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This May, a project on an online website became a popular topic in the game industry and among gamers.
Daiba: We infiltrated into a sound production studio in the Metropolitan area in Tokyo to reveal it.
Their name is "Team Monken."
They are members in a project to create games on their own without capital.
"Monken" refers to an iron ball that used to be used to dismantle buildings.
The game is to destroy a building in which a kidnapper has barricaded himself by swinging a monken using a crane.
One of the reasons Team Monken has gained attention is their way to gather capital.
They tried to gather 2 million yen through crowdfunding, which gathers capital from individuals online.
The project reached its goal in three weeks although it didn't have clear return for the capital unlike other speculations like stock.
The members aggressively took to PR activities like joining Nico Nico Douga and holding talk events to get support.
"We assumed the money would be for keeping one programmer and paying software licensing fees."
The average age of the four members is 44. What are these members who are active as pros in their own fields asking for to create a game with only 2 million yen?
We asked Mr. Kurokawa, who is in charge of the project.
"A game cannot be created with only 2 million yen. Everybody working in the game industry knows that. But in this case, it's not investment, but support. We hope that something new will come out by asking for support even though there's no return. We think it will be good to create Monken and allow people who watch or play it to modify it or create a different game by using the characters. For that reason, we're using Creative Commons, which means people can use Monken freely, though we will still retain the license. We would be happy if something new is born from this."
Monken's basic business plan is to sell the app on smartphones and tablets.
But sales profits aren't the only goal for this project.