Road to Alpha 1! (Blog #6)

Hey everybody, hope you're all having a great Friday B)

This blog will be quite long, as I'll be answering questions from the previous blog, and then going into some personal thoughts about the community, Alpha 1, and Fatsona at large at the end. This blog will also be set to public, since it felt weird to gatekeep the personal thoughts at the end.

AMA

What made you start creating fatsona and why specifically this ip?

It was very natural, it's hard to put a pin on what specifically incited the idea. I've always wanted to create games, and as things fell more and more into place for me to become a full time kink artist, it just made sense to push for something large. At the time I was very fresh off of playing Persona 5 and falling deeply in love with the world and characters, and it really inspired my imagination. As I said, hard to put a pin on it, but it felt like the right thing to start doing.

What do you feel has been the most 'worth it' aspect of developing Alpha 1? What was the biggest pain in the ass to design?

They kind of go hand in hand, actually! The harder something is, the more rewarding/worth it it becomes to see it through. A couple examples that come to mind is Ann and Futaba's timeskip design and render. For both of them, I had reached a "finished" 1st stage render, only to have to redo or redesign huge portions of it due to either lack of satisfaction or feedback. There's actually a couple examples of this happening as well for the gameplay side of it, having to redo stuff never feels great but It always ends up better so it's hard to look at it wholly negatively. Ooh, Ann also has like a dozen or so renders to accommodate all her outfits, which was very tricky! If I had to pick 1 answer for each, though...

Most worth it: The whole process of working with others on the vocal tracks. From directing the music guy, to writing the lyrics, to working closely with the singer... It was a huge leap out of my comfort zone, but few things make me more excited for the potential of Fatsona than the songs :D Working with others tends to be risky and rewarding and uniquely challenging. Honorable mention is the creation of Nym and the greater narrative of Fatsona with Kitshock, but because a majority of that wont be seen in Alpha 1, I think the songs are a bit more accurate of an answer.

Biggest pain in the ass: Victoria's render, which went through almost 2 years of constant iteration... And I'm still not 100% about it. I think it's the hair, LOL. Victoria deserves the best... Ughh.

What are you most excited about with this process?

Finally releasing it to all of you guys, giving a glimpse at what I'm kinda reaching for and the efficacy I'm pushing this project. It's a heart turning anxious-excitement like I'm about to perform on stage or something... I'll admit that the previous builds of this game were kind of sloppy in comparison to Alpha 1, so I really want to exceed that expectation and make people genuinely excited to see the final vision of this game gradually come to light.

How much do you think the balance between the fetish and Game content should be overall? For fatsona and other games?

It definitely depends on the game. For some games, it might be best to keep gameplay center stage, and compliment it with fetish stuff- Hackweight is a good example. The gameloop of Hackweight is very attention grabbing, and if I really pumped up the fetish content during the main game loop, it would feel out of whack. I think that generally speaking, the game should never forget what it is and it's demographic though, even if there are segments much more focused on gameplay and sometimes not even directly relating to fetish content. This being said, the game should still be fun and engaging, and for the case of Fatsona, should feature pretty deep systems and interesting gameplay quirks to justify how long the story runs in tangent to gameplay.

At a glance, Fatsona is a little heavy handed on the fetish content, each character has almost an hour of fetish story and multiple weight gain renders, as well as a lot of other special kinky secrets I'm not quite ready to spoil yet... Yet even with this, the game is being written and directed in such a way that will hopefully lead to more deep story and gameplay moments that elevate itself beyond dumb smut. The story I want to tell with Fatsona is in my opinion a pretty important one for this community, and I hope that can find a balance with the fetishy side of it as well. Not necessarily the gameplay/fetish balance in the original question, but felt relevant to bring up!

How many updates until mommy makoto??????

Makoto will likely be reserved for the final game, but she is the next character I'm going to be personally writing for :D

I only plan there to be one more Alpha build after Alpha 1, as to not dig too deep into the story envisioned for the final game. Having to replay Alpha characters in the final release would get extremely old... lol

What should fans be most excited for in the next updated, officially announced or not?

Well... the most exciting addition is something I will not be sharing~ :P

Though, I think fans of Persona will most enjoy seeing where Haru, Ann, Futaba, and Chihaya's stories and characterization play out. Personally I'm very excited to see people's reactions to the new breakout gameplay, especially those who have played the earlier versions of the game.

How are you/the chickens/ms metrack?

I'm pretty good! I go into a bit more detail below but it's been a bit stressful working on Fatsona... but I still can't complain. I get to draw bellies and listen to cool music all day, my life is pretty good. The chickens are doing pretty good too, we unfortunately lost our 2 year old Mimi to sickness a couple weeks ago, and because she was the last of the original flock it was pretty sad to see. However, she inspired a lot of love and passion for chickens within me, and her life really did matter. All I can do now is my best for the legacy she left behind <3

Ms.Metrack is good! She is a total treatler, and I HAD to buy her nutty butty, funyuns, hot cheetos, sprite, and honey buns today. If I didn't do it, she was gonna slash my tires!

will nym be in the game

OK!

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Personal thoughts

This past week, a decently large artist deleted their account over being ousted by some pretty damning allegations. Another couple artists were hacked, and their accounts were compromised for a while. Beyond this past week, there's constant pressure from deviantart, twitter, and the internet at large pushing against this kind of art. There's drama and fighting within close art communities. There's garbage AI junk infiltrating every corner of these spaces. There's scandals artists get unfortunately involved in. There's account swapping, there's harassment, there's genuine shady dealings. I've been in this space for years, and I'm deeply familiar with all the ugliest aspects of it... But the most horrible and quiet ache in this community, an ache that is much deeper than the dreadful things that come from online communities- is self hate.

It may be dull, it may be semi-ironic, it may not even be visible when it happens; but so many people in this community harbor this. It's a hatred of the fetish. It's a guilt, a quiet hand that guides them into a self loathing for this. All the countless times "Why do I like this" and "I'm such a degenerate" cross the minds of people in this community make my heart break. It is equally sad to see people, who engage in this community almost daily, will distance themselves from ever truly opening their heart to the idea that this can be more than something self-indulgent and sinful.

It can be truly beautiful. I want you to remember that.

There are times self doubt and relationship struggles will pin this kink down under guilt, shame, and hatred. It's ok to have struggles, but it's not ok to suffer. Ask yourself if there's anything in your life you can do to acknowledge and improve your relationship with this part of yourself.

Even if you think this is too serious of a take to have on it, even if you can't fully disregard shame, even if you might disagree- I will try to illuminate the beauty and intimacy of the kink, and I will always try to glorify and empower the people in our community. We all share this often very sensitive, personal, and private part of ourselves with each other. Even through the veil of anonymity and aliases, I've made lifelong friends through this community. There's an automatic relatability and understanding that comes with sharing something so personal with others, and I encourage you guys to cherish that and see it that way too.

As I mentioned in the first blog, Fatsona is much more than stupid smut to me. Maybe it won't be much more than sex appeal in Alpha 1, but my hope is that the final version of this game can be an important expression of this kink and represent the nuance and delicacy it has that is often ignored. There's been many times I've been moved to tears putting together these character's stories, and I hope it's possible to make a game that is equally appealing to the eyes and the soul.

If you can't tell, this game is very personal to me. It's a bit of a unique challenge, dishing out parts of this whole, when having such lofty imagination and full hearts for it. Alpha 1 is this serving of it, and it's almost impossible to express everything I want this project to amount to within this build. Recent work has been pushing the bar higher, implying more, trying to give people a genuine scope-out of where my heads' at, but it's a unique challenge. It's this kind of ethereal thing, quantifying dreams and getting them ready for a storefront. I'm using extremely dramatic language here, but I just really want to come across that this is a much bigger deal than anything that's come before it for my account. I want it to live up to my self expectation, and more importantly, your expectations. I think it is, and I think it will, but it is still this sort of strange and nebulous thing to work on.

I'll admit, the gravity of Alpha 1 is kind of daunting to me, and is putting me under a lot of stress. It's the stress of working on something for literally 3 years and finally having to finish it up. It's the stress of having hard dates of times I can't work on it, creating lines in the sand that will halt my momentum and make people more impatient unless I can show up for it. I'm kind of pushing to get a tight deadline, and cutting corners where I can to make it even doable. My sleep schedule is a mess, constantly staying up until 8-9am to work on stuff. My room is a mess, energy shots everywhere, I've not made my bed in a couple weeks. I've been a lot more isolated, not really hanging out with anyone or talking to Ms.Metrack much. I'm not eating much and I'm running very thin on food. I may be making it sound worse than it is, it's not like i'm dying or anything, but it is an unfortunate repercussion of having to dedicate almost all my time to the update. I'm staying optimistic through it all though and really am pushing so fucking hard to get this done. I'm not giving up hope and I know that self doubt is the last thing I need right now. This all being said... it might not be possible to get done in the time I have. I won't know until I get there, maybe there's still more corners I can cut, but I definitely am feeling like the light at the end of the tunnel might be just out of reach.

I'm going to keep on pushing and keep on trying, because this project deserves it so much. With that, here's kinda what I'm working with for dates:
June 21st- I leave for a week. This is what I'm really pushing for
July 4th- I will have a little more time to work on it and finish it up, and it would be "Nymdependence day" - If the update is just a little short on June 21st, It'll be July 4th
July 24th- I leave for another week. If the update has some unexpected hurdles, or if I want it to be a less sloppy launch, it'll be July 24th.

I hate doing dates because I haven't gotten them right before, but It's at a point where I can kinda share this internal range because they are quite rigid. I still wont be able to announce one of these as a release date until next week, since it's at a point where 21st release is maybe possible... If it is possible, it will be done, I think is the best way I can put it.

That's pretty much all I have to say. I can talk about Fatsona endlessly, but I figured a bit more of a personal insight would be a bit more cathartic to put down while I continue to try my best to deliver this update. Thank you for reading if you did, and thank you for the support. I love you guys :) - Metrack