Tom Franklin: Please tell us about yourself. Where did you grow up? Where do you live? What is your educational and designing background?
Kanare Kato: I was born in the Chubu region of Japan and grew up in Tokyo and Nagoya. I studied literature at university and have never learned any specialized subjects related to game design or visual design.
TF: Did you start playing games as a child or an adult? What games were your favorites, and how did they form your game design aesthetic?
KK: I exclusively played video games as a child, but I lost interest in them quickly after entering high school. My interest in board games is relatively recent, but I can’t remember how it first started (I think I saw something on the Internet).
Initially, I was drawn to the modern art look of Gigamic games such as Quoridor and Quarto. Therefore, my interest in game design is related to visual aesthetics.
TF: Your Board Game Geek designer profile lists 40 games that you have designed. How did you get started designing games? Are all those games available?
KK: After becoming interested in games like the above, I started to do a lot of research on abstract games and began to think that I might be able to create one myself. Right around that time, a well-known Japanese board game information website started accepting applications for a game design contest, so I sent in my game, and it was selected as an honorable mention, even though it was not as good as I would like it to be now. After that, I decided to think of more games, and the result was Saiju, my debut game.
I have designed and published games by myself in a way that I can produce them in very small lots, referring to nestorgames, which published Saiju in the first place. Currently, I have stopped these productions because the price of materials has become too high due to the weak Japanese yen and it is too time-consuming to manufacture each one.
TF: You recently changed your online sales presence. You’re now selling only games by designers other than yourself and using factory production for the cardboard printed boards and pieces. What were the decisions behind this change and when will your games be made available for sale again?
KK: While I was publishing my own games in the manner described above, other designers began to ask me if I could publish their games in the same way. However, the former method was not profitable and time-consuming, and I thought that if I wanted to publish other designers’ games as well, I would not be able to continue using this method for a long time. So I decided to switch to a method where I commission game manufacturers to produce games and sell them while keeping a certain amount of inventory.
I do not intend to stop publishing my own games, and in the future, my games should also be published in the current new format. However, I still have no clear vision of how to handle the games I have published in the past. At the very least, I would like to republish Meridians, the most highly regarded of them, in the new format as well, but other games will depend on people’s demands.
TF: What other interests do you have besides board game design?
KK: I seem to have a hard time doing more than one thing at a time, and since I started designing and publishing board games, I don’t have much time for anything else, but when I do have time, I think I’d like to spend it reading literature, which is my original area of interest.
TF:What is something we haven’t discussed that you’d like us to know about you?
KK:The only thing I would like people to know about me is just that I am the author of my works.
Note that I have recently created a page on my website listing the games I have designed.
For more information about Kanare Kato’s games, check out his website: https://kanare-abstract.com/en.
Add Comment