Let's talk about IL2CPP and newer Illusion games
Hi there!
How y'all doing?
A lot of discussion about IL2CPP has been going around of late, and I've been talking about it a fair bit on my Discord, but thought I'd address it real quickly here as well, as not everyone of you are in there.
I'll refrain on commenting at the whole Illusion to ILLGAMES rebrand, other than that I'm really confused by that, seemingly, silly move. I'll continue to refer to them as Illusion as they're seemingly under the same management, doing the same thing anyways.
Now... If you've been keeping track of illusion and their releases, you may know that their previous game, RoomGirl, was something of a flop. Reviews on all fronts were not nice to it, even saw Japanese users openly disappointed about the lack of mods, which I'm not used to.
Yet the launch of the game was... Normal. People were excited, People liked how the game looked and was roaring to get into it. Game released, and there was a resounding "meh", so far so normal, followed quite promptly by what may be considered the death of the game.
Now, HoneyCome is announced, and looks likely to follow RoomGirls lead. People are excited again, and yet again, IL2CPP is being used, which will probably doom the game to the same outcome.
a $70 to 80 game, basically being dead and left behind under a month after release, barely any mods to talk about after about a year. What bloody happened here?
Well, on to IL2CPP. I'm not a computer science class, so I'll keep it simple. When Unity builds a game, there are several options for output. Older illusion games have used Mono, which is super easy to mod, allowing modders to get super clingy with the code, resulting in what we're used to now, full modding suite available just days after release, and a healthy output of new mods all throughout the games lifespan. Now, IL2CPP is... not so easy to get to grips with. It has a vastly higher barrier to entry, and complicates the creation of plugins. At the very least, there is a framework to use, but very few mods to use with it.
(It also does some free optimization from what I can gather, so some chance they're going with that as a dirty easy fix to optimization problems)
Quickly commenting on the big picture here, so need to make a disclaimer.
Most things above are strongly held beliefs of years, where I'm on record, so not thought that would require much in the way of disclaimer, but from here, I should add that I have a foreseeable conflict of interest, as relates to Illusions future success, which I may not disclose fully at this point in time, but know that it is there. Apply the desired amount of salt to my opinions on the future trajectory of this company, applied according to how much you trust me to stay relatively neutral, despite said conflict. At current, my interest is their success, for obvious reasons, but it may be argued that the conflict flips when looking into the future, so keep that in mind.
For most games, this kinda sucks, but hey, the game is still the game. For Illusion games however... this is fatal. They absolutely need the mods for a game to succeed, or they need to massively up their game on the base game side. HoneySelect won't do, base game will not be sufficient. Even Koikatus gameplay just straight up are not sufficient. Remove all mods from any Illusion game, and you're left with a few weeks of fun at most, if you have a high tolerance for tedium.
(adding to that is the nonsense ToS they got going, where they're trying to take ownership of everything made with the game, characters and all, as well as basically trying to outlaw modding)
My guess is that Illusion thinks that they, and they alone, deserve the credit for the success of pretty much all their games past HoneySelect 1 (Disregarding PlayHome, EmotionCreators and RoomGirl, shich all basically failed for the same reason, they failed to grab the imagination of modders), but boy are they in for a rude awakening... If their community turns their back on a game, it fails. Simple as that. Illusion is absolutely dependant on their community, and especially the modders, in order to see any appreciable amount of success in the market. Vanilla Bethesda games have a better time in the open market than Vanilla Illusion, and taken how shallow Bethesda games tend to be in their vanilla form, that is quite amazing in a way.
Now, how does the future look? Illusion is not quick on catching on, as they've proven time and time again, so I do not expect them to make any concessions for modders anytime soon, and they will file HoneyCome as just "inevitable" if it fails and try again ("You know the definition of insanity?"). As such I expect at least their next game to come delivered in the same way, probably their next few games. At which point they will have shaken off their reputation of selling games with great communities attached, and a large selection of mods. This will overall have a heavy negative pressure on the value of their games for years to come, even if they try to course correct.
Illusion, if you're reading this, course correct without undue delay.
IL2CPP will probably get tooled up eventually for modding, and I hope it does quickly, but I can see no signs of rapid expansion for that, so chances are we're talking years down the line. I am unsure about how wise it is to go with that when you're absolutely dependant on modders and have no official modding tools...
Brace expectations until either Illusion realizes that they need their community, they course correct or... well... other unannounced things happen.
RoomGirl did mark a new generation for Illusion, one that will, at this rate, be a generation of decline, after the previous generation of growth marked by Koikatsu to HoneySelect2. This will be entirely on them. Their rebrand has hurt their reputation, their disregard for their community, further so. And to make sure they're presented in as bad a light as possible, the way they press their ToS, which reads to me as legal nonsense (Not a lawyer, do not use as legal advice)...
Illusion will likely file this in all the wrong categories, still holding strong that they, and they alone were responsible for the success of Koikatsu and HoneySelect2, so the new games must themselves have been doomed to failure no matter what they do, which is how it looks like they're taking RoomGirl, though I'd kill to see the post mortem for that game.
Time will tell if they manage to pivot in time, or if we're seeing a long term decline.
I hope they pivot, and soon.
No matter what happens, Illusion is squarely planted in my childhood, so rose tinted glasses are in full force here. I do not wish to see something I associate with my childhood decline, and as such, conflict or no, I do hope they wake up eventually and smell the roses.
Comments (14)
My first Illusion game was Koikatsu Party. Found it by accident actually. But enjoyable. Then discovered your Patreon and have been able to get my hands on other titles (I did buy HS2 and AI Shoujo off steam) and I've enjoyed all of them. What ILL seems to forget is mods add all sorts of replay options for the community. Yeah they are probably more irritated that Modders are implementing things they didn't even think about but they are straying into that Wall Garden Territory that Apple and EA are chasing. The whole "you make a character in our game, we own it" is no different from that EA Codong challenge from several years back where they tried to say "any idea you submit is ours to use as we please". To me, I personally thought RoomGirl had potential to be really good. Now, it looks as if they are reacting to the backlash like a child. Now the newest title feels like a cross between Koikatsu and HS2, which isn't bad. But they gotta lighten up or this will flop too as mods have been highly valued in the modern gaming community and if they fail to adapt, that's gonna bite them bad in the back side.
Tried various il2cpp reverse analysis tools, none of them work well. Why on earth did they do that, performance or to prevent porting to android like hs2?
The "free" performance is probably the main reason, the modding problems is probably seen as a bonus I imagine... Very hard to say what they're thinking though
Well said and even better, articulated. I have the same opinion you hold: this game stands upright only due to the modding community. It is quite strange to see Illusion disregard any accumulated success due to the modding community. Especially given that Bethesda is so successful due to their willingness and cooperation with modding capabilities. I hope Illusion can course correct effectively, for their own sake. I know that many Japanese companies do not approve of overseas customers, but like it or not, if even their homebase customers disapprove of their product, they should have no choice but to realize their fault. Keep up the great work as always!
Excuse me, as a European I see this whole situation with a lot of confusion and many points are not clear to me. So from Steam I find out a few weeks ago that Illusion declares to close its doors on August 18th, that all its products will be removed from both steam and other digital stores (eg DLsite). But on August 4th they announce that on September 8th (if I understood correctly) Honey Come will be released, a kind of Koikatsu mixed with Honey Select and that the company will no longer be called Illusion but Illgame.... I don't quite understand, were they then acquired by another company or did they simply change their name? Why then such a move? It's not really clear to me. I could understand if they change their name because maybe they will start producing something else and not VM18 games ... But do so .. bho Furthermore, this war against modders is born against those who create mods in general, or is it because of those who create games usually Visual Novels clearly using the studio version of Honey Select / KoiKatsu and who are all the rage here on Patreon? Because I can also understand the second item, no company would like to see others earn through their product without them having requested the license or even paying for it. While the first option instead I don't see the reason, it is true that there are modders who get paid for their creations, but in any case that is all their work and Illusion or Illgame can really say little, moreover, as you yourself reiterate, their games live thanks to mods, indeed in a general perspective All video games if supported by modders tend to be much more long-lived, just look at Red Dead Redempiont 2, GTA5, Ark, Skyrim, Minecraft, Eurotrack Simulator and so on, they are a clear example. Furthermore, the same illusion shoots itself in the foot, given that once a game is released it tends to never add many other contents, at most one DLC and then stops, when for example it could sell many additional packages that could improve the quality and amount of content, for example new game areas (Koikatsu Sunshine lends itself very well to new areas), new locations, clothes, accessories etc... But no, he lives on his laurels and adds no more. I think it's normal that at this point modders indulge themselves. That's why I really don't understand this war. But maybe it's like I said before, maybe they didn't target modders, but those who live by developing titles through their works, and unfortunately then I can understand them too, but rather go and sue them instead of shooting everyone without doing distinctions, perhaps accusing the modders of also feeding these "creators" of VN
Very hard to see what goes on from the outside, but it seems they're still owned by the same company, has the same leadership, and do the same thing. Was rumors that they were planning to stop with HS2 realistic style, and therefore did the change, which seemingly is not correct, as they state that they're also working on such a game. A lot of... less than flattering potential reasons have also floated, and enough people know about it that it would negatively affect their reputation, but I have no interest in repeating them without any substance. This whole thing makes little sense with the data provided, but as a fan, it's really hard to behold. We will probably never know, unless an insider shares their knowledge of the situation... On the antiModding sentiment, It's overall, the ToS explicitly calls out reverse engineering and modifying the game.
Very articulate and good food for thought as someone outside the sphere of discussion. Thanks!
You're most welcome :)
Sounds like they just don't want someone making money commerically off chracters created using their games. As for the rest.. mods keep games fun and alive.
They don't and shouldn't own the characters anyone else makes with the creator just like Bandai doesn't own the thousands of DB OC's made in the DBXV creator or even SC's. I do find it ridiculous they're trying to hurt modders when all moddings done is make people want to buy their product even more. But to add to that, claiming ownership of others ideas/creations simply because it was made in their game despite no one agreeing to that makes it even worse.
I suppose we can only hope that they pivot back after the bottom line takes a hit. If not this will be another company slowly going under.
I'm still stuck on the "own characters created with the game" part. Do they mean they own the things others have made using their character creator? Cause that's nuts if so. Bandai has character creators in two of their most well known games (Soul Caliburs III-VI and DBXV1-2) but they don't have ownership of other peoples creations(to my knowledge)
Yes, the ToS basically says that anything made from the game or in it is their property. I quite frankly do not think that ToS will stand in court, not in the US, the EU nor Japan, so they'd be silly to enforce it, but yes, they claim that. Not a legal professional though, so a lawyer for one of these markets will have to speak for any kinda proper assessment to be made, but if they manage to actually succeed on their self proclaimed rights, that will be a death blow to their whole business, so ye...
I guess they never heard about that Small Indie Company called Bethesda and how modding community basically keeps their games alive, but in their case it's to much bigger extent.