Forum - View topicThis Week in Games - Hack The Past
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Harleyquin
Posts: 2901 |
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Watched a video discussing Illusion's closure and chatter essentially boiled down to three issues:
1. Costs ballooned and revenues didn't keep up to maintain the company as a going concern. Probably the most likely reason, article already sourced other commentary specifically referring to this. 2. Litigation from copyright holders. Illusion's animation engine was/is a big driver of subculture 18+ homebrew works, which might have annoyed enough copyright holders to force legal action. The Rapeplay issue is old news as Steam continues to sell some of their more recent offerings post-dating Rapeplay, but in Japan falling foul of even their generous doujin-related laws might have contributed to costs. However I think this is the least likely reason as no reliable news pertaining to pending lawsuits can be sourced. 3. Declining motivation from the developer staff. Chatter elsewhere from localisers allegedly said the directors fired some key staff and it all spiralled downhill from there. Elsewhere comments about the game's stable said the peak of their output dates from 5-10 years go, with their most recent offerings being visually impressive but incredibly lacking in gameplay features as alluded to in this discussion thread. If their long-standing USP of stellar graphics no longer holds because of copycats and/or other creators seizing their thunder, then no backup plan with gameplay which keeps potential buyers interested is a doom spiral for any game company, let alone one in a niche industry on the decline for years. Even gacha games (From Hoyoverse to Nikke) nowadays have graphics which gave Illusion games from earlier decades a run for their money, so looking at them with a bias from their long history (30 years!) would have misled readers on just how far the marketplace has passed them by. Mods don't earn companies revenue as there are no royalty payments, so another example of a company failing to stay relevant as the marketplace changes. |
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Covnam
 Posts: 3703 |
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Still surprised they went with GU over the original, but maybe it was more of a rights issue?
Hope we can get it some day 
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Nyren
Posts: 705 |
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I'm saddened by Illusion's impending closure, but I could kind of see it coming. As others have mentioned, costs are definitely ballooning and adult games don't exactly have a massive fanbase. And as visually impressive as Koikatsu, Honey Select, and to an extent AI Shoujo were, AI Shoujo was the only one with any significant amount of gameplay. Honey Select boils down to creating female characters to have sex with, no work really required. And Koikatsu, as a spiritual successor to Artificial Academy, was somewhat lackluster. It dropped the darker elements of the simulation and even dropped the ability to play as any character other than a primary player character and you couldn't play as female characters. Not to mention customization of the male protagonist was extremely limited and even with mods it was less than ideal. Koikatsu Sunshine expanded the scope, but not by a lot and still had the same problems.
Artificial Academy 2 remains my favorite Illusion game because it just does so much. The fact that all characters are controllable, there can be evil characters who do truly evil things, there is a Teacher who is actively involved, actions do in fact have consequences, and the game pretty much runs on auto-pilot without the player pushing it in any given direction. Characters can form relationships, spread rumors about each other, etc. all on their own. The only thing I didn't like was the NPC's are omnipotent and know where any character is at a given time including the player. So if you wanted to go somewhere secluded with another character, it wasn't truly secluded, all that had to happen was an NPC decided to find the player, and they knew exactly where and ran there interrupting whatever you're doing. The only way to avoid this is to enter one of the rooms that only opens up when you have an NPC set to follow and no other characters can enter. A modern Artificial Academy 3 would be an absolutely fantastic thing and it's a shame that fans will have to make it now if it is ever to exist. |
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