At OffKai, Panel 4 A Game for Your Oshi? – A Peek into Making Fan Games https://www.offkaiexpo.com/event/a-game-for-your-oshi-a-peek-into-making-fan-games/

• Presented by:
  • Team for Idol Showdown, free fan-made holo-live game.
  • Loose discord group of volunteers
  • Technically a company for legal reasons, but is actually more of a friend circle.
  • Selrev, Project Manager
  • Gogibahp: Previous sprite art lead
  • Brine: Senior QA tester, Main composer
  • BohemianRapCity: Sprite artist
• Vision
  • What does it take to make a successful fangame from scratch?
    • Is it gameplay, visuals, horniness?
    • The main thing is no matter how good the game is in your head, the only thing that matters is if it gets finished.
    • You need to manage your expectations. For example, Star Citizen has too high expectations and is not complete and has no scheduled release date.
  • Why make a fan game instead of an original game?
    • You don’t own the character, you can’t make money, your oshi could graduate while you are working
    • Common motivations include artistic vision, learning new skills, working with people who have similar interests, just for fun, to assemble a portfolio, or making something for a portfolio.
    • Your motivations change who you might want to work with.
  • Think about what kinds of games your oshi likes. How can you incorporate their character into the game to enhance it? How do you want your oshi to be represented?
  • Will your oshi actually play your game? Don’t expect them to, especially if it is not the kind of game they would like.
  • At the end of the day, your fangame is for the fans, not your oshi.
    • Your oshi are people too and do not have infinite time. They might only play it for one or two streams.
    • Fans will be able to give more time than your oshi ever could.
• Team
  • How do I find people willing to work for free, for a free project?
    • You need to find the right places to find people.
    • Go to places where people are already doing work like game jams.
    • Find existing fan projects and join them.
    • Find friend of a friend of a friend of a… (etc)
    • Go to conventions to meet people, like OffKai, Anime Boston, and PAX.
  • You need Leaders
    • It is important to have leaders who have the responsibility of making decisions.
    • Selrev is just sharing their experience here.
    • Got a Reddit dm after complaining about what different VtUber personas would be like in fighting games on Reddit, inviting them to join the project.
    • They tried doing something democratic at first, but no one knew what to do.
    • Was the only person to know both art and code, so made a presentation to organize things.
    • Assigned hard rules like which characters to use and who would make decisions.
    • People will leave the project. Some won’t be around all the time.
    • The people who stick around truly believe in the project and will help you make something special.
  • Conflict is inevitable.
    • Overcome differences through your oshi. push aside conflicts for your oshi!
    • However, this can backfire as well. conflicts can be really serious.
    • Idol Showdown had a conflict between picking which VTuber to use for the game’s Hololive ID (not sure what that is)
    • They resolved the conflict based on which character resonated the most with the design of the game.
    • Sometimes you need to make the decision to pick what works best for your game and not who your favorite oshi is.
  • Growing as a team
    • Everyone has different skill levels, which means there are different things everyone can learn.
    • Different skill leveks means that the feeling of growth will mot be equal.
    • Take advantage of the team setting to grow and do your best work
    • Work with your team to cover your weaknesses. A good sprite artist can work with a good animator who can work with a good programmer to get the entire character into the game.
• How to keep the project going?
  • Fangames seem cool, because there is no boss, no publisher, no profit or sales goal, and infinite time.
  • But your budget is motivation, because you will run out. You also need momentum.
  • The secret to making a game is to work on it. You’ll figure it out while you work on it. You don’t know what challenges you will encounter until you find them.
  • You can finish your game and make it better later.
  • Incremental progress that you can swe increases momentum, because it feels like things are happening. People want to be a part of something that is actually happening.
  • Make the game playable as soon as possible for people to play.
  • After 2 years, they found a lot of bugs and infinite stunlocks during their first beta test.
  • Despite all the bugs, people were playing the game and having fun.
  • After people started playing it, the work changed from just a project to a game.
  • After finishing the work, keep in contact with the people you worked with! Be very grateful, it is hard to find people who are like-minded and driven. You can make more cool things with them. These connections can last a lifetime.
• Q&A
  • Are you the only musician or just the lead one?
    • I’ve done most of the music for the latest update. I didnt do any music until next fest.
  • (clarification) How do you work with other musicians to ensure consistency in style and quality?
    • Sometimes it is really easy, and other times it can be really difficult. Idol showdown is able to manage because the soundtrack is pretty eclectic. For a more cohesive soundtrack, you need to set ground rules at the beginning to determine style.
  • For the animators, movesets are really important. What are your favorite moves that you made?
    • Selrev: The Coco meme grab.
    • Gogi: Fubuki blue fire punch up.
    • Brine: Pekora TNT jump infinite chain bug. Had the most fun with it.
    • Bohemian: Korone’s bat upward swing. It was polished and felt like a real thing.
  • How do you balance work and school and working on the fan project and also watching your oshi?
    • Selrev: Because we have a larger group, which let people adapt to availability. As long as there was enough people, others could take breaks.
    • Brine: Recommends deadlines, even if arbitrary.
    • Selrev: Deadlines force you to consider what to keep or cut.
  • In the very first version, how big was the roster and how feature complete was it?
    • Selrev: It had 8 characters but some characters were very incomplete.
  • How do you do UX testing in a fighting game, how characters feel to play? it seems really complicated.
    • Brine: Balance is really difficult. You need a lot of playtesters to play the game. We used playtest forms and interviews.
  • What is it like to work with Hololink?
    • Selrev: It had changed a lot. When we first worked with Holoindie, things were really different. It was pretty chill. They helped a lot with promotion and helped with voice lines once in a while.
  • What if your skills are underdeveloped? How can you get others to work on a project with you? To what degree do you need a good prototype? How do I avoid coming off as just an idea guy?
    • selrev: You need to keep trying, work on smaller non-dream project or join and existing one. Try and learn. If you keep working at it, you’ll get there.
  • How do you find your own voice in a fan project? How do you avoid thinking “I am just making shovel night but with my oshi”?
    • selrev: Try to make a game that gives value to people that don’t know anything about your oshi. Using an alternate universe can help avoid ip problems.
  • For solo dev work, do you have advice for getting motivation again?
    • Bohemian: You have to prioritize it. Even if it is just 10m every day, the key is consistency. Reserve time to work on it.
  • I am not a gamedev, but I am good at gaslighting people into making mods for me. We always get lost in the sauce when it comes to technical details like what engine to use and technical debt. Do you have any suggestions for how to deal with that?
    • selrev: You can only answer this question if you work on it yourself. Choosing your own engine is less of a risk than just not doing anything at all. You need to be able to get started — we actually used Godot at first.
    • Gogi: Pick an engine that is being actively developed on.
  • How do you regain energy to work on stuff?
    • Gogi: you need to rest and do something different before coming back.
  • When you specialize in a specific thing, how do you make something like a fangame as a solo dev before having anything to show?
    • Brine: I think you are giving composers too much credit. If you just ask, a composer will probably say yes. You don’t need to have too much to show.
    • selrev: See what you can do with what you do have.
  • After being in this project, how have your career aspirations changed?
    • Gogi: I am a software engineer (unsure if I heard this right)
    • Brine: I didnt want to work in games at first
    • Bohemkan: I had never worked on a game before
    • selrev: I am happy with the freeness of not having to be a professional software dev