Where’s the update?

Over the course of the past 3 years, I’ve established an update schedule – on the 1st and 15th days of every month, I upload a new build and a new YouTube video. Sometimes, I’m a day or two late, because I’m working on a very elaborate video. In fact, my most recent video was 5 days late! But now we’re 5 days past the 15th, and there hasn’t been any sign of activity…so, what’s going on?

While I was producing my previous video, I stopped checking my e-mail so that I could to spend as much time as possible working on the video. Once the video was finally complete, I discovered a mountain of unread e-mails waiting for me. It took me several days to get through them all – and by then, there simply wasn’t enough time to put together a cool build or video for the 15th.

When I realize that a video deadline is a few days away, but I don’t have a new big feature to show off, I try to think of something to make a video about. I might make a video about a feature I’m considering for the game, or talk about the origin of a character, or examine a game that can teach me how to improve Yandere Simulator. I would describe these as “forced” videos; they exist purely because I feel pressured to release videos twice per month – even when I’d rather be working on the game instead.

Many of these “forced” videos receive a very negative response; the LoveSick video is one example. I added “LoveSick Mode” to the game and made a video about it purely because I felt obligated to a maintain the tradition of two videos per month. However, the concept of LoveSick Mode was rejected by a large portion of the fanbase because it represents the opposite of the reason that the game caught your attention in the first place. If I wasn’t forcing myself maintain an arbitrary schedule, I wouldn’t have implemented such a dumb feature and angered the fanbase.

So – why does the two-videos-per-month schedule exist in the first place? It’s a tradition that dates back to 2014, when I first began working on the game. Very early in the game’s development, I posted threads about the game on a message board once per day to talk about my progress and ask for suggestions. Every one of these threads was incredibly popular, often reaching 500 replies in a single night! However, one day, someone warned me that people might eventually get sick of hearing about the game if I made threads about it once per day. They suggested that I should only post about the game once every 2 weeks to prevent people from getting sick of hearing about Yandere Sim. I thought this sounded like very wise advice, so I decided to limit my threads to the 1st and 15th day of every month. This eventually morphed into the tradition of uploading new builds and new videos on the 1st and 15th.

For a long time, it was very easy to meet these deadlines, because there were all sorts of features that I could put into the game very easily in less than 2 weeks. However, at this point in time, there is no more “low-hanging-fruit” – in other words, all of the features that remain to be put into the game require more than 2 weeks of work. This is what has led to a lot of “forced” videos over the past year.

It’s taken me a long time, but I’ve come to realize that these “forced” videos are only hurting the game’s development. These videos take away from development time, introduce concepts that many people aren’t interested in, and usually just wind up making the fanbase angry. It’s a lose-lose for everyone. That’s why I think I should probably abandon the 1st-and-15th schedule that I’ve been using up until now.

From now on, I’d like to upload videos only when I have something significant to show off – not when the date on the calendar reaches an arbitrary number. This might result in less videos being uploaded, but each video would be more significant. Alternatively, videos might actually be uploaded more frequently, but each one would be shorter and would focus on a single subject – just like the really old videos that you can find waaaaay back at the beginning of my channel.

EDIT: But, don’t worry, I could still write a blog post on the 1st or 15th of every month as filler material between videos, and perhaps provide screenshots / teasers of upcoming content!

At this point in time, it’s too early to say how things will turn out – but I hope that this blog post helps you understand why there hasn’t been a new build or video recently, and why things might change in the future.

(On that note, I might actually release a new build very soon, since a lot of bug fixes have piled up recently.)

Thank you for following the development of Yandere Simulator!