Where’s the video?

In my last blog post, I said I was working on a new video. However, it’s been over 2 weeks, and the video still hasn’t come out yet! What’s up with that? Usually, it only takes me a few days to make a video. None of my videos have ever taken 2 weeks to produce! So, what’s the holdup? When is the video going to be out?

I’ll tell you everything! Scroll down past this absolutely precious artwork by Luariaura and click “Continue Reading” to get the details.

After releasing my “SNAP Mode” video, I stopped creating videos so that I could focus exclusively on completing Osana. Even after Osana was released, I still refrained from creating videos, so that I could spend all of my time on improving the demo.

Over the course of November, I finally finished making all of the fixes / changes / additions / improvements / new features that I thought were necessary to solve the problems that were present in the first release of the demo. The demo is now a completely different experience. In fact, I’ve even updated the title screen to have the words “REVISION A” to denote the fact that I consider the current demo to be a completely separate thing from the original release!

Now that my top priorities (Osana and an improved demo) have been taken care of, I’m finally ready to return some of my attention to a secondary priority – the creation of YouTube videos. However, this presented me with a quandary: where the hell do I even begin?

Usually, my videos are about whatever I’ve been working on recently. Because I haven’t uploaded a (real) video in 8 months, there is about about 8 months’ worth of work that I want to talk about. I suppose you could imagine that 8 months’ worth of discussion topics have been “piling up” this entire time, and a dam is about to burst!

I want to discuss:

• The flaws that people identified in the demo
• The changes that were made to the demo to address the flaws
• The new features that have been added into the game over the past 2 months
• The origin story of the stalker house stealth mission, and how it was created
• The changes that were made to the stalker house stealth mission to address its flaws
• The ways in which I plan to make the rest of the game different from Osana’s demo week
• An “assassinate Amai during a bake sale” challenge that has been created, and why it exists
• Answers to questions like “When will the crowdfunding campaign launch?” “When will Amai release?” “When will the game be finished?”

There is so much I want to talk about that I’ve spent the past 2 weeks just writing the script! In fact, the script is currently over 8,000 words long, and it’s still not finished yet!

I quickly released that I was writing the most lengthy and elaborate video that I’ve ever produced. I started organizing it into “sections” and realized that it made more sense for each section to be a separate video. This is no longer going to be just one video, but probably at least 3, each one covering a specific category:

• The ways that the demo has changed and improved
• The stalker house stealth mission
• Amai and the game’s future

Writing this video (or, series of videos) has been an arduous process, because I keep second-guessing myself. “Is this section too long? Should I re-write it?” “Are people going to misinterpret what I’m saying here?” “Is it going to be weird to release multiple videos back-to-back?” Every step of the way, I’m worrying about what people are going to think, so progress has been slower on this video than any video to precede it.

I often judge the speed of my development progress by looking at how much time has passed since my last update. Back-to-back daily updates? “I must be making fast progress!” Last update was 2 weeks ago? “Oh no, progress is slow!” However, I think that this is a flawed way to look at my own progress. What matters isn’t the time between updates, but what was accomplished during that time. Even while working on the video, I’ve been continuing to make fixes/changes/additions to the game. I’m happy with what I’ve been accomplishing lately, and I think you will be, too.

I understand if it’s disappointing to read a blog post announcing that I’m still not ready to release an update yet – but I really need to make these videos. It’s a personal mission at this point. Even if it’s weird to suddenly release a barrage of videos at the end of the year covering a bunch of different topics, it’s something I need to do. I have to express all of these thoughts that have been building up, and I have to report on all of this progress that has been building up, and I want to do it in video format just like I’ve done for the past 6 years. Anything else is just not an option to me at this point.

As an apology, I’ll share something with you – a sneak peek at something that will be coming to the game in the future:

I hope you’ll have fun speculating about what it might be!

I’m very sorry for keeping you waiting, and I hope that you can be patient with me for a little longer!

As always, thank you very, very much for following the development of Yandere Simulator!