Thank you so much for taking so much time to write THE MOST in depth, and thought provoking comments in this threads existence. These are the posts that drive the improvements we're making. Thank you so much!
First off I want to say everything you stated I agree with totally, and what you have communicated isn't the first time I have heard these criticisms. I want to touch base on a few of your statements and provide our thoughts on them, maybe you will see we are fairly aligned.
Your initial statement about competition, is one where we have made significant changes internally. Prior our vision was just like yours, "show me who else has done this!". The typical response was to move to another issue, and we would feel vindicated. But that isn't the right attitude at all, sure we cornered the DC smut niche, but that doesn't mean we look in the mirror and jerk off. We got lucky, plain in simple, and if we got lucky so could anyone else. We need to iterate, and in my opinion we have failed on that.
I want to touch on your comments regarding the switch to Ren'py and how it was late. I agree that the switch probably could have happened sooner. But we officially started our Ren'py rebuild in late 2020, and had Henshin on payroll in early 2021. So you're exactly right about when the Ren'py rebuild was taking place. As for moving sooner, Ren'py only became a conversation point in 2020-2021 and that is when we started. Our eyes were on Unity, until they changed CEO's.
I want to add some dialogue to your stand alone comments. You're one of the few people who understand where we wanted to go with the stand alones. In fact the concept of stand alones came from a comment in this very thread, and you highlight that with your comments on Themyscira feeling like a whole different game. I wanted to reach more users, and make sure Android users were able to access new content as well. Stand alones seemed like a brilliant way to address that content. What wasn't ever considered was your perspective, and how the "sandbox" feel doesn't carry over. So that brings us to another comment from this thread that made me re-ask a question to Henshin that hadn't been asked in two years "How much work to convert the Android build to PC". The results are clear with the direction change.
I want to say we agree about the execution part of your comments. To execute you need a plan, and not just writing on a napkin, you need a comprehensive plan. This was the aspect of SU development that was removed due to time constraints in the 2 month window, and frankly we had no process for planning. Now we have spent more time than ever with planning, brainstorming, and discussing as this cycle moves forward. I can tell you from what I see internally the differences are massive.
Thanks so much for giving me the opportunity to talk with a level headed, thought provoking post. I hope to only encourage more of these types of posts in the future, as I have documented many of your ideas.
*I forgot to mention BoB2: It should never have been announced the way it was, that was an internal mistake. I'm still pissed that fucking image was released because of the crates of ammo it provided. I wanted to create a plan of how to address questions, and show we were working towards it. I woke up to that post. Sharing an image with "ideas" and a fucking date was retarded.
I'm glad that my post got the intended reception! I wouldn't have written my post and kept playing this game over 8 years if I didn't want it to succeed. I don't think I was totally successful in keeping a lid on takes related to my personal tastes, but I wanted to try and engage on a meta level about the production of the game itself and offer what I hoped would be some cogent thoughts and insights.
It was not my intention to imply that you guys were resting on your laurels, so I apologize if you got that impression! The mere fact that we are actually having this conversation, in this tone, is a sign that the team at GSG is looking to the future and trying to make the best possible game it can. Having read those 3 posts from your Patreon and seeing the continued interactions in the thread just confirms that impression.
I'm pleased to see that my estimate of where you should have gone in 2021 or so was closer to reality than I realized. To expand on a point that I had left on the cutting room floor last night, a sort of sub-frustration with the game's use of Fungus was that GSG was rolling out those Ren'Py standalone builds for Gotham and Themyscira but didn't seem to want to touch the base game. And granted, using those modules to respond to both the needs of Android users while also putting new content into Ren'Py for later integration with a rebuild makes total sense from a development perspective. It's just that the plans to ditch Unity for Ren'Py as a whole never filtered out here, it seems. There may be Discord or Patreon discussion of it that I just never looked for.
So, on the subject of the standalone concept: I'm not a fan. That's just my opinion, man. And here's the thing, as I mentioned in the previous post I think your elevator pitches for both Gotham and Themyscira are great. But even having Themyscira being so different shouldn't be an issue. Nanda Parbat, Kasnia, and Almerac have very different vibes from the base SU setting. It's the fact that Gotham and Themyscira have so little connective tissue with the base game that I don't like. The previous events felt like they were trying to serve a bigger narrative (Prison, Yacht I & II) or let you do character spotlights outside of the rather monotonous cells (Kasnia, Nanda Parbat, Almerac). Sometimes they did both, and sometimes they did those things really well.
Some members of the old roster do show up in Gotham and Themyscira, but those characters still come off as narratively frozen and they aren't big players in advancing the narrative of the new events themselves. It's a hard needle to thread because GSG has embraced a development path to try and get away from the repetitive cells, but the decision to develop in a way that benefits the Android side of the userbase has costs for other aspects of the game. I'm not going to pretend I have easy solutions or perfect suggestions, but it is feedback that I'm hoping will stick in the back of GSG's heads.
If the new release cycle you'll be able to do comprehensive planning and consideration of what you're making, that sounds great! But even with that, there is always that possibility that the creative decisions GSG takes don't go where I personally want SU to go. That's okay. I really want to focus on something you mentioned earlier in your post, something which I think is an issue not just for SU but also for the H-Game scene more generally:
"We need to iterate, and in my opinion we have failed on that."
Working with Fungus was probably not the best environment for iteration with how problematic it could be. But as you are currently rebuilding the game, I have to ask a question:
"Are you guys actually iterating?" Are there characters who had a rushed or uninspired implentation that you've always wanted to go back to and work on a bit more? Is there a costume idea that has been sitting around somewhere, drawn or in a dream, that a better code environment would make easy to implement? Are there monotonous mechanics that you think could be streamlined or balanced/implemented better now that changing one thing (hopefully) won't break everything? Transitioning to Ren'Py is a rare opportunity for rebirth. Unlike SU Unity, which grew from nothing into
Something (I'll see myself out soon now that I've made that pun, I promise), SU Ren'Py has all of the assets, written dialogue, and beyond in front of you. I hope you're seizing this opportunity to do a little tinkering and not just planning to release a 1-for-1 reproduction of SU Unity.
(As for BoB2: I'm not enraged by it like other users are, and I'm glad that at the end, it's considered a (painful) learning experience. This is still something of a hobbyist industry and people dream big. As I'm sure you remember, posts on 4chan with less supporting material behind them used to get ridiculous levels of hype. And if you ever do put BoB2 out, I know I'll give it a play.)
fix it? Haven't saved in 2 hours
