In the previous two postmortem posts, I’ve already discussed a number of reasons as to why the development of GENBA no Kizuna has taken so unexpectedly long. The biggest one behind it, however, I have yet to discuss. That’s what today’s blog post will be about, so it’s recommended that you check out Part I and Part II first, if you haven’t already!
Now, this reason can be summed up in a single, very simple word, but there are multiple aspects to it, which I want to delve a bit deeper into, so… here we go!
- Time
First of all, you have to consider that, while I was working on SHINRAI, I was still in university. I was in my last few years, in fact, and only had a handful of courses left to attend. Paired with the fact that semester breaks are pretty lengthy (about two months per semester, meaning four months a year), I had quite a bit more free time back then, which I could dedicate to VN development.
But that changed after my graduation… particularly because I was suddenly pierced by a heart-shaped arrow soon after!
- Love
That’s right, I kinda… fell deeply in love with someone. A fellow VN dev who I had talked to since 2015. We ended up becoming a couple and, of course, that changed a lot of things. As you may expect, she simply became a higher priority to me than my VN projects. We started spending more and more time together, I wanted to help her with her own projects whichever way I could and, after a number of real life meet-ups (she lived in another European country), we also started planning the next steps of moving together and, eventually, getting married.
Those obviously aren’t minor things you just do on the side. They are major milestones in life that required a lot of planning, preparation and hard work, even more so because of the distance between us. Thus, most of my time and effort was invested into these endeavors from that point onward. After all, I wanted nothing more than to be with her and to make all our dreams a reality.
And naturally, that also required some cash.
- Day Job
For the first time in my life, I got an actual job. I became a translator at a software company where I’m currently still employed (although I’m not sure for how much longer, as I was already informed that I will eventually be replaced by AI, ahahah…).
By now, I’m spending most of the time working in home office, but back then, in the first few years, I not only had the working hours deducted from my day, but also about 1 1/2 hours of travel time to get to work and come back home. In other words, my dev time was significantly reduced compared to my university days. And while it was kinda unfortunate, I obviously didn’t mind, because it was all for an amazing cause. In fact, that period was by far the happiest and most adventurous of my life and when I felt the most fulfilled.
We faced a myriad of obstacles and struggles, but ultimately, we prevailed and managed to make everything work out. So, from late 2019 onward, we finally lived together as a married couple. Which, of course, brought with it many new tasks and responsibilities, so VN development still had to be relegated to being a side thing.
- Depression
This is something, I really don’t want to get too deeply into, due to the personal nature of matters, so I’ll keep this rather brief, but…
In June of 2021, things sadly took a rather unexpected turn when my wife suddenly decided to separate from me. As a result, I kinda fell into a deep depression and even had to go to therapy for a while. As you can probably imagine, that didn’t really help all that much in getting GENBA done any quicker.
At least at first. Because, eventually, I started to retreat further and further into VN development again. Getting absorbed in my world and spending time with my characters was the only way for me that really worked in coping with the situation and directing my mind away from the sad and painful thoughts. And so, from that point onward, development speed started to pick up again.
Remember how I mentioned in Part I that “the bigger question here isn’t why GENBA as a whole took eight years, but rather: why did its first chapter take 5 to complete“…? Well, now you know. And unfortunately, the reason for my sudden increase in productivity was one I could have very well passed on…
- Conclusion
Anyway, I really don’t want to say any more than that, but I hope that, after these three rather lengthy explanation posts, you can understand a little better why our second project took so much longer to finish than the first. There are some other reasons, as Natsu also faced her own struggles and difficulties throughout these years and there were other issues within my family that required much attention and dedication. I sadly lost both my grandparents during the last few years as well, which you may be able to tell had an impact on GENBA. A lot of my personal experiences have bled into the script as I was working on it, in fact.
When I was doing the final beta-tests, I was actually surprised myself by how much of myself had ended up being reflected by the characters and story. It almost felt as though I saw my entire life for the past eight years summed up.
While working on GENBA, I experienced both the happiest and most fun, as well as the saddest and most painful times of my life so far. It was quite an emotional rollercoaster and while it has definitely affected my work, I’m really not sure if it did for the better or for the worse. But either way… this journey is now finally complete and I’m proud of myself for having seen it through at least, even though there were so many times when I honestly just wanted to give up on everything.
Now, I have reached a point where I’m excited again to begin the next journey. And while it will undoubtedly come with its own challenges and difficulties, and there is no way of telling what shape they may take, I will do everything that I can to release the next project as well… and hopefully in a significantly shorter time frame than the last!
But with this, I guess we can wrap up this particular topic. Well, kinda. There is actually one other big reason that played into the long development time. A personal flaw of mine that often provided me with crippling anxiety and made things harder than they really should have been. But I think that will be something I’ll address when I’ll get to the next topic I’d like to discuss: GENBA‘s reception thus far and the conclusions I have drawn from it.
However, until then, I wish you a fun yet spooky remainder of October! Please enjoy yourselves and, as always, take care ^w^
