The End of Dysfunctional Systems

[Diamon]

Can't seem to find the page you are looking for.

Thanks, should be fixed.

[Nosebleed]

Pretty solid and standard reasons, was kind of expecting something along those lines.

I have to say i agree the most with the fact they were feeling like it was becoming an obligation and not a fun hobby, that can really destroy everything. I guess this happens more frequently when money is involved too.

Well, good luck to Dischan and their future products, i hope they and other people can take something out of this.

[Darklord Rooke]

Pretty solid and standard reasons, was kind of expecting something along those lines.

 

 

Not really, unless you mean pretty standard amateurish behaviour.

 

Basically it comes down to inexperience and naivety. This is why you shouldn't donate to kickstarters unless they have an experienced team with an active demo. All Dischan had done was 2 short visual novels, Dysfunctional Systems arguably overhyped purely on the basis of the art. 

 

And they lost money on Dysfunctional Systems because of, according to them, poor business practices. 

 

Meh I'm old fashioned, I think it's morally questionable to take risks using money people donated in good faith. 

[Decay]

Sounds like they didn't have a game plan going in. They'll just take the money and start bashing away at the problem, and somehow it will work out! It's like they failed at every single important step along the way.

 

People really shouldn't try to run kickstarters for making games unless they're actually confident in their ability to manage a project with money involved. This kind of thing keeps happening because people who are competent at making games think that their talent and some seed money is all they need to create a successful game development studio.

[Toranth]

Not really, unless you mean pretty standard amateurish behaviour.

 

Basically it comes down to inexperience and naivety. This is why you shouldn't donate to kickstarters unless they have an experienced team with an active demo. All Dischan had done was 2 short visual novels, Dysfunctional Systems arguably overhyped purely on the basis of the art. 

 

And they lost money on Dysfunctional Systems because of, according to them, poor business practices. 

 

Meh I'm old fashioned, I think it's morally questionable to take risks using money people donated in good faith.

It is a pretty standard story. It's the exact story of what happens to 90% of small businesses in the US. Hire too many people, hire the wrong people, don't have processes or plans to keep the employees in line and on task, fail to focus on reasonable deliverable products of the appropriate scope, and finally, the owner's loss of enthusiasm as what was "fun" turns into "work".

Nothing unusual in the least. It happens all the time, in all industries. The Japanese VN world also turns out a lot like this, on the low end.

Sad to see it happen in this case. Maybe some of the staff will get together somewhere else, with better management.

[Kosakyun]

I haven't even gotten to reading their work.

Would you still recommend that I read it even though it won't be continued?

 

Anyway, RIP Dysfunctional Systems.

At least you were loved by some.

[Zalor]

Not really, unless you mean pretty standard amateurish behaviour.

 

Basically it comes down to inexperience and naivety. This is why you shouldn't donate to kickstarters unless they have an experienced team with an active demo. All Dischan had done was 2 short visual novels, Dysfunctional Systems arguably overhyped purely on the basis of the art. 

 

And they lost money on Dysfunctional Systems because of, according to them, poor business practices. 

 

Meh I'm old fashioned, I think it's morally questionable to take risks using money people donated in good faith. 

 

Regarding using people's money given in good faith, I can't disagree with you. However, as I said in my first post; artistically speaking Dischan is one of the few western commercial producers making anything worth while. Ironic though, that the company that is in the right direction artistically speaking is going the wrong direction financially speaking.    

[Jibril]

Awww that sucks. Was actually looking forward to the series considering the first one is so amazing.....

[Kosakyun]

Well, I guess it was bound to happen if the things that Decay and the others were saying are true.

[Rose]

Wanted to read it once it was complete, sad to hear about this. RIP in pieces.

[Darklord Rooke]

Thoughts about Dischan, the gamedev paradox and Kickstarters

 

I’m not here to judge or shame anyone, but as a member of a small hobbyist team who followed their progress since 2011 or something like that (yeah, we weren’t even officially a team back then…man, time sure flies), I have many things to say about what Dischan faced. And I think the biggest problem at hand is simply the gamedev paradox. Since I just made that one up, let me explain what I mean.

 

The creation laws (aka common sense)

 

When you start making games (be it a visual novel or just a plain gameplay-centric game), the first tip you always get from more experimented developers is to start small. Indeed creation is way more complex than people think, it’s not magical, you gotta work A LOT. And no amount of theorical research will make you learn and improve like the experience you get in the field. In short, you will make mistakes, it’s unavoidable, so better make them really fast and in the most painless way possible.

 

With visual novel, it’s a bit tricky since on the surface they look way easier than other types of games. And in some ways, it is true. A visual novel doesn’t require that much programming skills thanks to Ren’Py, so it’s easier to code. But, here’s the catch: a gameplay-focused game will always be more dynamical than a visual novel. It’s meant that way. So, in order to compensate, you’ll have to produce more art assets (sprites, backgrounds, event CG, and so on). And the big difficulty, as a new creator, is to avoid  like the plague giving the artists on your team too much workload. Even if they’re paid, they’re gonna lose interest over time (or life can happen, you never know), so if your project has a big scope, you’re pretty much doomed to fail. Even if you have motivation and dedication. That’s the harsh truth of visual novel development. So, you HAVE to start small in order to finish your projects.

 

On a side note, many people don’t even consider visual novel as games so they don’t read gamedev tips or Gamasutra articles thinking it doesn’t concern them, which is sad because it’s super useful!

 

The marketing laws (aka AHAHAHAHAH)

 

So, we just said you had to focus on visual novel that have a small scale in order to be able to finish them and gain experience, right? Well, just forget what you just learned, because marketing doesn’t work that way!

 

 

The first marketing tip you always get is to show your project as soon as possible (even when it’s not ready). Also, polishing. Show the most polished shiniest prettiest stuff as you can. Thing is, hobbyists can rarely afford to get an artist good enough to show off a game with impressive art. That’s what being a hobbyist means. With the indie market being completely swamped by games to the point where getting visibility is now a real crucifixion, you better have pretty screenshots if you were planning to get a bit of attention! Wait, what do you say? Everyone wants attention because you’re kinda creating stuff so that some people can enjoy them? Yep, you see where I’m going… With so many pretty games around, it’s difficult to be distinguished. The best way to have people talk about your game is usually to have an interesting story and a stunning art direction. Then you may get press coverage, reviews and all. Doesn’t mean you’re gonna get rich but it’s always nice.

 

Since visual novel don’t have that much gameplay, you may also want to make an hybrid to get attention from a bigger audience. Like adding RPG mechanics. Or just adding as much choices as possible in order to offer a truly interactive experience. That will cost you even more efforts and work, of course

.

But then, let’s face it, there is another thing you can do to make people hyped about your upcoming visual novel: selling them dreams. A small scale visual novel with a cool story does sound nice but it’s not « shiny » enough for marketing. No, you’ll want to promise a big scale game with tons of features (we call that “feature creep” BTW). Like: Impressive amount of choices that have an influence on the story! RPG mechanics ! Full voice acting! 10 love interests! Animated opening! Original theme songs! Sex scenes (I’m still not sure on why VN fans are so keen on wanting H-scene…)! An hidden route with a catgirl (Same here, I don’t see the appeal)! QTE (wait, NO)! It’s especially true if you’re running a crowdfunding campaign, you have to create hype in order to get money. But then most of the money will be spend on the hyped features so it’s kind of a vicious cycle. Anyway, let’s go back on the Dischan story…

 

Ambition, a double-edged sword

 

See, Dischan has always been a very ambitious team, their goal was to produce high quality content in order to show demanding people that indie VN could look great and professionnal. Their projects were all dreams-sellers, if I can say so. So it’s not a surprise to see their ambition turned out to be double-edged : without that, they’d never have been able to get so much press coverage and visibility so fast. But if they didn’t have so much ambition, they would never have burned that fast too. People are only looking at the surface, which is highly polished visuals, and not at the management hell that was behind. I can only imagine the burden to have that much responsability and pressure when you’re actually not that experimented…

 

Fittingly, all the visual novel Dischan managed to finish were mostly small projects. Like Cradle Song introduction, Dysfunctional Systems introduction (for me, Ep1 is a long intro to a bigger story) and a Nanoreno game made in a month, Juniper’s Knot. And all the visual novel they cancelled were big scale projects that turned out to be way too ambitious like the full Cradle Song and the Dysfunctional Systems serie as a whole. So, even though they were a big name in the VN community, the team wasn’t in my opinion ready to go all out like they did with the crowdfunding campaign. For me, the big mistakeDischan did was to listen to their fans when they said they should try Kickstarter to get another chance at a time where Dischan has the honesty to announce many members of the team left, that they were broke and that they wanted to cancel the full-time developement of the Dysfunctional Systems series as a result. Kickstarter is a very useful tool but a very dangerous one too!

 

Kickstarter is a useful but dangerous tool

 

Which brings us to the next point of my rant: new teams kickstarting their first projects. It has nothing to do with Dischan in particular but several people got worried about the future of kickstarted visual novel upon learning one of the biggest got cancelled. It’s a pretty natural reaction but I don’t think it’ll have any kind of effect. The Kickstarter honeymoon is over since a while now and I think people are way more cautious when pledging. It’s a real investment and a bet: you won’t always got what you hoped for but without your funding it wouldn’t happen anyway. Failed Kickstarters are sadly a good opportunity for other devs to learn what went wrong and try not to reproduce the same mistakes. I’m sure many early VN crowdfunding campaigns are currently going to hell without anyone noticing. Especially the people who thought kickstarting their first project was a good idea. I’ve checked many (look at that useful chart for more informations) because I was curious about their progress and I saw many updates about the departure of artists, management issues and sometimes even total mutism. Those may got cancelled too, and I think it’s bound to happen, especially because some team leaders are gonna get burned out very badly due to pressure. In short: crowdfunding can be a great tool but you have to know what you got yourself into, otherwise you may ended up crushed by the high responsabilities that come in the package. Not everyone can handle it. I think Dischanwas actually pretty honest about that fact and that may have saved them from an agonizing death of years of trying to finish the game in vain while losing their sanity in the process. So maybe it’s better that way? Who knows…

 

Conclusion n°1: while Dischan was the more visible indie team making visual novel, they’re not the only ones who got caught into the gamedev paradox. Wanting to get visibility, many creators jump the gun and got burned in the process. It’s always been that way for visual novel, but whereas those projects would have just peacefully disappeared some years ago, the use of Kickstarter adds money into the equation and just makes the fall public and more impressive. Let it be a lesson for all of us: We all need ambition but trying to go too fast will make you fall. Just as with the Icarus myth, we shouldn’t get too close to the sun…

 

Conclusion n°2: gamedev is hard, don’t underestimate it. And yes, it includes visual novel too.

 

 

http://traumendes-madchen.com/blog/?p=1142 

[Down]

Sex scenes (I’m still not sure on why VN fans are so keen on wanting H-scene…)! An hidden route with a catgirl (Same here, I don’t see the appeal)!

Can't disagree with that guy

 

 

Very interesting read, thanks for the share. It's really common (even outside of VNs) to see people throwing their project into crowdsourcing without any experience whatsoever and aiming too big, and that's really a shame.

That chart is really great too (although I seem to be too stupid to use google drive efficiently because the display is shit >_>)

[Nosebleed]

It's a shame this happens indeed but I don't think any amount of failures will really stop people. The greed, the fact that the possibility of thousands of dollars could be achieved just by making a KS blinds some people to the real struggle that is developing a proper VN.

 

Not only that but believing the hobby you love so much could actually turn into profit is also a big reason why this happens.

But once you pour so much money into it, it stops being a hobby and starts becoming hard work and not everyone can handle that change.

And so many people leave due to struggling with responsibilities.

 

Dischan was just overly ambitious, but I don't blame them, it's a natural thing to wish for, it just didn't work out this time.

 

I'm still of the opinion that people need to realize that throwing copious amounts of money at random human beings does not make a decent product  pop out of thin air.

 

I just hope that, at the very least, this failed KS opens the eyes of some people when browsing similar KS and be wary of overly ambitious goals.

 

Can't disagree with that guy

Down confirmed catgirl hater. Ban pls.

[solidbatman]

I am still pretty pissed about the whole situation here. Warning flags should have gone off when they add characters for stretch goals. In my opinion, stretch goals should maybe add new features (small) and new scenarios, they should never greatly alter the scope/nature of the project and story. Dischan once again poorly handled a VN and likely killed any chance they have of doing much of anything again. 

[Vemocleus]

Even as a backer I was late to the party on noticing this (Damn my infrequent email checks!).  This is depressing in several ways, such as the loss of this series and a drop of faith in Kickstarter.  Crowdfunding can be a great way to get something done that fans really want to happen.  It just doesn't always work out like you hope.  I do wish they'd release ep0 though, so we can see ourselves what they were talking about.

 

Everyone can learn a hard lesson from Dischan's failure though.  Their detailed analysis of what went wrong could help a lot of people avoid the same mistakes when trying to launch their own project, KS or no.

 

(sigh)