Japanmanship is dead. Long live Japanmanship!

If the weekly StatCounter reports that still get sent to my email inbox, and are promptly ignored by myself, are anything to go by Japanmanship still seems to be getting some traffic. As you may have noticed, though, I've done extremely little to it over the last year orso.

The fact is, well, the blog is dead. Sorry. I simply don't have the time or inclination to keep it up anymore, just 1 post short of the 300 mark. And trust me, this has nothing to do with me being lazy or disinterested; I simply don't have the time anymore to keep it up, and since starting for myself I have very little of interest to write about concerning the subjects this blog used to cover. I know, I know, I killed it before, only to resurrect it within a year, but this time, I'm afraid, this is it.

This doesn't mean, of course, that I've completely given up on dispensing spurious advice about Japan entirely. I'm still writing the occasional article here and there, and I have been thinking about turning the information covered in this blog into some kind of book or e-book manual, but that is a lot of work, so don't hold your breath!

As covered in a recent Gamasutra piece, I have crawled out from under my rock of anonymity since putting my money where my mouth is and starting an independent dev company with two like-minded expats in Tokyo. The company is called Score Studios, for various clever reasons, and it has a website here: http://score-studios.jp/

I don't think it'd be too much to ask for any semi-regular reader of this blog to buy one of our games, like Flock It! as a show of support, for all the amazing and witty insights I've been providing on this blog for free for so long! Yeah, I know, I wrote it for entirely selfish reasons over the years, but that doesn't mean I can't guilt a few of you into parting with some shinola, does it now?

Though it covers more the pitfalls and pleasures of game development on a small scale, the Score Studios website does have its own blog, which can be found here. For news, either follow the news page or our company Twitter feed. For insights into what I'm having for lunch every day and other nonsense, there is of course my very own Twitter account, and those of my colleagues who go by the on-line handles Beatwho and Hamouras. You can find out more about us on our aptly named "about us" page.

That, as they say, is that. This blog has been good to me over the years. It has provided some sanity and, I have been told, has helped the occasional hopeful to make up his or her mind about working in Japan. With so many more foreigners working in game development in Japan compared to even a few years ago I am confident some other smart-arse will at some point take of the reigns and provide insider insight, and maybe help future expats on their quest for information. I have also been fortunate to meet a few readers, as well as being in touch with some interesting characters who have graciously let me write for real, actual magazines and what have you. I hope it has been good for you too, or if you're new to this blog, will provide at least a few hours worth of distraction. I don't know what Google's policy is on dead blogs, but I'll leave it up as long as it's allowed and maybe, just maybe, in the future, write that 300th post to announce the Japanmanship book if I ever get my act together enough or if the Earth slows down drastically so as to cram a few more hours into each day. Whichever happens first (though we're talking cosmic timeframes either way).

Your humble servant,

"JC"