1-month Reflection Post

Hi friends!

Before I get started, I'd just like to celebrate the fact we've reached over 3,000 downloads! As a little treat, please enjoy the attached Dave thirst trap 😌💖.

So, I wanted to make a little post discussing some of the stuff that I learned along the way for making and publishing ChoPro's demo. This is a bit of a "diary entry", if you will. Just posting this here for my benefit, but also could help some aspiring developers too!

Teamwork makes the dream work:

• I seriously have no idea where I'd be without my fabulous team. They keep me motivated plus they do a great job with getting their tasks completed. 
• To any solo developer out there, I would highly recommend outsourcing something for your VN. Whether it's art, music, BG's, writing, programming, ANYTHING to reduce the burden. I promise, it's worth it.

Criticism will happen. And it's okay to be frustrated by it:

• For me, this is a bit of an ongoing struggle. It's a struggle to know what criticism to apply and what to ignore. Especially since I've been receiving mixed reviews.
  • A little bit of background on me as a person. I'm an engineer, by trade. I've learned to receive criticism really well when it comes to professional projects. Critique in my field is integral to ensuring people are kept safe and proper procedure is taken to manifest the best outcomes. I take criticism in stride for these kinds of projects.
  • Getting critique on a creative project is entirely different. I'm not joking when I say I've devoted nearly all my free time into this project for the past 9 months. I'm pouring my heart and soul (and lots of $$$) into this. Each character, setting, and story has bits and pieces of me integrated into the fabric of my writing.  Taking feedback on it is really challenging, because it's difficult to untangle my identity to this story. So when the story gets critiqued, I feels like I'm getting critiqued as a person.
    • I fully understand this is not a rational way to process criticism. But that's okay. As a human being, I'm under no obligation to be 100% rational 100% of the time. That's not how our brains work. It's important (and necessary) to process information logically and emotionally.
    • I'm getting better with it, but it's still challenging.  I had to learn to take breaks from the project. It was such a major focus of my life for so long that I neglected self-care, which only compounded the issue.
    • Also to anyone who says I'm being too sensitive... why don't you come back when you have 3K downloads and a handful of people tear apart your life's work. Then tell me how you feel 😜
• One of the more frustrating things about critique is negativity cognitive bias.
  • What I mean by this, is that often times, as humans, we tend to focus way more on the negative aspects of a piece of media than the positive.
  • Often times, negative reviews will be more detailed and thorough, while positive reviews will be vague. 
  • For example, if someone were to say "I disliked this character, and here's why..." I'll often get a detailed account about the disliked character and their undesirable qualities. However, from the same critiquer, I won't see praise for characters who were liked, and their respective desired qualities.
    • I find critique like this to be unbalanced (and in some cases, unfair). It's just as important to address positive attributes of a piece of media than to address only the negative attributes.
    • I have received a handful of good and balanced critiques, which I appreciate IMMENSELY. 
    •  All of this brings me to my next point...

Take pride in the things you didn't get criticized on:

• Due to the aforementioned negativity bias, things that don't receive criticism (good or bad) are often acceptable.
• There were a lot of things I was worried about getting critiqued on, and so far I haven't seen any feedback regarding it. Some examples:
  • I was worried people were going to find Chronicle's business model unbelievable or contrived. I'm glad I convinced you all that the business model of a cafe/venue/music store works!
  • I was worried folks were going to not enjoy the character designs (visually or literally). I haven't gotten any bad feedback about character design aside from the MC's horniness.
  • Sound design is apparently acceptable. I haven't received a lot of feedback regarding this particular topic, but that's a good sign! Soundscapes usually fade into the background and aren't a focus of the players' attention. When it's good, it blends right in and goes unnoticed. 
  • Everything from a programming standpoint is functional! I've had very little bug reports (outside of RenPy's occasional hiccups).
  • I was never expecting anyone to say this, but nobody has ever called my work lazy or uninspired. I'll take that in stride 😌.

First release will be far from the best, and that's a GOOD thing:

• I'm happy that I accomplished something as grand as writing the first chapter of a visual and publishing it. I certainly did my best, but that doesn't mean this is the best I'll ever do.
• I've already seen my writing improve tremendously over the past 9 months. I'm really excited to see how much more I'll improve once things really start to take off!

Itch marketing is more important than Twitter marketing:

• One thing I'm extremely grateful for is the detailed project analytics Itch provides. This has given me tremendous insight into who's looking at the novel and from where.
• This lovely Google Doc from Minoh has some really great marketing advice!
• I won't stop growing the ChoPro brand on Twitter, but I can't solely focus on it.
• Total side note, a little bit of marketing on FurAffinity wasn't a complete waste of time either.

And there you have it! All my silly thoughts haphazardly organized into bullet points :3. I may make another post like this after the release of Build 1 to put down some more of my thoughts.

That's all I have for now, take care y'all 💖