Weekly Update (+ a little bit of a heart-to-heart thingy?) (Patreon)

Hiya! I'm finally back with your trusty weekly update!

FANBOOK PROGRESS

This week has been taking care of the release issue and taking care of fanbook content. I'm still at the audition guide part... This book is gonna be hella long... >_<

Anyway, here's the lineart of the fanbook content! 

Artist is taking a Japanese language test, so art progress is considerably slower, but it will still get done (I'm so happy to have a reliable artist like her, and will try to keep her as long as possible... x"D)

WHAT HAS BEEN HAPPENING AFTER RELEASE?

I mentioned before feeling incredibly tired and stressed after release... Well, what happened that caused me to feel like this? I'm not 100% sure, but I do have my suspicions.

1) The game is too personal

I've been doing mostly everything by myself. It's not exaggerated that I've done 90% of the work myself. Therefore, this game is a very personal thing. Any attacks / harms inflicted to the game feels like a personal attack, which causes even the slightest issue to be very stressful. Like, if people say 'wow, the game sucks', my mind translates it to mean 'wow, you suck'. And that kinda sucks. When I released the game, it feels like I put myself in a crowd of people, waiting for people to criticize you.

2) Feeling of doubt?

I really hate to be ranting, but I can't help but feel like my hard work for almost three years doesn't amount to anything. If you were to ask me two years ago or so, I was so sure I wanted to do this for a living. Now? I'm not so sure anymore. Developing a game is a very taxing thing by itself, but when you take into account the mental health issue and other issues (hate mails, personal attack, piracy issues), it becomes even more taxing and I start to think, "is doing all this even worth it?". 

I can't even tell my friends what I've been working on because LGBT relationship is still considered such a taboo in my country (it's a stupidly close-minded country). Thankfully, my parents are both pretty open-minded, though they're kinda objecting me doing this for a whole different issue (me overworking, lacking social circle, etc)

3) Feeling kinda betrayed?

The game was barely released for a week when someone - a former patron at that - purposely "donated" the game to a large piracy site. More than anything, I just feel betrayed. Like, if you want to share the game to your friends, just keep it to your small circle? Why purposely share it to a large piracy site that is hard to take-down? Do you want to make me fail that much? Do you want to get me outside this industry that much? Don't you know that this industry is niche enough that it is hard to even sell four-digit-copies? Do you know how much games cost to make? *end rant* (sorry for ranting ~_~)

THE POSITIVE SIDES...

The above text has been extremely negative, but there are some positive moments after I released the game too. 

1) Some players do love the game

There ARE people who give positive feedback about the game (and it's not a small amount either!), saying the game is addicting, that they love the characters so much, and thank me for making the game. When I see the comments, I think to myself, "Well, maybe it is worth it, after all?" (I seriously have to compile all those feedback to a scrapbook or so and take a look at it every time I get down xD)

2) It is fun to finally be able to make new games

Honestly, I was kinda fed up with Seiyuu Danshi (you probably will too, if you have been working on the same thing for nearly three years like me x"D). I'm glad I can now at least start tinkering around with new ideas without feeling any guilt (I did feel guilty whenever I was working on my side projects... because I feel like I had to finish Seiyuu Danshi first.)

WHAT IS NEXT?

1) Working on new games, but gotta be careful with the cost...

I'm excited to tinker with new gameplay mechanism. If you saw my teaser image, you'll probably see that I'm looking to make a survival game. It is kinda inspired by Lost in Blue (an old DS game...), but considerably easier (that game was soo hard!) plus with naked romance-able characters, and another variable which is lust, which controls the 18+ scenes to be obtained. 

I'm still in the middle of making the GDD (though it is not that detailed) for the game, but I'll let you guys know again later once everything is fixed. 

The office internship game, which I teased about several months before would probably be scrapped for now. That art style - even though I find it to look much better than mine - cost a lot more than the current anime art style. Now that I know the game would probably not sell that much (piracy ahoy), I've gotta be a lot more careful with the art cost. If I go with the anime art style, I can also work on some of the artwork myself to save additional cost. I might revisit the game later, though, once my income is a lot more stable? (well, if that can ever happen in the future... fingers crossed?)

2) Instead of caring too much about the pirates, I've decided to focus on paying players instead =)

I'll probably start making 1 free additional episode of Seiyuu Danshi per month / per two months, with the theme decided by a polling for Patreon... What do you guys think of such a thing? Will you be interested of such a thing or is it better if I just concentrate on my new games instead?

3) No more overworking myself, and to find another hobby aside from game making!

The unhealthy thing about making games as a career... is probably the fact that your life consists of purely game-making. That's also the reason why I take any criticism / attack on the game as a personal attack. So yeah, I'm probably gonna start taking up another hobby... for my own sanity.

4) Will I keep working on games full-time? 

I'll probably still work on games full-time... Well, for now at least. For how long is still undecided. I guess the current me is just not that optimist anymore of my future in game development compared to the two-years-ago me.

Well, that's it for this lengthy rant! See ya next week!