A (long) open letter to those that have supported me along this journey

People of Patreon & my SumoTEAM,

As you know, I completed "My Sister, My Roommate" last week, and the reception has been... Mixed... to say the least. A lot of people didn’t like the way it ended and I appreciate all the feedback I’ve received so far.  In a weird way, I'm glad it got such a negative reaction because I had no idea just how much everyone was invested in these characters.  And I'm not sure I would have known how much people cared if everyone didn't hate the ending as much.  Maybe I'm just looking on the bright side a little too much, but that's what I'm working with right now.  So, I do want to thank everyone for their passion and dedication to these characters that I've created, as well as the (mostly) civil discussion that followed the release of the game.

As Marshall Field famously said "The customer is always right".  It doesn't mean what a lot of people think it means.  He is basically saying that the market will decide if a product/service/store sucks or not. If everyone tells you that your business sucks, then it sucks.  You could think you have the best idea in the world, but it no one buys it, then it's not a good idea. I feel like the market has told me loud and clear over the last few days that the ending I gave to MSMR was not a good idea.

I wanted to address a couple things:

(1) - I had this ending mapped out since I started the game.  A lot of aspects of the game changed early on during development, but the Molly ending was always my first plan.  Originally, I had a couple potential other love interests planned (Cory & Jessica), but the branching and programming of that honestly got to be too much for this first time developer that was learning coding on the fly, so I quickly reduced Jessica's role and added in a bi-sexual partner for Cory, who was also her Volleyball partner, Chelsea. I scrapped my original idea of Gentleman/Deviant Points in favor of letting players make decisions in each scenario.  I also added in another side character, Skylar, that I really really liked.  I liked her so much that I reduced Jessica's role even further and had Skylar do a lot of the things I was originally going to have Jessica do.  More on Skylar later.

(2) Believe it or not, I've had the entire game more or less set in stone since V.5 or V.6.  Contrary to what some people are speculating, I didn't wrap this up because I got bored or wanted to move on from MSMR.  There's a public post I made in October 2018 where I said this would be wrapped up at V.15 and at that point, I'd probably known for months.  I've had a spreadsheet with the plot bulletpoints planned since I started the game.  Some details changed along the way, but the entire story had been decided on months and months ago.

Now to address a couple elephants in the room:  

Why did the ending disappoint so many people?

No Nikki ending.

My biggest regret is telling everyone, early in development, that Nikki was not going to be a love interest.  By doing that, I feel like I really painted myself into a corner.  I never had anything against a Nikki ending, other than nearly every single childhood friend* game had that same ending and I was trying to do something different.  I was thinking people would like to play something else.  Unfortunately, because of the many games that existed before mine, people came to expect a Nikki ending.  And I told them it wasn't going to happen because it wasn’t ever planned on happening.  And more people asked, and I would say over and over again, it wasn't going happen.  I doubled, tripled, quadrupled down of this, nearly every single time.  The more people asked, the more I denied that it would happen.  And by the end, I was saying no because I didn't want to (a) make it seem like I had been lying to the people that have been supporting me along the way and (b) I didn't want to be "bullied" into changing the game from what I originally planned, even though that's the direction the characters seemed to be naturally heading in. Some could even say I bullied myself into keeping the “No Nikki Ending” just because I’m a stubborn son of bitch.  The fact of the matter is that I could have included a Nikki ending, or at least one where she is somehow a "thruple" with Molly and Taylor. There’s a lot I could have done differently.  I just felt like I had committed so hard to the original ending I planned that I wasn't going to budge.  And that was probably a mistake.

Why Molly or nothing?

I mapped this out on a forum post, but for those that didn't see.  Here was my thought process:

Cory wasn’t going to be good happy ending for Taylor. They are too different and Taylor lies to her constantly, saying what he thinks she wants to hear. That is not the basis of a good relationship.
Chelsea was more attracted to Cory than she was Taylor. She saw Taylor as a way to get closer to Cory. She knows the Cory likes Taylor and thinks that maybe bringing the three of them together will make her and Cory closer. If Taylor has a threesome with C&C, that leads to C&C opening up their relationship, getting a lot closer, and ultimately winning a Gold Medal in the Olympics because they are now more in sync than they’ve ever been.
Mrs. Sollain was never going to happen long term. Taylor and her are at two very different points in their lives. Besides, Taylor doesn’t even know her first name!
Ashley is in jail and conjugal visits are hard. Besides, Taylor could never be a vegan and that’s what Ashley was looking for.  
Jessica kind of fell of the face of the earth once I introduced Skylar, like I mentioned, Skylar took a lot of what would have been Jessica's scenes.  So, to give Jessica an ending with Taylor would not have made any sense, but she deserves to be happy, so her and D'Brickashaw ended up together. And the two of them dating helps to explain why Taylor hasn’t seen her in a long time.
Skylar may have been a decent option, but her and Taylor barely spent any time together, actually getting to know each other. It was always they run into each other and hook up. Not a bad thing, but certainly not enough base a “they lived happily ever after” scenario on.  Sarah is in a similar boat that Skylar is. She’s gorgeous and there could have maybe potential there, but they’ve had even less interaction than Taylor and Skylar. Giving them an ending based on their interactions would make less sense than Molly pulling an easel out of her purse.

You're the author Sumodeine - Why didn't you write Skylar or Sarah to have bigger roles??  They both certainly could have been written to have a better relationship with Taylor.

Because I like both of them too much.  I may regret putting this out there, into the universe, but a few updates ago, I started think about what I was going to do once MSMR was completed.  And I had these two characters that I really, really like but we don't know much about either of them.  So, when I decided my next game was going to be set in the same universe, I decided I wanted to include some of the same characters, as well as new ones.  I was essentially going to keep Skylar and Sarah's character development on ice until my next game, where I could really give them more of a central role, instead of being a couple of side characters.  Because of this, I didn't want to give either of them a happy ending with Taylor, because then I couldn't really make either one a love interest in my next game. Perhaps that wasn’t fair to Taylor or to those that wanted more out of them now, but in I thought I was doing what was best long term. And I thought people may be more excited about my next release if it was going to feature a few characters from this game.

I cheated on Molly and then got a depressing ending.  WTF?

Yeah.  That may have been a little too harsh.  I wanted there to be consequences if Taylor didn't remain faithful to the one person that asked him to be in a relationship in the game.  At the time, I figured people would just load a save from before the relationship started and play it again to see the "good" Molly ending.  In hindsight, I should've done something a little bit different where Taylor doesn't end up an outcast.

I didn't want a relationship with Molly, so in the end I got nothing?

Again, this was probably a bit harsh.  Even given the corner I painted myself into with the other characters, there's certainly other options I could have done.  A yet to be seen girl, or some sort of combination or Chelsea/Cory, Mrs. S, or even trying to work it out with Ashley.  Really, I probably should have presented those options, but I had tunnel vision when writing and none of those were really logical for me.  However, logic doesn't apply to human emotion.  And at the time I was thinking there were three potential endings for Taylor (1) good with Molly (2) neutral without Molly where they stay friends and (3) bad without Molly where she leaves bc Taylor cheated.

Why do Cory & Chelsea win the Gold Medal only if I have a threesome with them?

It’s the butterfly effect. C&C get closer because of the threesome and become better teammates. They learn how to communicate better and that immensely helps them as a team. Team chemistry is huge in volleyball, and C&C have it in spades after the threesome.

Why TF is Nikki a cat lady at the end?

Similar to the cheating scenario, I wanted there to be consequences if the player said he wouldn't want Nikki to be happy if she couldn't be with him.  Again, I probably took that one a bit too far.

Nikki got married to someone?  Who TF is Marc???

This is the Nikki happy ending. Or at least the ending I intended to be happy.  We don't know much about Marc because I didn't want to add a new dude for Nikki into Taylor's story.  We know he's a nice guy, that is a virgin, and he treats Nikki right.  The intention of Marc is to be the opposite of Nikki, and almost a male version of Molly for her.  Up until meeting Marc, Nikki has only been with people that use her for her body, other than Taylor.  Marc likes Nikki for who she is, not because she puts out.  It's supposed to show the growth that Nikki experienced with Taylor.  She now has self-worth and doesn't think she needs to have sex with someone for them to want to date her.  At least that was the intention.  

So, where do you go from here, Sumodeine?

Well, I never set out to disappoint an entire fanbase.  That's not good for me as I make future games, and more importantly, it sucks to know that so many people hated the ending I wrote.  I wanted to make a game that people would love!  Seeing person after person disappointed in what I put so much effort into was really, really difficult.  I feel like I built up a lot of trust and credibility over the last 2 years and after this release I also feel like I squandered a lot of it away.  So, I’m going to do something that may piss off some people, but right now, I think it is also in the best interest of the story. I’m going to do something that I’m not sure any adult game dev has ever done after finishing a game: I’m going to say that game is now back to being an unfinished work in progress.

So, here's what I'm going to do over the next couple months:
(1) Re-do all of my very early game renders.  They are bad and I've wanted to do that for a long time.  This will take some time, but it will make the game feel like a more complete package.

(2) Add more story detail to what happened during the three month time jump between Ashley's arrest and the trial.  That was better in my head than it was in reality.  This can also help set up for my next task...

(3) And finally, I'm going to add another few endings that will hopefully not be as disappointing to those that supported me while I've been developing this game.

(4) And maybe along the way, I'll try to get the game ready for a Steam release. If that happens, I may need a new name for the game, but we can cross that bridge when we get there.

By doing this, I really really hope that I'm not alienating those people that liked the ending I wrote or those that supported me and defended my endings over the last couple days. I don’t plan on taking away the good ending, but I will had a couple other options as well. That’s the plan right now, at least.

Admitting I messed up isn't an easy thing to do, but it's very obvious to me that I should have done things differently.  I was so caught up in finishing the story I planned, I wasn't thinking about the story this game had become.  I really hope by doing this, I can build back your confidence in my ability to deliver a great story.

I hope that you all continue to follow the progress of the game, because it's not done yet in other words… https://youtu.be/HHv95AeysNo 

It's time to get back to work! Version 2.0 is officially in the works!

Best,

Sumodeine