On Borrowed Time
Hi! If you’re new here, welcome to my blog! I’m John! I’m the founder of fledgling entertainment company “PlotTwist Studios”. Most of you, if you do know of us, will know us from our one title “Women of Xal”. It’s out on Steam and itch.io for Early Access, but desperately marching to full release later this month (October 2021). I brought you all here today to bring you my positive[!] financial update, along with the looming ominous money clouds ahead.
Women of Xal. You’ve all heard about it: Overwhelming visual novel with too many branching paths to get half the picture, over 100 CGs, animated cutscenes, voice acting, Kickstarter some folks thought was a scam back in the day, ect. Well that all came at a cost. And for once, I’m not talking [just] mental health!
$50k+, revenue sharing, and an incredible amount of original music from yours truly.
They called me a madman. They’re probably right, but don’t focus on that! The present problem is that Women of Xal might not make its money back in any reasonable amount of time. So we’re looking into small project ideas that might, gasp, bring in more of a male audience. Because apparently WoX drew in every demographic EXCEPT men. I know there’s a few guys who are fans of WoX, but let me tell ya, not enough! So my question to you all is:
Is it time to look into the more lewd mini-titles?
I’m not as much of a stickler about said market like I was back in 2016. However, there are two problems I currently face: looking at Google images for anime ladies to figure out what a lot of guys are into... ticks me off. Earnestly ticks me off. (I speak chiefly of anime search results, so opinion may vary) Yet I know if I just do my own brand of sexuality, it’d just be Xuna being a dork for 10 hours. Again, I would LOVE to explore that genre of visual novel[?] and see if I can add the same sense of uniqueness that Women of Xal has offered players. I love breathing fresh air in avenues stressfully suffocating with sameness. And if I bring my A-game to the characters, I might actually recover that money before retirement.
The second problem, is, of course, that the game might succeed as a story, but FAIL HORRIBLY as a smut game. You know, just John things. :| Anyways, the obvious answer is to have another guy write for guys, but that scares me as much as handing future Women of Xal stories to another dude. I’ve seen how too many guys write and, well... it ticks me off. Earnestly ticks me off. lol
Anyways, this is just early morning ramblings of a man trying to recover his money. Thanks for listening to my XALtalks. I just want my 50k back, man.
But what do you think? Am I overthinking NSFW/R-18 games? Do I just do my thing and assume the target audience will arrive and adore it?