Strangers on Paper - DevLog #27
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May is finally here! You know, that month in which we first released the first chapter of our first game last year. Yeah, it’s been a whole fucking year. And as such, we thought it would be a good time to sit down, look back and see if we have any learnings worth sharing with you all. We do have some
words, you’ll decide whether they were worth reading or not.
- We were stupid to set a release date
More specifically, to do so that quickly and that carelessly. Confidence can make people do stupid things, and hell, were we confident we could manage it.
“We have a system!”, we’d tell ourselves.
“We have a timeline, we’ve accomplished this before, we’ll do it again!”. But sure, we never factored life, divorces, technical difficulties, economic crisis and a lot of other shit into that. Why should we? We make fun of our past selves for that, but it does keep us up at night from time to time, as we frequently tell each other. Hopefully it won’t anymore once Chapter 2 is finally out but… we know better.
- Comparing Chapter 2 to Chapter 1 is useless
This is mostly from a self-doubt point of view. Putting all our focus into making something as good or better than the first installment would only result in setbacks and frustration. Don’t get us wrong, we do believe you should always aim to improve as an artist and reflect on what’s working and what’s not in what you have created. However, each piece of work or, more precisely in this case,
each chapter of SOP has its own flavor and we will appreciate them for what they are, instead of pitting them against each other and second-guessing every choice.
- We gotta ignore the “REWORK” voice in our heads
That being said, we can’t help but want to go back to the first chapter and make several changes. Improve on some renders, change some parts of the script, develop some scenes further… And it doesn’t stop there. The voice lingers in our head as we work on Chapter 2, and it’s hard to develop something you’re not entirely happy with, and trying to find a balance between your expectations and what you can actually do. But oh well, perfection is definitely not the goal, and we will stay away from choices that may hinder the progress any further.
- Acting as a team is vital when you’re… in a team
Every two months or so, we’ll have a real talk, a meeting that goes on for a bit too long and we’ll go
“damn, I needed that!”. I think that, especially during this past year, it’s become part of our nature to want to take care of
“our thing” individually and then ask for help only when we’ve dug our feet into the mud a little too deep. Things always work better and smoother when we can stay in touch frequently, even if work and life and shit makes it tougher sometimes.
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- A good reminder of why we do this is needed. Quite often
Once Chapter 1 was out, there was this feeling (and truth) and it wasn’t just ours anymore, it was
yours. Every person who was reading and playing it and falling in love or hating it was owning it now, and there was an undeniable pressure at times to match their expectations, to please them. Especially for those who were investing their money into supporting this project, but also for those who had spent time playing, sharing their encouragement, even those who had shared their dislike and a little part of us wanted to prove them wrong. But that was not and has never been why we are making this game. We are making it for us. We are making a story
we like. A game
we enjoy to play. Something we can look at and be proud of, despite others’ perception of it. Sometimes staring at a render of Amy for several minutes in a mostly creepy way will do it. Sometimes it’s about writing an inside joke no one else will get, but will make us smile at that little secret that’s there just for us two. Sometimes it’s going “fuck!” at something the other one has created. And sharing “fuck!”s is quite the encouragement.
On the topic of
pleasing everyone, there’s been moments of self-doubt, and some that made us even more sure of our choices. I think the ones that have us cocking our heads the most are those that compare it directly to other visual novels that are less story-heavy, or longer, or a different flavor. On the one hand, it is natural to see this as a result of SOP being just another AVN in a sea of games that have set specific expectations for players that our game may not match. The question of
“should we be more like other AVNs?” does pop up in our heads quite often. After all, other AVNs are doing way better than us. But then on the other hand, and maybe repeating myself from the last item, the goal was never to make an AVN like every other AVN. So, while the comparison will most likely always be there, we like our odd one for being short, for being different, for having less of this and more of that.
This is when our blood pressure spikes. The idea that people are willing to spend their money into the development of this game is amazing, yet it comes with (again) the pressure of not wanting to let those peeps down. While we do understand we are dealing with consenting adults who
choose to share their support with us, whether it’s every month, just once, or from day one,
and we literally would not still be doing this without you, we really want to make it worth it for you. We dread the idea of uploading another dev log saying
“hey, we’re almost at the finish line, but not quite!”, but that has been our truth as we have been balancing life and SOP and trying to do our best without falling off the tightrope. I guess that’s another way to say thank you to each and every one of you who’s still here, who asks for these rambly dev logs, who leaves a comment that’s a paragraph-long, or even just an emoji. It’s a nice reminder that there are humans like us out there who still have hope to get another date with Becca or Amy (or, as many of you have stated,
both), to hang out with Tony, to roll your eyes at Daniel or smile at the occasional line where he actually gets it right.
