Friday Rambles 2023-06-23

Well, well, well, if it isn't the Monday Night Friday Rambles. Hello again.

Guess what? The Japanese localization is now out. And everyone gets a 10% discount on top of that! What a cool deal, especially if you've been waiting for the Japanese localization of the hot new indie game sensation: Endless Monday: Dreams and Deadlines.

Above: Me announcing the new release in a tweet with the trailer I made last night

It was a time consuming and expensive experience, but time will tell if it was worth it. I'm hoping I'll at least break even or build up some cred and a fanbase for the next game, even if this one isn't a huge financial success or whatever. If nothing else, I did learn a lot about how I should be organizing the code and what I should be thinking about when building my next projects, and I also met some cool people in the Japanese indie game community.

I'm considering deeply how I'm going to do this for other languages. As the Japanese Loc Team knows, I am a bit obsessive about how my game is translated and having full control over my work, and I don't want people to just fart out some bad machine translated thing or some joke thing for a fan mod and have people think that's what my game is. Also, while putting in support for fan mods I ran into a bunch of technical problems that would make it super annoying for me to implement people loading in arbitrary translation files in a way that doesn't suck. So idk. And with my time being super limited these days and the projected return on investment for good quality professional translations ranging between "negative" to "low" for my super-niche word-heavy indie game, I'm just not really wanting to think about it right now, even though, sure, I really want the entire world to be able to play my game.

So... I love this game but I'm also really wanting to move on to new work (first the content update for this game, and then the next game itself). I learned a lot from this one, and I really want to apply those learnings to the next game, and continue telling the story, and uhh have something new for my fans to buy, so I can afford to eat food and pay rent.

Anyway, now that the localization is finally released, I can shut up about it and start talking about other stuff. Like, uh..., hmm... nice weather we're having, isn't it?

Another thing I wanted to muse about was game piracy. I have no idea how many people pirated my game, but considering people have DM'd me about how they pirated it because it was too expensive for them (which is like, why are you telling me this. whatever.), I'm wondering if people think I'm some kind of mega corporation or one of those super rich and famous mainstream indie devs or something, someone who doesn't literally need every single sale I can get to afford to keep making games.

Back when I started working for a game company many many years ago, I casually mentioned pirating like a tv show or something and got chewed out by the regional manager of the office I was working at because we have to remember that we depend on sales to survive as a company. I took it to heart and never pirated anything ever again. But like, I get thinking it's morally correct to steal from corporations and all, and I'm also not going to argue with your justification for pirating games from solo indie devs, and the percentage of people pirating my game who would have bought it in the first place is probably very low, but still, it feels kinda bad. blah blah blah. ANYWAY...

I can see why so many indie devs are going the "creator" route where they make most of their income from streaming or making youtube videos of making games, or ... Patreons... of making games...., because it's more money than actually selling games. lol. You know how the people who get rich during a gold rush are the people selling shovels and maps? I feel like i've said this a few times already in previous rambles. whatever. it's still true.

I should consider myself lucky that my first ever game is doing as well as it is, to be perfectly honest, and that so many of my fans are willing to support me by buying my game. I can still see myself making this a career, and I am looking forward to finally starting work on my next project. And I'll probably keep doing Japanese localizations too, until Goodsmile notices me and makes a Skye Nendo.

Above: Jill Nendo keeping me motivated, until such a time Skye may gain a corporeal form

Well, I think I have about a week or two left before I can start putting time into work again, so I hope I'll have cooler updates for you then. I wanna draw again! I wanna do stuff! I'm goin' nuts over here!

Okay! I'm gonna go now! Please wish me a good and successful reception in the Japanese indie game enjoying market! 

Thanks for all your love and support, as always!