world are the people I mostly deal with, but do feel free to get in touch if you have any questions regarding all things PechaKucha, whether it’s about holding a one-off PK event, starting a regular PKN series in your city, or anything else you may have on your mind. Since the organization is run as a non-profit, sponsorship enquiries and collaborations are also VERY welcome!

So there you have it, and if all of this wasn’t enough, do feel free to email me with any question you may have.

I was happy to see that top shelf pictured at the Junkudo book store in Ikebukuro, bringing together that great little collection of Japanese pop culture books from Kodansha International. I remember that when Arcade Mania came out, because we were the first, it was actually challenging for bookstores to place the book, as it wasn’t obvious where it should go. But with the addition of all those other books that ended up using the same format — Matt Alt and Hiroko Yoda’s Yokai Attack and Ninja Attack, Brian’s Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential, and Patrick W. Galbraith’s The Otaku Encyclopedia — it now makes sense to display them together. I think the next step is the creation of a box set — how great a Christmas gift would that be!

Most people think of me — and with reason — as someone who is tied to the art and design world, and so often don’t really understand why I tweet so much about gaming-related topics, or why I hang out with so many people who work in the gaming industry. It’s no secret that gaming is in fact one of my absolute obsessions, one that has been a part of my life since the very early days of the medium (from the Atari 2600, Intellivision, and Vic-20 of the 70-80s to the very latest consoles, with a lot of coins spent in arcade cabinets throughout). More recently (in 2008), I covered the industry for close to a year as a contributing editor on Wired‘s Game|Life blog, and I also co-authored a book with Kotaku‘s Brian Ashcraft on the world of Japanese game centers called, appropriately enough, Arcade Mania. There’s also my little “Game” site, which admittedly I don’t update as much as I’d like to, but is still a good place to check out games that I’ve really enjoyed.

Throughout this time, I’ve made a lot of good friends on both sides of the industry (on the development/publishing side, as well as on the press side), and these friendships have continued despite my “moving on” (i.e. again, working more in the arts/design side of things, and my involvement with PechaKucha). One of my favorite regular outings are almost weekly lunches I have with CheapyD (the founder of mega gaming deals site Cheap Ass Gamer) and the crew from game localization company 8-4 (John Ricciardi, Mark MacDonald, Hiroko Minamoto et al.), which often includes some of their visiting friends (a lot of EGM/1UP alums). I should also mention that 8-4 are getting ready to launch a new podcast called 8-4 PLAY (it should be up later tonight) for the 1UP network, and I will probably be popping up as a guest occasionally.

But this brings me to what I really wanted to talk about in this post, and that’s this year’s edition of the Tokyo Game Show. As many of you know, I missed last year’s edition because of my spine injury, and so was quite looking forward to it this year, not just for the games, but also to see all of the people who come to Tokyo for the show. This was also the first time in quite a few years that I didn’t have to work during the show (I did get an offer to cover it, but I just had time to go on one day), which made for a much more relaxed and enjoyable experience, with lots of great parties (CheapyD and Weekend Confirmed‘s Garnett Lee’s birthday bash on Saturday, 8-4′s big pre-TGS party on Tuesday, and then last night with Microsoft’s press party, followed by the always amazing industry drink-up at Ootaru in Nakameguro, pictured above and below).

As for the show, I’ll start by saying that it does feel like there were more interesting game announcements than last year (which was pretty lackluster in terms of news), but walking around the show floor you couldn’t help but feel that there were less booths and less people (even if I was there on a business day, which is closed off to the public). I was getting the same reaction from a lot of people, and so this is definitely not just coming from me.

I didn’t play that many games — I’m usually happy just walking around and seeing what’s on offer — but did at least get to try a few. As I’m a rather big fan of racing games, I was quite happy to try out both MotorStorm 3 (or MotorStorm: Apocalypse, as it’s known in the West) and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, and had an absolute blast playing both. One of the games I’ve been looking forward to the most this fall is Fable 3 (I have terrific memories of playing Fable 2), and playing the demo just confirmed what I already expected (i.e. it’s going to be right up my alley).

But the game that really surprised me was El Shaddai — and yes, this game is indeed named after one of the Judaic names used for the “God Almighty.” The visuals are a joy throughout — very stylish and unique, in the same way that games like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus pushed the boundaries of what an action/adventure game can look like — but especially stand out during the 2D side-scrolling sections, with stunning backgrounds that use color and shadow to great effect. This game has suddenly become one of my most anticipated titles for the coming year.

I just posted something about the new book Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential on SNOW Magazine, but wanted to mention it here too. It’s Brian Ashcraft’s follow-up to Arcade Mania, to which I contributed, and I can assure you that fans of AM will absolutely love Confidential too. It’s done in the same style and was edited by Andrew Lee, who had a hand in all of the recent “pop culture” guides from Kodansha International, including AM, The Otaku Encyclopedia, and Matt Alt‘s Yokai Attack and Ninja Attack.

The book is now out everywhere — here are links to Amazon US and Amazon Japan. Oh, and the contributor of the book, Shoko Ueda? That’s Brian’s wife who, you know, was an actual schoolgirl, so you know it’s legit.

I’m still not quite sure why, but for some reason I’ve been invited to guest on next week’s episode of Tokyo-based game developer Grasshopper Manufacture‘s podcast. So expect me to talk to about, yes, games, although I’m sure some design-related talk will happen as well — Grasshopper’s games are quite known for their stylish uniqueness in terms of graphic look. Another link I have with the studio is that I interviewed its founder, Suda 51, for Arcade Mania (for the retro chapter). I believe it will be up next Friday, and I’ll post a link to it when it does.

Rush is a cool new iPhone game based on the terrific Arkedo series of games (especially the third one, Pixel!) that came out on Microsoft’s Indie Games service for the Xbox 360. Why do I bring it up here? Well, the company behind it, Pix’n Love, is also the publisher of the French edition of Arcade Mania, which is pretty damn neat.

Some very good news: Arcade Mania is getting a 3rd print run! Huge thanks to everyone who has picked up the book so far — hoping you’ve enjoyed it — and here’s an invitation to everyone who hasn’t done so yet. The book is available in bookstores, but of course on Amazons worldwide too (Amazon US, Amazon Japan).

What do I do on Friday nights? Well, this last one I decided to build a site from scratch from an idea I had earlier this week (last Saturday night, actually) and the result is now online, and called Game. As I explain in the “About” page, the idea is simply to recommend games — these are not reviews, I will only include games I like — using a format that’s short and to the point. Also, I wanted a look for the site that was at an extreme opposite to what gaming websites usually look like.

Why do this? It’s been just over a year now since Arcade Mania came out, as well as me leaving Wired’s Game|Life blog, and I started missing writing about games. Anyone who follows my Twitter feed will know that I tend to recommend a lot of stuff there, but I wanted to do something that had a bit more permanence.

For now, my plan is to add 2-3 games a week, and they don’t have to be absolute new releases — right now, anything released in 2009 is still fair game I feel. Also, games will cover every platform, so expect flash/browser games, iPhone games, console games, etc.

I hope at least a few people find this useful, and I invite everyone to follow along on the site (and you can of course subscribe to the feed as well).

Matt Alt shares the responses from a 2channel post that asks Japanese gamers what they play when they go to game centers. The last one he highlights is a bit sad (but almost understandable):

Whenever my friends and I go to the game center we basically stand around for a while and leave because there isn’t anything a beginner can just start playing.

I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t mention that for more on the game center scene in Japan, you should definitely pick up a copy of Arcade Mania by Brian Ashcraft and little ol’ me — makes for a great stocking stuffer!