Before we get into today’s topic, you might want to check out last week’s blog post if you haven’t already. There, I talked about the reception of GENBA no Kizuna thus far and the potential takeaways from it, which leads me into what I’d like to discuss next.
Just in case, we will still go into a bit of a quick recap, though, so… let’s get started!
- Player Reaction Recap
As noted last week, a number of players seemed to be disappointed by our second release, because it went into a different direction and had a different vibe compared to our first VN. And while most of them said that they still enjoyed GENBA and that they think it’s a good game, some did state that they liked SHINRAI more and would have preferred seeing something a bit more akin to it again.
Now, that’s a totally fair opinion to have and not really one I’m all that surprised by. In fact, while working on GENBA, I worried about this exact reaction a lot. Because, as I mentioned last time, in many regards, I purposely chose to do the exact opposite of what I did before. So I was well aware that not everyone would be on board with that. After all, in many cases, if you really like something, you want to see more of it. Not an exact copy, of course, but also nothing that’s so different, it might as well be an entirely new thing.
I can tell you, for instance that, if they had gone through with the initial concepts for “Jurassic Park 4“, featuring messed up dinosaur-human hybrid creatures instead of real dinos… well, I certainly would have been very unhappy with that!
Thankfully, it seems as though my creative decisions weren’t quite that controversial, but again, some players felt disappointed and would have liked to see something a little different and that needs to be acknowledged.
- Project Presentation
Now, to some degree, it might be my own fault for not properly setting expectations. From the beginning, I kept referring to GENBA as a spin-off and decided to go with a title that didn’t incorporate the word “SHINRAI”. This was done to distance it a bit from our first VN and thereby make clear that it’s not going to be quite the same.
However, maybe I could have made that even more clear. Or maybe an entirely different approach should have been used. After all, GENBA is very much tied to SHINRAI, bringing in recurring characters, setting up the world some more and clarifying SHINRAI‘s ending by giving more context on it. So I can see why some people may be a bit confused now…
- The “Big Difference”
In my mind, the biggest difference between both projects is that SHINRAI was treated as “mystery first, characters second” and GENBA as “characters first, mystery second”. By that I don’t mean to say that I didn’t care much about providing an engaging murder mystery with GENBA. Quite the contrary, I put an enormous amount of time and thought into planning it out. However, just as the title “GENBA no Kizuna” states, the entire story is more about the bonds between the characters this time around, rather than the death of the victim. So there are a lot of character moments. Each investigator has their own struggles to deal with and helping them is just as important as solving the case. These scenes, particularly those during the first half of Phase 4, are the core of GENBA to me.
When I wrote them, I treated these as the key moments. When Keiichi tries to convince Rei not to give up… that is the essence of this entire project to me. That’s why it’s called “GENBA no Kizuna“: “bonds of the crime scene”.
But maybe, for some people, that’s exactly the part that didn’t land. Maybe they just wanted more focus on the actual murder case and saw all this character stuff as interference? I don’t quite know! A few reviewers stated that GENBA “drags” a bit here and there or that it sometimes got “so boring” that they had to skip text. However, none of them provided any examples of the stuff they did perceive as such.
Well, except for that one negative reviewer who does specifically bring up the aforementioned conversation with Rei as what bored them so much that they decided to drop the game right there. So maybe this aspect of the project wasn’t as clearly advertized as I had thought and so people didn’t really expect to see it to such a degree? Again, until we get more feedback, I won’t really know.
One thing, I do know for sure, though.
- Worries
As I’m working on our next project right now, I once again feel like it’s not going to be quite what people would like to see.
Because, this time around, there’s not even gonna be a murder case to solve. It will once again be more about the characters.
And then there’s some stuff in there I just wanna do for fun.
Now, granted, it’s going to be a much shorter project, so this one shouldn’t take us another eight years to release.
(And let’s be real… this enormous waiting time also probably played heavily into the disappointment. At least some players may have been more accepting if GENBA had released much, much sooner…)
It’s also not like the actual SHINRAI sequel is cancelled. That, I still want to work on and yes, it will be more like Broken Beyond Despair, with Raiko and Co. being trapped in a place again and the murders unfolding around them. It’ll have a darker tone, too.
Furthermore, a lot of the stuff addressed in this “mini project” is actually stuff I wanted to include in the SHINRAI sequel, anyway.
I just felt like it might be better to take it out and turn it into its own little thing for various reasons. Primarily because, with the sequel, I really want to focus on the new characters and the new murder case. Thus, the mini project will deal with the BBD aftermath instead.
However, all of that said, a lot of people might (re-)experience disappointment when they’ll learn that, instead of finally giving them the sequel they want, we first work on something very different yet again. And that’s what worries me a bit.
- Guilt
I obviously don’t want to alienate more of our audience. I’m very grateful for the fanbase we have and it always hurts to see people go or give up on us, because they “don’t really have much hope left to see Shinrai 2 in the next decade” (yes, that’s a direct quote from a former patron).
Because of all that, I even feel kinda guilty as I write the script for what’s next. There are moments when I’m really enjoying myself.
I’m having a blast writing, giggling and laughing to myself or getting emotional over the fates of my characters. But then, all of a sudden, a thought hits: “I wonder if our fans will actually care about this…”
When that happens, I feel like I shouldn’t be doing what I’m doing at that moment and just move on to the actual sequel already.
And this brings me to the title of today’s post: what should I do? That what would be best for our fans and therefore business?
Or that which I really want to do and which would give me personal satisfaction…?
- Personal Satisfaction VS Business
I mean, that’s how it all started. When I wrote SHINRAI, it was only for myself and my best friend. It was never intended to be shared with anyone else. I simply wanted to write a story for fun and provide some entertainment to a person I care about. That was it.
But once we turned this VN dev thing into a business and released the project commercially, things kinda changed.
Now, literally thousands of people have played SHINRAI and many have told us they want to see more. So, already while working on GENBA, I was experiencing a lot of stress and pressure. I was afraid of failure. That maybe SHINRAI was just a fluke. A happy little accident that had somehow worked out, but in reality… I actually really suck at all this.
I was scared of disappointing our fans. A feeling that only grew in intensity the longer development took.
You might remember that, following the release of SHINRAI, for a long time, we would do monthly illustrations. Something I had always thoroughly enjoyed, as it had given me a chance to not only draw my characters in different outfits and situations, but to also try out new things and improve my art skills. But then some people began complaining, telling us to focus more on actual game assets and thereby speed up the development process…
That was the point when I really started to feel guilty about doing things for my personal enjoyment and when VN development began to feel much more like a job – a duty even. Which, of course, does make sense. We’re trying to make money with this, after all!
That’s just the way it is when you go the business route (a topic you may have noticed being addressed through RRP in GENBA.)
- Regrets…?
Now, don’t get me wrong. Do I regret releasing SHINRAI commercially? Of course not! The fact that I did led to one of the best things I have ever experienced in my life: people buying, playing and enjoying something that I have created and craving more!
And if I do have to make money in life, I’d obviously prefer making it through the thing that I am most passionate about. So, in that sense, expanding the business-side of things and making enough money through VNs, so that I could quit my day job and focus purely on my creative endeavors… that would be the dream!
The question just is, what’s the best way to get closer to that? Creating things the fanbase we have now won’t like…? Probably not!
So yeah, maybe I should have worked on Withering Without Hope, rather than GENBA. But then again…
GENBA is something anyone can jump into, even people who haven’t played Broken Beyond Despair (at least that was the idea), while WWH really is only for the people who did play BBD… (just like the mini project now will be).
So are direct sequels really that good of a way to expand a fanbase or do they mainly just help keeping an existing one…?
I mean, in the ideal case scenario, people don’t just like SHINRAI, they like us as developers! Right…?
- Decision
This feels kinda like a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario. I could just not make that mini project I’m so passionate about, but that wouldn’t make me happy. But if I do work on it, pushing off the “real sequel release” even further, then the players might not be happy. And, of course, even if I do say “well, just doing what I want worked out well enough the first time around” and simply choose to follow my heart…
I’m just not the type who can completely blend out criticism and expectations and will therefore still be stressed out!
So, if that’s gonna happen either way… I guess I might as well just do what I want to right now?
And I do want to work on this mini project. In a sense, I even need to. Big murder mysteries like GENBA and SHINRAI require so much time, planning and attention to detail. They’re fun, but also exhausting, at least to me. So I need a bit of a break before I can delve into the next one and I want to work on something else in the meantime. Something that feels fresh and different again.
I don’t know if people will like it. I primarily fear they won’t, so I’m gonna stress out over that a lot in the coming months.
But maybe… I could also be wrong? I dunno. Only a release will tell!
Anyway, that was a lot of rambling. I’m pretty sure that, at this point, you’re getting really curious as to what exactly this mini project even is that’s got me both so passionate and worried. At least I would hope you’re curious about it! But rest assured, I’ll finally start talking more about it soon. Because with this, we have essentially covered everything I wanted to say following the GENBA release.
I might have more thoughts about it in the future, once we have hopefully received more reviews, but until then… I think it’s time to put this topic to rest and fully focus on what’s next!
Of course, if you’re a patron, you already have a bit of an idea about that. But very soon now, I’ll let everyone else in on it as well!
Now, as always, please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care :3