Japanese company「ILLUSION」dies. They are ceasing game development and publishing.

[ragingsimian]

[edit] I was typing when the post above me dropped. Take what I say below as a good bit of clap-trap in comparison to what is more usefull above.
I don't think I'm far off so keeping it

----
This extra hurts for us VR fans who saw how hard Illusion was pushing VR in Japan way early. Their native VR implementations were comparatively lame to the non-VR but they at least had VR implementations very early.

I'm old enough to remember the Western audience begging and pleading Illusion to make sales easier in the West. We promised we'd buy whatever Illusion first dropped in the west even if it was crap. Before steam VR Kanojo was available on

You must be registered to see the links

. I bet most folks these days don't even know (or remember) that site existed.

Did I pirate Illusion games back in the day? Absolutely. I also paid for VR:K, HS:U, and KK because I could afford it and like to keep my promises.

Is rampant piracy the main reason they are going out of business? Unlikely.
But B.S. excuses for piracy do nothing to help.

Not everyone treats piracy as a way to try-before-by. Some people are just freaking greedy and use excuses that don't match what their real actions are. Some honest people are just too tempted and become lazy. Instead of choosing what to buy with limited funds - pirate everything and buy more beer.

If the fault is the wrong direction of their games - well that's what their PAYING customers seemed to want and led them towards with their wallets. Illusion was never hell-bent on some creative vision while ignoring their paying fans. They had a market niche and they worked it.

I'm of the belief that it was indeed the broad economic landscape they operated in that pushed the needle too far into the red.

They've grown lots of experience with mocap, VR, etc. The results might not have fit everyone's tastes but the abilities were practiced and proven. Easy to imagine those human resources being worth more than the company itself can afford.

Lots of game companies fall in a way that screws their developers hard. I don't believe this is the case with Illusion.

Maybe I'm just be hopefull and wishfull but the gang that made this stuff I think will be OK - that's something.

Much love to them and the mod makers who have of their own accord made these games more worth the purchase price.

 

[AeroPlate]

Man bankruptcy jumpscare,will the new miconisomi game be alright? isnt that game developed with Illusion as well?

 

[raze2012]

I'm old enough to remember the Western audience begging and pleading Illusion to make sales easier in the West. We promised we'd buy whatever Illusion first dropped in the west even if it was crap. Before steam VR Kanojo was available on

You must be registered to see the links

.

I guess you'd be old enough to remember why they got scared, over a PR disaster on a game that wasn't even sold in the west.

Can't really blame them when the overseas market is that hostile to something that wasn't even supposed to be seen by them. And this was MySpace era social media where shit didn't blow up every other day. Imagine if that Rapelay stuff happened in the days of Twitter.

But I guess this was inevitable. People always complained how they never put the few games localized on sale but they also fail to realize how much work it takes to make a game like that. An adult 3D game with characer creator customzations, likely on a custom engine because the big 3d engines were very red tape about pornography until they became "free". It's been almost 2 decades or so with the modern 3D pipeline and it's still hard to produce decent 3D assets as an indie/small team. It's expensive AF, which is why pretty much no other adult studio in Japan bothers.

thats terrible.... why is there a labor shortage?

Stuff you've probably heard about for 5 years now. The Japanese population is dwindling, the old workforce is retiring or dying out, and the new workforce isn't large enough to replace that. Add on JP's reluctance on immigration and you literally lack a workforce to support your country.

Add on top of all that that JP's economy has stagnated for 30 years until very recently with the pandemic. There's not much point to invest in the Yen nor incentive to travel to JP for work even if they opened up their borders more.

 

[RunningFurniture]

so is this it? is japanese games dying? porn and all?

 

[whippetmaster]

Unless they change, those studios will mostly die out. I'm talking death by a thousand cuts kind of deal. Here's the major points to consider...

- There's a very low birthrate that cannot keep up with the death rate among adults and the elderly. The adults will either die from overwork or alcoholism and the elderly often pass away without any named heirs.
- A lot of younger Japanese people moved overseas for work and/or education and many never returned to Japan. I know more than a few of those individuals myself here in the USA. There's a few of them I know who are half-Japanese and they've described their treatment as ranging from being ignored to being threatened with murder or worse.
- As far as attracting foreigners to live there, it's among the hardest places in the world to immigrate to. Japan generally ranks among the top 5 of the hardest countries to immigrate to and get citizenship. The vast majority of people who have moved to Japan for work have returned to their home countries and some will refuse to even visit for vacations. I know Mormon missionaries and a few friends who moved there for at least a year or two. Not one of them will move to Japan and many will tell you that working there is an exercise in futility because you're made to feel anonymous or worthless.

So unless a sea change happens in Japanese society and the become more welcoming to foreigners and mixed race individuals then make it so a youth living there doesn't have to feel like they're an anonymous throwaway ghost. Here's a good way for me to make a point - google "Aokigahara Forest" or "Sea of Trees" and you'll find it has a long reputation for people wandering into it to commit suicide. Put that together with all the young people embracing what is called "hikikomori" and you'll see how you literally disappear and mean nothing to anybody, even at work and home. That's gotta change. So it's like they can't bring people there and keep them there. The elderly are dying, adults are committing suicide or embracing a hermit lifestyle and there's literally no birthrate to speak of. And their economy will keep growing, businesses will keep pushing to grow and the only way that can happen right now is to expand in other countries like the USA. Even in my neck of the woods in the high mountain desert, there are businesses that directly deal with Japan like sending them produce like onions and potatoes because there's no production there. That's scary because over time, that will only worsen the trade deficit that's averaging from 1-2 trillion yen PER MONTH. Unless they change dramatically, it doesn't look good for Japan at all.

 

[Meaning Less]

so is this it? is japanese games dying? porn and all?

No.

If anything this will impact western developers more, because they are the ones mainly using illusion engine to make games, and since the engine isn't being updated anymore now they will be fully at the mercy of modders.

 

[Z3r0K00l]

lmfao, they blame it on piracy when they have been producing dogshit for years

 

[Artemissu]

No.

If anything this will impact western developers more, because they are the ones mainly using illusion engine to make games, and since the engine isn't being updated anymore now they will be fully at the mercy of modders.

Modders once again coming to save the day, hoorah

 

[Meaning Less]

Modders once again coming to save the day, hoorah

Hopefully modders will stick to it, at least now they can focus more heavily on 1 or 2 games.

 

[AdventAnyx]

Damn
Well... The thing to fear the most now, is if some western "buisnessman" buys out their license after the bankruptcy and then uses it to sue all the top Patreon projects for easy cash. The Fakku accident 2.0.
That'd end a big part of westen game dev, as Studio stuff is the easiest way to make awesome graphics for one-people devs.

 

[amaranta]

Well, they did everything for this to happen.

 

[kintarodev]

I don't know if it's true or lie.

The Japanese anonymous said.
"I asked my friend who is working at ILLUSION. There was a lot of confusion among the core talented programmers.
It was happened around a development costs, and a serious piracy, and also a lack of human resources.
The most reason is some of them have been head-hunted by other companies."

Actually, there are only 26 employees on ILLUSION. They were not only looking for programmers, but a variety of the job titles, for example a senior management and a recruiter.

You must be registered to see the links

If we choose either a poorly paid and hard work porn company or a well paid non-porn one, we would choose the latter.

I guess this mostly explains it. Nice insight.

 

[Lanytai2010]

Understandable, but sad nonetheless. I still held hope that they could turn things around eventually.
The dream of Artificial Academy 3 is now forever gone...

 

[Asia Argento]

Take all their assets and shit and give it to ScrewThisNoise

Life will be better. Time will stand still and a timeline of peace and prosperity will commence

Damn
Well... The thing to fear the most now, is if some western "buisnessman" buys out their license after the bankruptcy and then uses it to sue all the top Patreon projects for easy cash. The Fakku accident 2.0.
That'd end a big part of westen game dev, as Studio stuff is the easiest way to make awesome graphics for one-people devs.

This. This is deeply concerning indeed.

 

[squiddysquidsquid]

To be honest, I'm surprised they've managed to hang on this long.

The closest Illusion ever came to making a "good" game was Artificial Academy 2 which is how old now, 9 years old? All the animations have been more or less recycled for the last 10+ years...

I played Koikatsu on a whim, and it was just the most miserable unfun grind ever even if I did get to see a version of some of my favorite game characters show up, or Ai Girl a few years ago which was almost kind of interesting, but another complete time/resource grind. While you might be able to make a sort of cute girl or your favorite video game babe or whatever, if I'm hearing the same lines, seeing the same animations, etc, what's the point of buying anything new?

I get that these are just J/O games with either an anime girl or a "Dead or Alive doll"-look girl, and I'm being rough, but at least with a modded copy of the Sims 4 I can have some fun with a sim who tries to sneak a quick one with the TV repair guy and gets knocked up, or if I mod the hell out of a bethesda game, I get not only the challenge of properly ordering the mods, I get some tedious dungeons to break up the monotony with clicking things to death. These options at least has some form of gameplay, or in the sims 4 case emergent gameplay, which I think is the key thing that made Artificial Academy 1/2 fun to watch unfold rather than boring preselected voice doll-fucker "fill the bars up so I like you" stuff that Koikatsu/AI Shoujo/etc were. Just give the game some personality that isn't just warmed over remains of visual novels from 30 years ago now.

 

[darkengeobr]

 

[Schulth]

When I saw what Room Girl was and tried to give it a go I did think what the fuck is this!

They should have either made a HoneySelect 3 and expanded mechanics and gameplay alot and worked on more of the games that people enjoyed. Instead they made shitty Room Girl and doubled down on it.

I know they wont but it would be awesome if they leaked source code for their games so that the modding community can continue.

A sad day to be a H gamer in the shit of absolute shit Ren'Py stuff (how the fuck do people like looking at static renders lmao) illusion was one of the lights.

 

[Marakas]

All they needed to do was mix Artificial Academy 2 and Koikatsu.

 

[essdubbaya]

If anything newer was worth buying perhaps they'd be able to stick around

 

[Totes_Adorbs]

And thus... the world truly has come to an end... We must all look to Hideo Kojima to keep lewdness alive in Japan.