(Bonus Post) How it’s Done: Finding Your Feet!

Hey-hey, how’s our Cadre of Cuddlers doing this Friday? Given the weekend is on the verge of falling into our laps, y’all feel more like the Band of Bangers, eh? All pumped up and ready for fun? Ha! Keep it sexy and kick of the next two days of sweet freedom with a little shot of wildness, why not! Let’s get into it then, as we’ve got plenty to get you thinkin’ today!

Now now, we’re being rather silly now aren’t we? Why shouldn’t we, it’s rare we have company on one of our posts, besides you the reader of it all… That’s right, we’re not alone on this one. A budding creator by the name of Z-Wave his here with us this time, and this post is at its heart, the spilling out of some of our recent private discussions into a hopefully helpful ‘How it’s done’ for the public to see. But hold up, before we get into that we need to rewind the tapes and give a little context. So then, here we go!

For those who don’t know, Z-Wave is a fellow dev working on a 2D game Power Rangers themed game, Powered Strangers. He’s been at it oh, about 6 months now, and it’s now time to move on from the testing of the lewd, warm waters and take the dive into true development with a splash! In that vein, Z decided to seek out some advice from the tried and tested people out there, which flatteringly brought him to us. Ain’t that nice? Sure is! With two years behind us, we might just have a thing or two to say that can lend a hand to those setting out with their own ideas. A few questions and answers flew back and forth, and after all that we thought we might just have some interesting info that y’all might just as helpful, inspiring creator or no! So then, here’s what we’ve got to say today, have at it!

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Z-Wave: “How do you get the word out about your creations? What are the most important lessons you’ve learned from your experiences?”

beWilder: The simple response to the first part of this one is naming of names, for promo reasons. It’s unfortunate, but even things created for artistic and entertainment sake have to compete like a business in part, if only to catch the eye. From there you can settle back into showing off the good stuff you pour your heart into, but first you can’t be naïve, and you’ve got to do some marketing. Your page is your own private space to do what’s important to you so make it you’re first point of call and your content’s hub, you can use it to show exactly who you are without interference so make it the place to visit you, always give people reason to go there directly instead of get their news second hand elsewhere. Discord is also a great backup to cover the things a webpage isn’t designed for, specifically real time chatter with the fans. We make sure to be active and around, which is all you can be, so it’s up to the fans to make the most of that direct connection, but it’s definitely worth doing. Reddit is good too, but it’s not where you want to spend your life, as are traditional forum sites like AnimeSharing, they take a lot of time to stand out from the noise of all the topics going on and so you have to use your time wisely or you’ll get little done. DeviantArt is a nice way to keep your art together in a gallery and display your best work there as well as find communities of creators like you, but that’s also the problem, they are creators too. They are there to get their stuff seen and a large share of people on creator specific sites are not there to listen to you. Make the connections that are helpful but don’t wallow.

The lessons we’ve learned along the way are another important point. We could write a book on this topic alone, and much like the same kind of books that would accompany it on the shelves of the world, it would go unread and be mostly nonsense. These things usually are. The one piece of advice we would give though, the same advice that was given to us and we learned the hard way even still, it would be this: “Things come in waves, in big highs and deep lows. Don’t follow the rollercoaster, if you do you’ll burn out emotionally, you’ll tire. Keep your attitude, your eagerness, your very drive consistent… and keep it a few notches above baseline excitement”. What we are saying there is don’t flip out when you see a good compliment appear, don’t fret when you get criticism. Take each as they come, deal with them on the merits and keep the passions burning, but don’t boil over or you’ll fall out of step with the progress you are making and that will be the thing that makes you sour on your own efforts. Worked 24/7 for 3 months straight to put up amazing versions 1-3? Only seeing a few plays and the odd high five for the effort? You can see it can quickly seem it’s not worth the trouble, but progress will never come proportionally to effort in real time, it always lags behind. Get worried by some perceived cause and effect between what you do today and how people react? You can’t know why people do what they do most to the time so questioning every move you make will only tire and bum you out. So like we said, keep the spirits up, keep working at it, and keep looking to the larger picture, you’ll last longer that way, and lasting is the best way to make something worthwhile.

Ok so, still with us? Good stuff! So then, bring on the next question and get into something juicier, and something those more interested in the entertainment than ‘the biz’ will enjoy!

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Z-Wave: “How do you give your characters distinct personalities? Aside from simply using different keywords in their speech I mean…

beWilder: There’s no right or wrong answer on this one, it’s a case of whatever works for you as the creator. One thing that inarguable helps though is information and lots of it. The more you know about a character, the better you can judge how they’d act in whatever situations you put them in, and in what cases they are likely to buck the expectations of them. To get the ball rolling it can help to start with an archetype as a frame (a bad girl, a family woman, or a fun loving teen to point to particular few types) and then a twist to mix them up and create depth (a bad girl trying to be better, a family woman losing her family, a fun loving teen with a sociopathic bent). After that, just make shit up… seriously. You’re creating something from nothing, a character with a life’s experience who in reality has never existed, so without something behind them to both create and satisfy curiosity you won’t captivate, so get to it. Think up details to the character, both big and small, and don’t forget to have flaws in there too! What music do they like, if any? What odd hobbies, talents and/or behaviours do they have? Where did they pick them up? Where were they born and how did they get to where the game is, or why did they stay there from the beginning? Who are the most important people to them and why? Just make up a lot of this stuff and do your best to keep them consistent, and notably different to other people in their vicinity. Those titbits will form a deeper personality and from there you can almost get the character to start telling you about themselves. Links form, and that distinct personality will come to the front.

Here’s a bonus little exercise that we particularly like to run that may also help. Once you have core cast, the likes of NTR’s Noemi, Kriem, Frankie and Kelsey as an example, or even the main archetypes you’d like to explore put together, imagine them all sitting down on a daytime talk show. Put them facing each other around a round table in your mind, then give them something to discuss, like a key theme of your game’s story. Let their reactions flow unfiltered and see where you end up. After posing the question, who speaks up first? Who gets the most animated over the topic while who keeps a level head? Which of them agree with each other, and which are at each other’s throats? We find this is a great way to flush out the motivations of characters, as well as points of dramatic contention too. Can you find at least one area/topic of common ground between each of the personalities? What makes such strange bedfellows agree? That’s a good place to explore on each of them. Can you point to something that will cause a fight between any pair? Those divisions cause drama and excitement, so how can you use that? In the end, if you can look at your group and think that they in many ways belong alongside each other, and yet you find it unlikely they’d ever find a way to come together without your game’s premise… that’s when you know you have very fertile ground to explore for each of them. All that’s left is to pull it out of them as you go, and that’s your part to play.

Go on, give it a good try, seriously. Don’t blame us if you fall in love with some of them though! Alrighty, one last question for now! Hit it Z!

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Z-Wave: “How far do you plan out your games? Months in advance or roll with it on the fly?”

beWilder: Well, this one is also a more subjective way of doing things, and even we have a bit of a moving target in our own efforts too since both our major projects are managed by a different one of us. In general though, yes, we plan pretty far out in advance in as many respects as we can. What’s one of the biggest criticism of Adult Games’ design these days? Pacing is not respected and after rushing too far into things you’ve nowhere to back up. It quickly becomes how to get everyone to fuck everyone else in every way possible just for new things to happen. That’s especially true for Female Protag games, and you can’t do good pacing without planning. For the example of Agents of Heels, we have our main story points all mapped out, the key things that fuel the intrigue and the story so that all the questions we’ve raised can be answered, future beWilderverse threads that spawn from AoH have solid ground to spring from, and even potential prequel stories all have their pieces to add to our world. What we don’t have mapped out to a ‘T’ is exactly what ways scenes develop and how those bits of information drop, and how our girl’s different paths twist in the wind. NTR is almost the opposite, where Spook has the time to do more than just planning, the scenes are written months, at times almost a year in advance in some places, and what isn’t planned out that far is which paths get action for each version. That is as much dictated by the art time budget and so that’s the one thing that caps our versions content at this point.

We find that when your building something to last, and something that has far reaching potential, you’ve got to be on top of it all, so you do it justice. Knowing what assets you’ll need aside (and that’s a very serious point to consider on a bootstrap budget), if you just plod from storypoint to storypoint with no long term vision, you’ll slip into a rabbit hole and tie up in knots, not even seeing potentially better stories you could have told. There is always room to tweak scenes in response to player feedback, gameplay and code can be whipped into shape along the way too, but you can’t prop up mal-prepared content once it’s gone out nearly as easily so it’s important to put the best foot forward in the places that need it. How many times have you seen a game’s engine improve? A patch or a DLC that adds better or clears out bad features? Now how many have you seen a story be retconned or rewritten in large part and still stuck with the game? You can count them on one hand, can’t you? With that we rest our case.

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And so, that’s about all we’ve got to say! Well, for right now that is. Better let y’all absorb all that before we roll on with more’n’more, that is, if that’s something y’all would like to hear? So, what do you think, are you a little more pumped to go get your idea off the ground? Feel like you’ve seen behind the curtain a little bit? Enjoy the palace intrigue of those in the practice of making porn games? We sure do hope it’s been worth the read which ever it is! We’ll be back next week with plenty of news and things to get excited about, you’ll see for yourself soon enough, but before all that the weekend starts now and we’re ready to party it up Discord style! Oh, and don’t forget to give Noemi a good visit, now that her v0.2 has gone public! Every trip to see her is quite the treat!

Be all worked up and beWilder!