Let's talk about IL2CPP and newer Illusion games (Patreon)

Hi there!

How y'all doing?

A lot of discussion about IL2CPP has been going around of late, and I've been talking about it a fair bit on my Discord, but thought I'd address it real quickly here as well, as not everyone of you are in there.

I'll refrain on commenting at the whole Illusion to ILLGAMES rebrand, other than that I'm really confused by that, seemingly, silly move. I'll continue to refer to them as Illusion as they're seemingly under the same management, doing the same thing anyways.

Now... If you've been keeping track of illusion and their releases, you may know that their previous game, RoomGirl, was something of a flop. Reviews on all fronts were not nice to it, even saw Japanese users openly disappointed about the lack of mods, which I'm not used to.

Yet the launch of the game was... Normal. People were excited, People liked how the game looked and was roaring to get into it. Game released, and there was a resounding "meh", so far so normal, followed quite promptly by what may be considered the death of the game.

Now, HoneyCome is announced, and looks likely to follow RoomGirls lead. People are excited again, and yet again, IL2CPP is being used, which will probably doom the game to the same outcome.

a $70 to 80 game, basically being dead and left behind under a month after release, barely any mods to talk about after about a year. What bloody happened here?

Well, on to IL2CPP. I'm not a computer science class, so I'll keep it simple. When Unity builds a game, there are several options for output. Older illusion games have used Mono, which is super easy to mod, allowing modders to get super clingy with the code, resulting in what we're used to now, full modding suite available just days after release, and a healthy output of new mods all throughout the games lifespan. Now, IL2CPP is... not so easy to get to grips with. It has a vastly higher barrier to entry, and complicates the creation of plugins. At the very least, there is a framework to use, but very few mods to use with it.

(It also does some free optimization from what I can gather, so some chance they're going with that as a dirty easy fix to optimization problems)

Quickly commenting on the big picture here, so need to make a disclaimer.

Most things above are strongly held beliefs of years, where I'm on record, so not thought that would require much in the way of disclaimer, but from here, I should add that I have a foreseeable conflict of interest, as relates to Illusions future success, which I may not disclose fully at this point in time, but know that it is there. Apply the desired amount of salt to my opinions on the future trajectory of this company, applied according to how much you trust me to stay relatively neutral, despite said conflict. At current, my interest is their success, for obvious reasons, but it may be argued that the conflict flips when looking into the future, so keep that in mind.

For most games, this kinda sucks, but hey, the game is still the game. For Illusion games however... this is fatal. They absolutely need the mods for a game to succeed, or they need to massively up their game on the base game side. HoneySelect won't do, base game will not be sufficient. Even Koikatus gameplay just straight up are not sufficient. Remove all mods from any Illusion game, and you're left with a few weeks of fun at most, if you have a high tolerance for tedium.

(adding to that is the nonsense ToS they got going, where they're trying to take ownership of everything made with the game, characters and all, as well as basically trying to outlaw modding)

My guess is that Illusion thinks that they, and they alone, deserve the credit for the success of pretty much all their games past HoneySelect 1 (Disregarding PlayHome, EmotionCreators and RoomGirl, shich all basically failed for the same reason, they failed to grab the imagination of modders), but boy are they in for a rude awakening... If their community turns their back on a game, it fails. Simple as that. Illusion is absolutely dependant on their community, and especially the modders, in order to see any appreciable amount of success in the market. Vanilla Bethesda games have a better time in the open market than Vanilla Illusion, and taken how shallow Bethesda games tend to be in their vanilla form, that is quite amazing in a way.

Now, how does the future look? Illusion is not quick on catching on, as they've proven time and time again, so I do not expect them to make any concessions for modders anytime soon, and they will file HoneyCome as just "inevitable" if it fails and try again ("You know the definition of insanity?"). As such I expect at least their next game to come delivered in the same way, probably their next few games. At which point they will have shaken off their reputation of selling games with great communities attached, and a large selection of mods. This will overall have a heavy negative pressure on the value of their games for years to come, even if they try to course correct. 

Illusion, if you're reading this, course correct without undue delay.

IL2CPP will probably get tooled up eventually for modding, and I hope it does quickly, but I can see no signs of rapid expansion for that, so chances are we're talking years down the line. I am unsure about how wise it is to go with that when you're absolutely dependant on modders and have no official modding tools...

Brace expectations until either Illusion realizes that they need their community, they course correct or... well... other unannounced things happen.

RoomGirl did mark a new generation for Illusion, one that will, at this rate, be a generation of decline, after the previous generation of growth marked by Koikatsu to HoneySelect2. This will be entirely on them. Their rebrand has hurt their reputation, their disregard for their community, further so. And to make sure they're presented in as bad a light as possible, the way they press their ToS, which reads to me as legal nonsense (Not a lawyer, do not use as legal advice)... 

Illusion will likely file this in all the wrong categories, still holding strong that they, and they alone were responsible for the success of Koikatsu and HoneySelect2, so the new games must themselves have been doomed to failure no matter what they do, which is how it looks like they're taking RoomGirl, though I'd kill to see the post mortem for that game.

Time will tell if they manage to pivot in time, or if we're seeing a long term decline. 

I hope they pivot, and soon.

No matter what happens, Illusion is squarely planted in my childhood, so rose tinted glasses are in full force here. I do not wish to see something I associate with my childhood decline, and as such, conflict or no, I do hope they wake up eventually and smell the roses.