Seat of Power – A WW2 VN (All Ages) (DRAMA/POLITICS)

[Barzini]

The main goal of this thread is to seek feedback - The visual novel team is currently engaged in discussion if a happy ending, is truly necessary in writing. As I am a really evil nice person, all endings that I have written are tragic and the most bittersweet one is still described as... Tragic.

May I hear from the community, do you feel exasperated at a game when you realise that all endings are sad and there is truly no "Happily ever after" ending?



Rejoice! Afterthought Studios is currently working on a Visual Novel set in the era of the Second World War, where you play as different members of the Yukimura family that owns a zaibatsu, or in today’s terms, a conglomerate.

Inspired by modern day corporations from the war that still exist today, along with the influence that these corporations still possess today, Seat of Power is a story that challenges the player to do what may not be morally appropriate and decisions you make will affect the Yukimura family and the Yukimura Corporation.

Will you choose to protect the Yukimura Corporation or the Yukimura family? Is it the business before Japan or the family before your nation?

Or does loyalty to the nation come first?



Afterthought Studios will update, as frequent as possible, on our official Facebook Page as well as Twitter account. We will also actively engage in discussions in forums such as Lemma Soft Forums in which we would also create a topic for this visual novel of ours that we are proud to show off.

Take a look the early sketches that Tomtato has made…



And a sketch of an army base from resident artist, Lace...



And some of the music that our resident musician, Gustavo has churned out…

https://soundcloud.com/afterthought-studios/tracks

We’ll be keeping you posted with more and more updates as our production goes full speed ahead!



The idea of the Visual Novel was started by Barzini, who then decided to take it a step forward and try to put it into fruition with whatever little resources he had, throwing composers, sound effects personnel, the programmer, the artist, an editor and himself into the fray. The community of lemmasoft has also been most helpful in helping out, giving advice as well as a providing a good area of networking with other like-minded visual novel artists, writers and many others.

Gradually, as the story shaped up, Afterthought Studios find itself looking at the story of a family that is torn between greed, power and fanaticism.
In the end, is doing the right thing, always the right thing to do?



Writer & Founder
• Barzini

Social Media Manager
• Amanda

Composers
• Gustavo Coutinho
• David Su

Artist
• Tomtato (http://aradied.deviantart.com/)
• Shoji Amasawa of PaperDoor Studios (We thank you once again for your beautiful logo) (http://shojiamasawa.deviantart.com/)
• Lace (http://lace-the-disgrace.tumblr.com/)

Programmer
• Tobias Schwarz

Sound Effects
• Cindy Wu

Editor
• Alexander

Executive Producer
• Kato (A most sincere thank you for the help you have rendered so far)



Do keep an eye out – There may be additional opportunities!



For all enquiries, please send your email to afterthoughtstudios9@gmail.com

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Aftertho ... ef=tn_tnmn

Twitter Account: @afterthoughtVN

Tumblr Account: http://letsafterthoughtstudios.tumblr.com

[MoonStar]

Looks great. War and politics was always among my favorite along with some mecha hence why my favorite anime of that genre is code geas.

[laiktail]

Love the initial sketches and the plot sounds like it has a ton of potential.

Now, on to the main question - should your VN have a happy ending?

From a story point of view, it will be yes if the strength of the story comes from a happy ending, and no of the strength of the story comes from tragedy.

From a marketing point of view, a resounding yes. I know it's gonna be anathema to writers who want to write the story from their unadulterated-by-marketing heart, but I say this not without objective reason.

It has been statistically proven that people are most likely to share things that either make them laugh or make them angry, but moreso on the laugh side. Furthermore, happiness trumps sadness by loads when it comes to the likelihood of someone sharing something by word or mouth. The reason for laughter and anger being the greatest triggers is they put you into a "high arousal" state where you're more likely to take action. As for the happiness thing, it's by merit of people wanting to share happiness with other people rather than sadness. If you're interested in reading more about the concept and key components of virality, definitely check out the book 'Contagious' (can't remember the author), which is where I remember this from.

There is an astoundingly higher proportion of happy endings in Hollywood for the same reason. If people feel like crap at the end of your novel, they can mistakenly attribute it to your novel being bad itself.

Proponents of the tragic ending might say, "but what about [insert beautifully written tragic piece here]?" You'll notice that the ending is extremely powerful, but that's because of the strength of what came before it. A tragedy will still succeed if it's good enough. I can think of the anime AnoHana and Code Geass as fantastic examples of tragic ending done well, and they are memorable for their endings. The ending of Hemingway's A Farewell To Arms is downright depressing. They're all amazing. It's.just harder for the reader to bear than a happy ending. It's also harder to gain traction via word of mouth.

Just my two cents, hope the emphasis on marketing is not too unpalatable as ultimately everyone just wants to read or write a great story.

[ShojiAmasawa]

Some stories, just as real life, can have no happy endings. As the great singer, Morrissey, said ― People rarely die on a ferris wheel in a fit of hysterics. So, hats off to that alone! World War II was not the cheeriest time in human history, after all.

I will definitely keep my eye on this one. The art and concept alone are intriguing, and I love it when someone steps forward to do something completely new like this.

And yes, I had a lot of fun designing the logo for this!

[Barzini]

Thank you so much for the kind feedback, all of you! My main concern has always been to appeal to my readers' sense of "Good Ending" which can be quite tough!

[Barzini]

Updated with our tumblr link above!

Do follow it for the latest news and information!

[Barzini]

Updated with a CG of an army base!

[TheForeverLoneWolf]

I've only just discovered this, and now I can't wait to see it all the way through. I love stories of tragedy, and I love stories of war - the mending of both into one story from such a unique point of view intrigues me to say the least.

My only complaint is that your social media is somewhat lacking, but smaller studios sometimes can't spare the time nor effort for such things. Especially if your production time is slower than the average big name studio, as you simply just don't have enough content to spare without giving away key information about your plot or concept.

Anyways, I am sincerely looking forward for any more updates from your studio.

[SinaAzad]

Oh , Im very happy to discover this visual novel ! im also going to subscribe to this topic !
Politics , war , tragedy ? My life is complete ! by the way , is that a type 3 Chi-nu in your logo ?