The moment of introspection: The decisional mistakes we did in VIRTUES
Added 2022-04-08 10:46:06 +0000 UTCHi, everyone, this is Agang.
After 2 years of development, now VIRTUES can finally be considered a complete project. I want to give my most sincere thanks to all the people who support us and enjoy our work. We could never have done this job without your love!
But we won’t stop here. We are not complacent about what we’ve done in the last two years. We take every support with reverence and we are desperate to repay you with more games and updates.
I will post the early peeks of PHOENIXES v0.1 and the plan for VIRTUES v17 in a few days. As for now, I want to be completely honest with you and review what we didn’t do well in VIRTUES. I believe learning from our own mistakes is important for our further progress.
This post may be really long, please forgive me. Feel free to ignore this post if you are not interested in reading a long article. I’m just here sharing my thoughts. There is no announcement or news about the games in this post.
First of all, I have to admit that we are not satisfied with the quality of VIRTUES at all. VIRTUES is our first project, we have put so much love and passion into it during the past 2 years, and it will always have a special place in our hearts. But still, I’m not gonna lie to myself, VIRTUES is far from being a great game. During the first few versions of VIRTUES, we made so many rookie mistakes in building the story framework, designing characters, crafting gameplay, etc. If we compare developing a game to building a high-rise, then VIRTUES is a building built on a badly unstable foundation, and this limits its ultimate height and quality. I wanted to rework its foundation completely, but I didn’t have time to do it because I had to spend most of my time making new content in every update cycle for our fans and supporters like you. I couldn’t just suspend updating and tell you guys to wait for many months until the rework is done, that would be irresponsible.
Thus, we decided to keep constructing this building on its humble foundation as best as we could, and now, after 2 years, this building of VIRTUES is finished. It is not as fancy or high as the other buildings in town, but we have done our best. I hope you enjoyed v16 and the overall game, but if you didn’t, well, we are sorry for that and we totally understand it. We will learn from our mistakes and we wish you will find more pleasure in our next game PHOENIXES.
So, now, it is the moment of introspection. As I said, we have done so many rookie mistakes during the first few versions of VIRTUES (story framework, writing, controversial plots, gameplay), but now I don’t want to talk about them because first, there are too many of them, and second, only rookies make rookie mistakes, we are not rookies anymore, so we won’t make same mistakes again in PHOENIXES and there is no need to introspect them. Now what I would like to talk about are two big decisional mistakes we made. If we say that the rookie mistakes brought the building of VIRTUES an unstable foundation, then these decisional mistakes brought it a rough rooftop. As you see, Irene, Elisa, and Rachel’s solo endings are missing in v16. It was all because of these two decisional mistakes we made. I have to keep them in mind and make sure I don’t commit similar mistakes again in the future:
The first mistake, Rachel.
The design of Rachel is definitely my biggest failure. She is the least popular one among all the girls, and her storyline couldn’t go as far as the others.
In the beginning, she was designed as an “energetic idiot”, an outgoing girl who is good at sports but bad at social contact. It is a common role in anime, there is nothing wrong with it. But things went wrong when I began to write her story. I accidentally made her a little… too “idiotic”. She became a girl without even basic common sense. It was too unrealistic and it made her background so hollow that no one including me could resonate with her story.
My initial plan was to let MC guide her in life and teach her everything she should know, their relationship will improve during this time, and eventually MC will teach her things about sex. It sounds like a workable plan, but no, it didn’t work at all. MC and Rachel are all college students, they are in an equal relationship, so he doesn’t really have the position to be her life mentor. It would make more sense if they are in an unequal relationship like “big brother & little sister” or “master & servant”.
So, what would happen when they are in an equal relationship but MC acts like her life mentor? I complained about it in the game through MC’s tongue: “It looks like I am coaxing an innocent girl with a sweet tongue or something.” He wants to make love with Rachel, but first he has to tell Rachel what love means… … That sounds creepy, right? It was too easy for MC to cross the line. I have to be extremely careful when writing their story because I don’t want you to feel like MC is a despicable r*pist or something.
For example, let’s imagine a scene of MC and Theodora having sex outdoor. MC acts aggressively and mischievously, and Theo be like “stop, what if people see us?” but she enjoys it at the same time. This is a common scene, right? If you replace Theodora with any other girl, such as Senning, Vera, Elisa, this scene still works. However, if you replace Theodora with Rachel, then well, it won’t work anymore because it will make MC look like a jerk who takes advantage of an innocent girl who knows so little about sex.
Thus, every time when I wanted to write more about Rachel’s story and progress the relationship between her and MC, it felt like a pain in the ass. It was so hard to make her story titillating enough but at the same time not to make MC look like a r*pist. In the end I had to admit my failure.
In the future, I will avoid giving any characters extreme personalities. Every girl should have multiple faces and can’t be defined with only one or two words. In PHOENIXES, there will be at least 15 main girls. I am very careful with their design and I promise I won’t make the same mistake I did on Rachel.
The second mistake, the engagement between Theodora and MC.
How many of you still remember that Theodora and MC were engaged since the beginning of the game? Why were they engaged? No good reasons. Is their engagement important to the story? Not really.
This engagement is completely useless to the story. No, not only useless, but also toxic. It deprived Irene and Elisa of the legitimacy of developing romance with MC. They are literally cheating on Theodora.
Honestly, it was not really a problem when I wrote Irene and Elisa’s storyline. Both of them had fair reasons for this “cheating”. Elisa was deserted for two decades and she couldn’t resist MC’s charm anymore. Irene likes MC since they were very young and she doesn’t want to be an outsider to MC and Theo after they get married.
But the problem showed up when I began to design finales. I realized that Elisa and Irene could never have a happy solo ending with MC because of his engagement with Theo. In order to give legitimacy to their romance with MC, Theo has to show up in their endings and be like “Mom/sis, I forgive you for taking away my fiancé. You have my blessing. Me? No, don’t worry about me, I can live with it.” Shit, how could that be a happy ending? The happiness of MC and Irene/Elisa is built on Theo’s loss. I will never be able to write anything like that.
In the future, I will avoid making any girl ‘naturally or legally close’ to MC at the beginning of a male-protagonist harem game. MC can choose to have a romance with only one girl instead of having a harem, but the other girls should not be considered losers in this love story.
… … … …
Oh dear, this post is even longer than I thought. I’d better stop it here before it gets too tedious. Sigh… … I wish I could write my history paper for college with 1.4k words in a day too… …
Anyway, thank you so much for reading my messy thoughts. I hope they make some sense. Now I should go catch some sleep~
Comments
Your 'messy thoughts' were incredibly interesting to read even this many years later. I think you wrote yourself into a corner with Theo's engagement in a hard way to foresee. To bypass that and have her be happy with MC choosing someone else, you'd have to sour their relationship and make it extremely awkward while making it clear it's nobody's fault. This will be a valuable lesson going forward, I'm sure
Hello213
2024-05-27 03:34:03 +0000 UTCYeah, I don't care how you justify it, no woman is gonna be cool with "you were engaged to me but then married my sister". You will hear about that shit for the rest of your life.
MuteButtonHero
2023-01-23 06:18:05 +0000 UTCI think Theodora isn't really losing anything. I played v16 solely with the bare minimum in relationship points with other characters besides Irene. I only really gained points with others for the purpose of pursuing an Irene romance. When you follow a path like I did where you are more focused it is hard to see how Theodora loses when the relationship doesn't build. It builds if you pursue her sure but if you avoid her to go after Irene or Elisa it isn't really a loss. I do see what you are saying but I think you have to keep in mind from a new game your relationship with her is already low and pretty bad emotionally. He is engaged but engagements can be called off. I would actually say that her breaking off the engagement is a win over a loss. She would know who MC loves and almost nobody wants to marry someone who loves someone else if they value love. I enjoy the game either way 😊
Silly4Life
2022-09-30 03:36:19 +0000 UTCAnyway, I really like those Greek flavour names.
YAO TIANCHENG
2022-05-02 06:34:28 +0000 UTCNo wonder you named the female characters with the names of "Theodora" and "Irene", which should be pretty unusual unless you know at least some history about East Roman Empire lol.
YAO TIANCHENG
2022-05-02 06:29:45 +0000 UTCA few comments about the visuals. I was disappointed when you reworked Rachel's appearance to have huge boobs. Sure, a lot of guys say the bigger the better but are you only writing for those guys? There are a lot of different preferences. So either all your characters look the same and only appeal to one set of guys or you have a variety of looks but then most guys will have some girls in the story they don't prefer. They will complain and tell you to change them to look like the ones they like but that just means you were successful in showing a variety of girls. Some girls will never win the popular vote because it's a smaller number of guys who like that type but they're an important part of your audience too. I also thought Uno could have been a bit more chubby. Not a lot but a little more because the way the story talked about Uno didn't really match the way she looked. I also noticed most of the girls' boobs were shaped the same. In RL there are many shapes and variations and we should see that on the characters in the story. Hope these comments help.
MuteButtonHero
2022-04-16 08:24:28 +0000 UTCi just wanna say, I really enjoyed virtues, flaws and all, and am even more pumped for your future creations.
karan bharat
2022-04-13 20:28:30 +0000 UTCyknow seeing the amount of thought u put into creating the story is very inspiring to see! i honestly really like virtues, it looks good and i never found the story archs weird. but to see you want to be better makes me very happy for the future products.
karan bharat
2022-04-13 20:27:39 +0000 UTCTo be honest, beautiful character and big breasts are enough. If you want to tell a good story, you'd better focus on main characters no more than five.
吴恒悦
2022-04-12 15:22:50 +0000 UTCNo offense. I think one of the biggest mistakes you made, is the lost of theme bringing out. The title of this game is virtues, and there were some scenes where virtues was mentioned in the beginning of the game. However, as the game progresses, no more virtues is shown, the gentleness of MC is mentioned more often though. Actually, the contradiction between harem and virtues is a good point to discuss, especially in the Elisa&Theo&Irene ending. In normal sense, harem is far away from virtues, no mention incest. However, pursueing love and dedicating ourselves to lover are also kind of virtues. I mean the story is great but more theme bringing out could make it better.
erosama
2022-04-12 00:39:38 +0000 UTCNobody is ever happy with a first project. They always feel like there shoulda/coulda/woulda been a better way to do it. I enjoyed it, and look forward to Phoenixes. A suggestion...maybe using more actual animation instead of making us constantly clicking would be better? As I said, just a suggestion.
Scott Guy
2022-04-09 09:47:05 +0000 UTCI liked the engagement subplot with Theo. It gave the relationship some depth, and some reason for her actions as a character other than " bitch who eventually comes around because it's a porn game". But I also just liked Theo in general. My only criticism is that you should have just let him figure it out eventually. No blackout is that complete. I'll admit I don't entirely understand your concerns about the individual endings. I thought they were just supposed to be like an extra sex scene set in an alternate universe, until I started reading your posts. But now that I know how hard you worked on them, and how much trouble you went through to maintain narrative consistency, I suspect there's some kind of genre convention thing going on? This is kind of the first harem game I've ever played, so I wouldn't know.
lemonarchistemoderne
2022-04-09 06:11:29 +0000 UTCTheo has three separate chapters, and the story line of this character is also very complete. The reason why she is cold is because MC's memory loss after drinking. She just uses cold to protect herself. How can such a poor person be a villain? Theo has a very high popularity in China, even far more than Chinese mixed race Senning. If you force the setting of Theo villains, many people may not accept it!
Orphee
2022-04-09 00:22:36 +0000 UTCIrene and ELISA have no problem with the single ending! Mainly theo. Don't forget that the author has developed three chapters for Theo to make the story line of this character more complete. The reason for her coldness is MC's drunken amnesia. I think the author's focus is still on the Phoenix. The virtue line is basically complete. Whether the follow-up is V17 or the reward chapter is good. Just give Irene and ELISA a fair ending!
Orphee
2022-04-09 00:17:52 +0000 UTCIn the case of Theodora, I feel like what would have been a better choice would be to have made her more of a villain and to have Elise and Irene to have been unrelated. If you had done that then you could have provided them as people that the MC could confide in when away from his toxic engagement. Then, with Theodora as the villain, you could have provided a sense of vindication by having the MC get revenge on her for all the years of torture; preferably by putting her in a position where she can't help but lust after the MC despite her pride.
Remil Perez
2022-04-08 23:19:11 +0000 UTCOverall, I love that this game is different. It kind of throws you into this guy's universe. Some existing establishment a lot of unknown. I love the fact that there is always somewhere to go and something to do. There are seemingly hours of endless content that really makes me want to know what's next. I love how the name of the game is essentially the name of all the characters. It's really creative. The things I consider the most "rapey" were: 1. When Uno first moves into the house. He is super harsh on her and even though he is trying to teach her a lesson, I felt very uncomfortable. I don't like how that whole scene went about. 2. Senning if you don't choose the love route. Her roommate walks in and sees her brutally in your clutches like an abusive boyfriend. It was once again a press of violence that made me uncomfortable. I had to roll back and switch to the love route because it's not something I would actually do. 3. Irenes story as a whole. Despite Irene being 18, she clearly looks smaller (size and breast size) than everyone else. Big boobs is the theme here so she is definitely underdeveloped and her attitude hasn't grown passed her pre-teens. So if we want to talk about teaching and emotional guidance we should definitely be looking at her more greatly instead of Rachel's social naivety. Since you have so many characters in your games, I think its OK to have a girl naturally close. A close ride or die friend or a sister bound to you does not sound like a bad idea. Lastly all boobs are good boobs and we can't forget a really nice juicy ass. I'd love to see more varied sizes beyond Double G - Double H breasts lol. That's why Irene stood out the most to me, because she was just a C or D. We also cant forget ass dynamics in sex scenes. Nobody rigs the ass to bounce during these scenes. I think for your first game you did well. I am glad you keep your internal standards so high, but nobody is not proud of their childhood drawings. Its a stepping stone to greater things. Congrats on a pretty good game wrap. Cant wait to see PHOENIXES.
Lost Track Games
2022-04-08 15:02:49 +0000 UTCPS: As for Rachel, if I were you I wouldn't do a solo ending for her at all. From the beginning, Rachel never saw the relationships the MC has with the other women as one-on-one relationships, only as a harem. It is therefore obvious that Rachel also only perceives this system as the only true one that could make her happy, since she not only has the MC but also many other "sisters" around her every day who like her like she does is.
Bio
2022-04-08 13:35:52 +0000 UTCI think a solo ending with Irene or Elisa is quite possible, since Theo gave the MC the cold shoulder at the beginning of the story and only slowly thawed through his persistence. Continuing this thread, Theo and the MC could break off the engagement by mutual consent while remaining friends, and there would be nothing stopping the MC from having a relationship with Irene or Elisa, even with Theo's blessing.
Bio
2022-04-08 13:20:51 +0000 UTC期待你的更新
dnyiwe
2022-04-08 12:24:51 +0000 UTCIn fact, I think the ending of the ultimate harem is great for V16. As for Elisa and Irene, well, and Rachel, to tell you the truth, this girl has no sense of existence. The single ending of three girls can be made into the form of chapter reward. Maybe you want them to appear in V17 and hope the story is more complete. But as you said by mistake, there will be many loopholes in the early story, resulting in a bad single ending. If you reset the previous plot, it will be a very heavy workload, and few people will go through the game slowly from the beginning. I still think the form of chapter reward is a good choice, not V17. What do you think?
Orphee
2022-04-08 11:09:06 +0000 UTCThank you
RE 咚咚
2022-04-08 10:49:34 +0000 UTC
