ryunocore

composer, audio engineer, writer and developer https://soundcloud.com/ryunocore signed to Attack the Music

[ryunocore]

Woke up to find out I got suspended indefinitely from Upwork for not getting enough clients per job proposal, on a freelancer website full of...

Freelancing on Upwork? They may suspend you over clients not following through now. 

[ryunocore]

Why the “EVNs are garbage” meme won’t just die on its own, and how you can help kill it.

If you like anime and can use the internet, you probably heard about Visual Novels at this point. If you’re familiar with those, you probably know that short of a few titles, the ones produced in the West are not regarded with the same care as their Japanese counterparts.

That was a huge understatement, by the way. It is not uncommon for a developer to have a tremendously negative response when announcing a project even on communities dedicated to the appreciation and consumption of VNs. Expletives are thrown around as soon as the word “English” shows up without being immediately followed by “Translated”. But if downvotes on Reddit weren’t bad enough, a more common alternative is worse from a marketing point of view: being completely ignored.

After years watching the same thing happen over and over, I came up with a two-step hypothesis on why the stigma remains in spite of some very successful individual projects we managed to get over the years in our camp. We all wish it was just a meme we could shrug off, but  realistically, the self-depreciating attitude is in fact layered and is probably not going away without active effort. Here are the two main reasons:

History does not get rewritten over night, and preferences are even hard to change: the public opinion of a lot of EVNs is that they are, in fact, low-effort, unfinished, unpolished messes made trying to emulate JVNs to a T, but not bringing a lot to the table regarding things players actually want, thanks to people being biased against local projects versus “muh glorious Nippon” and also the fact they're so easy to produce that dozens of cheap products do populate the market and lead to a similar stigma people have against Unity games being just buggy physics tests or Android games being all Flappy Bird clones. Plain and simple guilt by association, a direct result of the early roots of EVNs, indie/amateur projects made by fans, not stacking up to the state of the Japanese industry at the time, with a literal decade on their belts by the time Ren’Py, the most accessible tool for development of Visual Novels in the West, got released. Now, this isn’t a phenomenon exclusive to EVNs; western webcomics and web novels inspired by manga are largely shunned by many, and there is much surprise when a foreign author is published by a Japanese company to this day in spite of some successful cases such as No Game No Life, or the South-Korean artist Boichi. However one wants to look at it, there is an inherent bias in western anime culture fans towards Japanese products that pushes away all others. 

Other developers: in order to not be associated with what many consider to be low quality products, many devs attempt to stand out. Unfortunately, the natural pendulum reaction to this constant push towards a perceived standard of quality in less than amicable ways, a.k.a. "my game is not like these other games, it's made with passion and not just this or that aspect for easy sales", which sure, is just a variant of "fake it till you make it" but does lead to a heavily competitive environment masked by niceties on a surface level. It should not be unexpected that toxic practices will take place in anything involving people and potential profits, but jealously stemming from comparison between userbase and financial rewards over genres leads to a tribal division among people who are, for all intents and purposes, on the same boat. Out of bitterness, it becomes easy to write off projects that pander to the public’s libido and end up being widely more successful than the average mystery thriller as low-hanging fruit grabbers... and they can be. The problematic aspect of this is assuming and perpetuating the idea all projects of a subgenre are by default worth less than what you consider to be “genuinely good”.

Basically, what I mean is: the whole perception that devs have of what is a valid effort in EVNs is our half of the problem. We can’t single-handedly fix years of conditioning on the public, there’s no one project that can change the scene on its own. You can’t convince other devs to care about the scene while (sometimes indirectly) attacking projects that are successful with backhanded compliments. You can’t encourage people to care for a scene if your marketing strategy relies on distancing yourself from it. The joke won't go away because it takes a lot of active effort to realize and accept that while popularity isn't a direct quantitative for quality, pandering to the audience does not make a project inferior regardless of how mad one gets at their attempt at a kamige not making anywhere near as much money and that in itself also does not mean you have a worse project.

However, this is where resentment starts for a lot of people. Those tend to be the ones who feel the need to prove themselves as not that kind of project as if not appealing to a huge segment of the population is a selling point or something similar. If your goal is money, yes, there are better ways to appeal more to a market than other approaches because statistically there are more people interested in anime girls with large bosoms than angsty boys who carry an ancient evil in their left eye. And sure, ideally every game would get funded on Kickstarter or get good sales.

But the truth is, there is nothing stopping you from doing either or both projects but yourself. And while one userbase might have a bigger number of interested people than the other, success comes from people taking a chance on your specific project with their time or hard-earned money, not just on a genre. Your project will need to speak for itself, and whether you use an innovative gimmick or eye-catching art, that should be enough. This cycle of putting others down based on their choices and wondering why the public perception stays the same and devs don’t seem to give out genuine feedback based on their experiences is a major issue that needs to be remedied.

There is no one true genre. There is nothing wrong with making fanservice-y games. There is nothing inherently good about making a serious game either. Nothing is a badge of honor. Whatever you do, it’s just entertainment. If the public doesn’t respond to your project, it is not another dev’s fault. And lastly, eroge does not need to be more than “just eroge” to be valid as a form of entertainment.

tl;dr weebs will hate your stuff regardless because you’re not Japanese, stop trying to change their minds and give them time to grow out of it; celebrate your features without comparing to other projects if you want a better scene and pray to God everyone else will too or the scene won’t progress even if we get more successful projects.

[trueyomic]

When It Hits the Fan Kickstarter and Geek'd Con Post-Mortem

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/trueyomic/when-it-hits-the-fan

The When It Hits the Fan Kickstarter seemed to have many things going for it:  Well organized information, a gameplay trailer, even a demo, something many game Kickstarters lack.  So what went wrong?

These are just my opinions, so give your own opinions at the bottom for others to also take into consideration along with this article of how I think my Kickstarter project failed.

1. Uniqueness

I will be the first to admit that When It Hits the Fan is not a very original concept. Top-down shooters with zombies are nothing new.  That alone could have been a main contributing factor to the Kickstarter’s failure.

I thought I had something unique to offer through the arcade machine, but a mixture of possible overpricing through not enough research and the machine costing too much to produce combined to turn off most who would be otherwise interested in a machine.  That, and it’s difficult to sell an arcade machine for a game that’s not complete yet.

Lesson 1:  Have something unique to market.  It’s no guarantee, but it helps.

2. Demographics

According to google analytics almost all of the people who visited the Kickstarter were primarily 13-17 males and secondly 18-32 males.  For the former case, most 13-17 year-olds don’t have access to credit cards (and rightly so) so they were out as far as being donators to a crowdfunding project.  It would have been better for this group to have shown it off completed as they DO have access to physical steam cards, paid with cash as I did with World of Warcraft game time cards when I was that age.

The second group I had more of a chance to talk with at the convention.  Most of them seemed to have fun with the demo and proclaimed interest in old school games that were similar to those played in their childhood, but many did not follow up with a pledge, with a few (gracious) exceptions.

Most people who said they would support it, said they would do so during a Steam sale.  This is common nowadays, and I can’t blame them since I’ve fallen into the same trap myself.  Having a huge backlog I haven’t even gotten to, it’s common for me to wait for a game to be on sale before buying it, just to add it to my to-play list.

Lesson 2:  Although money isn’t the primary purpose of making games for most indies, it takes money to make them sometimes.  If you want to earn the money to make them, make sure the target audience is willing or able to pay.

3. Marketing

Having no prior experience marketing, I tried venturing into this solo with nothing but the advice of those who have done this sort of thing previously.  While their advice was invaluable for the success I did have, perhaps I should have hired someone to promote for me while I worked on other things like improving the game.  Hiring a trailer-maker could have also been useful as I did get some complaints that the alpha gameplay trailer didn’t stand out enough.

Lesson 3:  If you don’t have the experience, it is sometimes better to let someone else handle it.

4. Exposure and Luck

Some Kickstarters just get lucky with articles from big names like Rock, Paper, Shotgun or Destructoid, but When It Hits the Fan had no such luck with a total of 4 articles from smaller websites.  While grateful for any attention at all from those otherwise awesome niche sites, it would have been a great boon to grab the attention of bigger sites with more views.

Same goes for Youtubers and twitch streamers.  I did get 3 or so youtubers’ attentions and a Twitch streamer, but in both cases the audiences were too small to have an impact on the Kickstarter.  The playthroughs however were valuable in other ways such as the commentary and opinions expressed during the streams.

That being said, I want to give a huge thanks to all of my local Bossier / Shreveport, LA supporters.  A vast majority of my donations came from locals, even before the local convention.  All of this is supported by analytical data from Google and Kickstarter.  Don’t discount your local community nor Facebook (also where most referrals that paid came from).

Lesson 4:  Be incredibly lucky or make the necessary connections you need before crowdfunding.

5. Geek’d Con Convention and Expectations

Towards the end of the campaign, the Kickstarter was nowhere near where it should have been to finish, but I held out hope that the convention would open up new doors when the players got their hands on the actual game.  These expectations were assumed in error.

1000 flyers were handed out during the convention, and through those I received six $10 donations through the Kickstarter.  Although I am grateful for each of those donations, my last hope for the Kickstarter was gone.

The convention did however provide very useful feedback and information through the hundreds of conversations I had those days.  Through many suggestions and even quiet playthroughs from con-goers, I watched and gathered data on how they were playing, how often they were dying to what, what enemies and traps they were having trouble with, and more.  From that, I have been able to determine what needs to be tuned in-game to provide maximum enjoyment while also providing appropriate difficulty for both casual and hardcore gamers.

Lesson 5:  Conventions are not for selling your game.  Conventions are for getting the word out, gathering opinions, and gameplay analytics.

In Conclusion:

I have learned a lot from this Kickstarter.  "Every failure is a learning experience,“ so they say.  In the future, if I decide take this sort of crowdfunding adventure again, I won’t be doing it alone.  I’ll be taking all of what I learned from this project with me to improve how I present my games in the future.

And while I haven’t been able to raise all the funds I need, getting to hang out with fans while they played my game, watching let’s plays of my game, and networking around has been absolutely worth the experience.

And if anyone wants to continue to support When It Hits the Fan and future games, please consider transferring your donation over to the new Patreon site:  https://www.patreon.com/heartfeltgames

Thank you all for your support from the bottom of my heart!  Hope to see you all again when the game is finished! Bonus section - Articles and Let’s Plays from during the campaign: Anomulus0:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjW6QlC6xf0 (part 1) Anomulus0:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhgSSB5t5wM (part 2) Jupiter_Hadley:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEE4kgVG2_0 Port City Games Interview:  https://twitter.com/PortCityGames/status/767538885740130304

http://www.oneangrygamer.net/2016/08/when-it-hits-the-fan-offers-classic-top-down-arcade-action/8691/ http://www.alteredconfusion.com/home/2016/8/3/nostalgia-is-sure-to-set-in-when-it-hits-the-fan.html http://linuxgamenews.com/post/148555352158/when-it-hits-the-fan-arcade-action-on-kickstarter#_=_ https://www.bluesnews.com (August 1st archive - no direct links)

Special thanks to: @ryunocore for advice given and music made so far. Cryptic Hybrid:  Who intended to have a let’s play, but instead helped me fix a crashing bug he was experiencing.

[trueyomic]

When It Hits the Fan

A fast paced action arcade top-down shooter that calls back to 32-bit arcade and console games.

Kickstarter and Greenlight campaigns are now live for When It Hits the Fan!  Help us raise $3,000 to finish up the music (by @ryunocore) and art!

All reblogs GREATLY appreciated as well as Greenlight votes!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/trueyomic/when-it-hits-the-fan

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=656196168

[ryunocore]

https://soundcloud.com/ryunocore/spaceman-sparkles-3d-ost-crossfade

[ryunocore]

chaser (forthcoming On Frequency Blitz 4)

Forthcoming On Frequency Blitz 4: http://shop.attackthemusic.com/album/frequency-blitz-4 @attackthemusic

Are you ready to chase?

[ryunocore]

https://soundcloud.com/ryunocore/ryuno-chaser-forthcoming-on-frequency-blitz-4

[ryunocore]

https://soundcloud.com/ryunocore/cloudstepping-featured-on-capcoms-crossxbeats

[ryunocore]

https://soundcloud.com/ryunocore/cat-souls-main-theme

[ryunocore]

Megumi EP is out: it's not The Longing of Shiina Ryo volume 3, but it's close.

[ryunocore]

Countach [Korg Poly-800 Demo]

Did a quick test after reading Korg Poly-800's manual. Besides drums, everything here comes from the 1984 under-appreciated budget synth.

[ryunocore]

minty

Free download, hope you guys enjoy it, EP coming out soon at http://www.attackthemusic.com/

[ryunocore]

The preview for my remix of Pa’s Lam System ‘s new track is up!

[ryunocore]

STARDUST, by MINIKOMA☆

MINIKOMA☆ 's "STARDUST" is out and sounds insane! But who's behind it? Any guesses?

[ryunocore]

2LEWD [SEX and VIOLENCE with MACHSPEED ]

From SEX and VIOLENCE with MACHSPEED by Studio TRIGGER.http://animatorexpo.com/ and Sex and Violence with Mach Speed by [Japan Anima(tor)'s Exhibition].

[ryunocore]

KO3 and I made it into Puru’s remix compilation, check it out!

[ryunocore]

[ATKC-0001] galaxxxy TRAXXX

Forthcoming digital album "galaxxxy TRAXXX" available exclusively with the 2015 galaxxxy meets Attack The Music T-Shirt collaboration.Album release (to preorders): 4/10/15 Shirt release: 5/15/15