Dev Log 4: I’m staring into the void, when will it stare back into me?

(My title sounds like a post rock song)

For me, it took great courage to release Achlys.

From what I have heard from other members of the community, a release, especially a debut, is something of a revelation. Before that moment, all you have are guesses to that tree of possibilities, and the release itself is when (the quantum supposition closes) the public sees it and decides what it is worth. You can imagine with Achlys, there was also the extrapolation that the public would be deciding whether the things I have to say are worth anything, and by extension, whether I am worth anything. Not the most healthy of mindsets, but something I’ve come to discover is inevitable.

I was an engineer by education actually, and a salesman by profession. Both have led me to develop a strong fixation with numbers. Feedback, often quantified by numbers and science, are the secret sauce for creating what the public wants, and what is received well. However, this reliance on feedback is also where, to put it bluntly, authenticity goes to die. This is how “by the numbers” works are created, if not literally.

On January 1st, 2024, the dawn of the new year, I sent Achlys out into the void.

What did I expect?

Something I was aware of was how difficult it was to market things and catch on fire. It has to have some draw, perhaps some meme-able viral quality, strong production, ever present advertising, and a good degree of luck. It is why NewJeans’ SuperShy, a bubbly, repetitive, calculated, and viral-by-design song, outperforms the elongated, depressing, and broody drones of Mogwai’s Two Rights Make One Wrong. For the record, all of those qualifiers easily apply to Achlys as well, for better or worse.

A part of me envisioned doing some degree of heavy lifting marketing, such as running a twitter account with all those tweets to farm engagement metrics and the like. Perhaps post some renders of Lauren copying poses from anime, after all, the Sumire Heanna pose in the game is probably the first render I did as a way to practice posing. However what I had come to discover is that, as one in sales should have already realized, marketing itself is a full time job. Only if I had spent all day finding places to post the game all across the internet did it make a notable bump on the performance metrics.

Another interesting thing I had realized was the limited amount of space to post the game on. If I could spam the same places hundreds of times over, it would work, but that’s not allowed or a great idea. It was difficult for a twitter account as well to generate real impressions starting from 0. In essence, the game’s vitality was tied to invisible algorithms, and I would resent posting soyfaces.

I didn’t expect anything. 

In fact, a part of me envisioned posting the game then disappearing back into the deep dark recesses of the collective unconsciousness. However what I had dreamed of was fostering a small community that appreciates the game for what it is and begins to dive deep into the webs of secrets I had laid out. I wanted a cult classic. My goal was to write something about as unfiltered as I could, and even in these dev logs or any form of communication, be about as authentic as I can be. (Yes, that was my word of 2023) The difficulty there is still getting the game in front of the right eyes, and often those cult classics are simply the earlier works of a producer who has already made it big with a newer work, or works that are sometimes so bad they exist to be ridiculed or appreciated only ironically.

Most of the substantial feedback I had received from close friends told me things I mostly already knew (I’ve been told that's often the case), but also some things I found funny. One person told me that “Jessie broods about nothing and needs to shut up” and another friend who said “Jessie is a well written character that serves as a foil to many of the other characters, and speaks your voice.” To put the two together, I am a person who broods about nothing and needs to shut up. Not too off base.

So I released the game into the void, but has the void stared back into me?

One of the realities of my job in sales isn’t how pointless and nightmarishly numeric it is, that’s a given, but how unfortunately, the metrics exist and matter for a reason. (And yes, the VN was written by an asian salaryman, an automatic seal of weeb quality.) The reason the metrics exist is to see what people look at and what people like, also known as engagement, and feedback. By the numbers, a good amount of people (more than I would have expected) see the game and bump into it, and then a fraction see it, then fewer download it, then even fewer comment, and even even fewer say anything. It’s not surprising, but the reality is always crazy to see.

I had been relying on the feedback to make some big decisions with regards to VN dev, but the results are inconclusive. So far the void has been staring back into me, but has been rather quiet. So if you wouldn’t mind,

Please Speak Up.