How do I feel about Yandere Simulator being in development for 7 years?
This video took much more time to produce than I expected, and also turned out much longer than I expected; it's 24 minutes and 45 seconds long! I think this is my second-longest video, right behind the 35-minute-long "Making Senpai Reject A Love Confession".
Why is it so long? Well, I guess it's because there's just a lot I wanted to say. This video covers a very wide range of topics; I share an anecdote from early in the game's development, I talk about how my approach towards the game's development gradually changed over time, I talk about how my priorities shifted over the years, I talk about the influence that YouTube had on the game, I talk about my mistakes and my regrets, I talk about the Yandere Sim community, I talk about how I feel after working on one project for seven years, I talk about the reasons why I haven't launched the crowdfunding campaign and the obstacles that probably jeopardize the campaign's success, I talk about the misinformation swirling around the game, and I talk about for my plans for the immediate future.
I apologize if you're disappointed that I'm coming to you today with a video where I talk about my ~feeeeelings~ instead of coming to you with a video announcing new features and progress...but sometimes you just need to stand up for yourself, speak up in your own defense, and address some issues that are difficult to talk about.
Within the next few days, I'll release a build with a few minor bug fixes, and then, I'll probably launch full-steam into my next goal: Demonstrating my ability to put 10 rivals into the game in a timely fashion. This is only one step of many steps I'll need to take in order to give the crowdfunding campaign a shot at succeeding, but that's the way things have to be done; one step at a time.
If you've been following the game's development for a while, you may remember the time in 2020 when I stopped releasing builds for a few weeks in order to prepare the biggest update the game had ever seen - the addition of Osana. We may be headed towards another large gap between updates, while I prepare the big surprise that I mention near the end of this video. (A significant amount of progress has already been made, I'm very proud of how it's shaping up, and I hope you're going to love it!)
Thank you for your patience with me, and thank you for following the development of Yandere Simulator!
How does YandereDev feel about Yandere Simulator being in development for seven years? (YouTube)
Comments (6)
Thanks for the video, I decided to subscribe after watching - hope you can get enough funding to cover your living costs!
Yanderedev-Yanderedev!!1 Here are some interesting advises for indie developers by someone who does a lot of talking about issues around videogames. You probably already know most of them, but maybe you will find out something new. Listening will cost 15 minutes of your time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYPSJI2FA8c
Admiring your eloquence and introspective reasoning as always :) Feelings are pretty much the cause of motivation, and motivation is the cause of work being done (both on the dev side and on playerbase side), so it is always cool to consider them, whatever the unwise people say. I'm very glad for you that both the emotional management and technical management and dependency resolution work has progressed this far ^_^
Bravo!
For what it's worth, I worked on one writing project intermittently for four years, and it wasn't even a million-word story. Once I finished, it felt like a weight was lifted. One things I've noticed and I'm sure you have too about crowdfunded failed games (Mighty #9 comes to mind) is that what was presented to potential funders was a very short demo and the final product wasn't much better. You've already provided more than that. I'm not going to pretend to put myself in your shoes, but I wonder if one way to try and "restore trust" would be to implement all 10 rivals into the game in a very basic form – you've said yourself all the core mechanics are there – so you can say you have a complete game. Thus, the purpose of crowdfunding completely shifts to what your intentions for it always were: animations, voice acting, code & script cleanup, new models, etc. I honestly can't think of any other way to get you out of this Catch-22 situation. I wish you luck and I look forward to where you'll go from here.
Agree with this and that might be the plan YDev hinted at. Get all the rivals out there with their core mechanics and the old style animations with stuff like picture insertion and text dialogue our first rival had in the beginning, then there's really nothing left to do other than get the voice acting and animations. Even if you only release 2-3 additional rivals, this would immensely increase confidence. BUT, more importantly IMHO, I think it'll be good to release the rival progression to the community for much the same reasons the video talked about. Because I can almost guarantee the community will find even more new and amazing ways to interact with the game once there are more rivals and progression.