In the time I’ve been at TheGamer, as the site’s only Features Editor based in Asia, I’ve attended a host of different conventions on the continent. The more B2B-focused Gamescom Asia is a relatively tame affair – you’ll usually see a Capcom booth, esports tournaments, a board games section, a dedicated indie game area, and artists selling their wares.
Singapore Comic-Con is a bigger spectacle with headlining influencers (this year’s main draw was Rurusama, who would let you look at her feet under the table for 1000 Singapore Dollars, roughly $700 USD), a gigantic Artist Alley where I spent too much on prints that I had no room for, cosplayers galore, and inexplicably, a booth for the police force.
Tokyo Game Show, one of the biggest shows in the region, is a particularly big draw for players all over the continent. This is where you start to see Asia’s propensity for gacha and fan service games bubble up. The show still has quite a global draw, with exhibitors from all over the world, so it’s not quite as obvious, but once you start noticing it, you can’t stop.
When I say fan service games, I don’t mean in the Marvel wink wink easter egg way, I mean in the 18+ age rating way.
And yet, none of this could have prepared me for Taipei Game Show.
It’s Fan Service Everywhere
As always, I’m not here to yuck anyone’s yum. I have many friends who I love and respect who play fan service games. I generally feel neutral about it – these games exist because there’s a huge market for them, and they make loads of money. I’m not a prude who thinks 18+ games shouldn’t exist, I leave that to the puriteens of TikTok.
That said, there was a lot of it at Taipei Game Show. Not just small booths, either, like at Tokyo Game Show, but gigantic splashy displays. One particularly huge display was onsen-themed, with standees and framed photos of its very voluptuous characters posing in barely-there, physics-defying lingerie.
Another booth, this one for Girls Frontline 2, was perfectly PG on its face. Then someone started doing a gameplay demo displayed on a very large screen, except the demo was just moving the camera around a woman lying on her side and lingering on her feet and butt. I have never in my life seen a game convention openly cater to feet fans, and somehow I doubt it will be the last time.
There was also a booth in the indie game area for a rhythm action game where you “heal souls” by pinching them with your thighs, because why not?
And Yet, At Least These Games Have Motivation
I was pretty surprised at the general booby vibe at the show – enough that I snapped a photo and sent it to TheGamer’s Slack with the message “I’m gagged” – but, again, I don’t feel that strongly about it. Many of these fanservice games are Chinese-developed, so it makes sense that it would be popular among Chinese-speakers in Taipei. It’s whatever.
What did horrify me, however, was one AI-generated game at the show’s Indie House called Abyss. I’d like to tell you what the game plays like, except the game wasn’t actually there, nor was there gameplay footage. The booth did have a screen that displayed what was clearly an AI-generated trailer that looked vaguely medieval fantasy in nature. There was also a vaguely humanoid robot standing by, doing nothing.
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When I spoke to a representative at the booth, he wasn’t able to give me very much information. When I asked what the game was about, he said it was an AI-generated fantasy MMO. When I asked what you could do in it, he said you could generate your own quests. But what’s the game about? I pressed. He wouldn’t give me a straight answer, but he did say, “The tech allowed me to replace all the developers.”
When I asked about the robot, he said that he’d put the AI-generation protocols in it so it could give quests. He was remote controlling it, though. It also wasn’t speaking, which apparently it could do. I’m not sure the robot was functional at all, as I didn’t see it doing anything while I was at the show.
Later, when I walked past the booth, I saw that someone had pulled up a screenshot of the game, presumably of the quest generation. It featured something that looked like a Roman colosseum. The text at the bottom of the screen seemed to be about artificial intelligence, because that’s certainly something that you’d see in a medieval fantasy game. The whole thing was very depressing.
Many of the game’s reviews on Steam call it a “cash grab” and a “scam”.
When I posted a picture I’d snapped of one of these fan service games on Instagram, a friend jokingly replied, “I’m looking forward to your treatise on how this game will usher in world peace”.
I’m not going to say that, but I will say that there’s something beautiful about the fact that we live in a world where people make weird, horny games for people who enjoy them. At the very least, there are people putting genuine love and care into their illustrations of absurdly proportioned women and fine tuning the jiggle physics for the love of the game.
But with AI-generated games, there’s no love of the game. There’s no soul, no craft, no care. As I walked away from the show, I realised that there’s a worse future for games out there, and it’s one where AI shills can proudly set up in indie game spaces, talk openly and proudly about replacing developers, and display absolutely nothing of worth. I’d much rather pay to see feet.
