Aileen: 0:02
Carlos Valdez, Senior Writer and Lead Editor of Yangyang Mobile, joins us to share how they are creating successful story rich games at a time when attention spans are short and difficult to hold. Yangyang Mobile is the studio behind horror visual novel The Letter and other graphic novel games including Saint Maker, Perfect Gold, Love Esquire, and High Times. Hi Carlos!
Carlos: 0:25
Hello, nice to meet you. Hello everybody.
Aileen: 0:28
Hi, thank you for being here. So, let's, let's jump in at the-- with the question. Yangyang Mobile releases a lot of visual novel games and you do it successfully. I've seen The Letter, and the writing is really nice. Can you give us insights on the kind of audience that likes to consume text- heavy or longer stories?
Carlos: 0:52
Okay, so yeah, like I think the first, the way I was thinking about it is the first question we need to ask ourselves is like, because definitely I think it goes without saying people who like visual novels, like want to get their claws into a story, right? But then the next question, there's what differentiates a visual novel? From just reading a book, right? I mean, I, myself, I love books. I, you know, I love books. I love or watching movies, but what's the difference here, right? And I and so first off with that, I guess it's one, well, visual novels have the experience of tying multiple senses together, right? You're not just reading text you're also seeing on screen this character sprites and you're also hearing the music, right? Music is another great way to get the viewers really engaged in a scene and of course you have the CGs which are of course these you know when something usually when a big event happens in the visual novel like an action scene or a dramatic scene, we give them this usually this moving picture So that the story points can really hit home, right? So again, I love books, but especially now that movies have always been popular series are more popular. I think it's people who kind of want to be in between it. It's like, it's an experience that's in between watching a movie, which frankly is a bit short sometimes they want something longer, like a long form story full of text, full of these reoccurring characters and with more, I guess, visual and auditory input. Our games also have voice acting. So again, that's one thing you can't really get from books, though even now, right, the audio books are becoming more popular. And I think that also speaks the, you know, the sort of desire or need for people to also just want more, I guess, sensory engagement when they go to stories. So yeah, that's, I guess that's one thing, right? And the second thing, the second question, I guess, is what differentiates our visual novel from the more gameplay heavy video game? Right.
Aileen: 2:52
Yeah.
Carlos: 2:53
And so, yeah, because, because I think to a degree, it is a different audience, right? So, me, I also like, like, if I want to play action games, like Devil May Cry, right? People want to just, it's that the interactivity I think is important there, right? You, you move your character around or you engage your mind in some, in a puzzle whatever that may be, that's what's being stimulated. And of course, There's a blurring line in between, right? Like, especially these days, we like tying in story to gameplay. But I would say, sometimes there are people who want to just, you know, they're, they're done after a tired, they're tired after a day of work and they just want to like, maybe grind some levels in an MMO, right? But some people wanna just get their hands on a story and they, and they don't want to, you know, they're not in the mood to have like a gameplay loop. So, that's where visual novels come in. It's that space in between
Aileen: 3:44
I like that description that space in between where you want to watch a movie But you still want some interaction and that's a really interesting way to look at it because when you mentioned After a long day home, you just want to chill, and you want you don't want just to watch or just to pla,y that's a really nice way of looking at it. So, what are the challenges that you encounter when you are doing text heavy storytelling?
Carlos: 4:10
So definitely our biggest challenge is well, one challenge is the assets, first of all, because I think I just want to say this is just coming from a writer perspective that when making a visual novel, there's at least a visual novel hybrid game, because I'd also like to, on the subject of gameplay, I'd also like to say that our interactivity is, there's also more interactivity in a visual novel, right? Like there's choices in The Letter, right? Depending on your choices. It's a horror story wherein any one of the main characters can just die if you choose wrong, right? And then for Love Esquire, there's a gameplay loop of like raising your stats, going day by day, right? So, there's that, engaging with choices. And I guess the biggest challenge is how to integrate those mechanics with the story. Because, because I think most people, so me, me, before I was a video game writer, like I'm coming from, you know, writing, writing novels, writing short stories. Right? And unless you're writing a choose your own adventure book, the concept of writing one story that you have to accept is, will possibly branch out into like 10 different outcomes. Branch in again, all while of course being, while of course considering your, your sanity, right? Like, you have to also see how you can, you know, how does this work? How does this situation, if the player character chooses to go to the castle rather than the farm and, and chooses to help the princess rather than the warrior girl, what happens next, right? All these branching pathways. Planning narrative structures, which is something very unique to storytelling in video games, right? You plan narrative maps and see how they branch out and branch together again. So, I'd say that's one of the biggest challenges, especially since I think with visual novels, a lot of our players really, like, expect that level of, you know, oh, I, I don't know. I kicked the duck in scene two and in scene seven, someone goes, hey, you're the guy who kicked the duck and all my choices matter. So it's being clever, but also being-- I guess ambitious enough to, to sort of take all of the possibilities into account.
Aileen: 6:24
That's a really good insight into the writing process because, like you said, when it's linear, you can do foreshadowing, but when it's branching out, it's, it's difficult. Now that's, I never thought about it that way because I just like making bad decisions in Witcher or in Baldur's Gate or in any choose your own adventure game. But nobody really takes the time to really think about the amount of work you put in to create something cohesive that has different branches. I think with The Letter that was, that was really beautifully articulated. Now that you guys have come up with all of these, what would you say are the best practices, when you not just with keeping your audience engaged, but with creating all of these narratives that speak to them, something that will keep them there for longer?
Carlos: 7:13
So, I think in the writing team right now, one of the things we find really strong, like we were just talking about this, right? Choices, right? So, cause again, some players just want to sit back and relax and sort of, you know, click their mouse. Okay. What, what's this character going to say? We all, we also have to always keep in mind that like, hey, yeah, you know, we want to. We want to engage these people. Is the pacing of the scene a bit slow getting going on too long? And one, you know, one good way to engage them again is give them a choice. Sometimes it's a serious choice, right? Should I, kill my father or not? Right.
Aileen: 7:48
It's a difficult question.
Carlos: 7:50
Should I kill my evil father, but I love him, whatever. Right. And, and, but another, but sometimes it's just like, hey, what color, what color shirt do you want? Do you want a pink shirt? Do you want a green shirt? Do you want a blue shirt? And even, so sometimes there are these huge moral choices, like you mentioned, Baldur's Gate 3, that game's awesome in just I can't even begin to fathom how many, like, what the writers were doing in creating all of those things. branching paths and possibilities accounting for every situation, right? But it's like that, right? You can choose, you can choose different things and just presenting the player with a choice, whether it's a serious moral choice or even a goofy choice, right? Like this guy's being an ass to you. What do you do? Do you kick him? Do you insult him? Or do you run in the opposite direction, screaming something random, right? What matters is, at that moment, the player's focus goes from the story, this passive participation, to something internal, which is like, oh yeah, what do I do? So, that's, I'd say that's one way to keep them engaged, definitely.
Aileen: 8:55
Okay, that's, that's really good. I'm glad we got to do this because in the other episodes, we talked about different areas of game development, but we never really got to dive in the inner workings of a writer when it comes to text heavy or lore heavy game. So, this has been great, Carlos. Thank you so much. Can you tell us about The Letter and any other games that YangYang has to offer now?
Carlos: 9:19
I'll just briefly go through a summary of all of our games, if that's okay with you. So The Letter is a horror visual novel, and it's about these characters who are b It takes place in a haunted mansion, and basically, depending on your choices, all these characters may die. Or all of them may survive, and it's changing POV. So, first off, we go to the girl, this Filipino girl, who's trying to sell the house and then, and then, you can end up transferring to the person who's trying to buy the house and it just transfers different POVs. And again, it's a game that's really about branching pathways and it's got a really good and ambitious branching pathway system. So that's The Letter. The next game we made so, which it's funny because a lot of fans expressed surprise because they were thinking, oh, so you're making another horror game, right? And we're like, no, we're actually, we're making a dating sim.
Aileen: 10:12
What? Well, technically that's horror too. That's terrifying.
Carlos: 10:16
That's true. Yeah, so that's true. Nothing is more horrific sometimes than a date gone wrong, right? So, Love Esquire is our next game. So, again, after the darkness of The Letter, we wanted to go something, for something more lighthearted. So, Love Esquire, way more zany, way more comedic. Excuse me for putting this in pretty crass terms, but basically, you're in a medieval kingdom, you know, knights, and kings and warriors. But the concept, the whole point of it is you're not this brave, super cool, badass hero. You're a squire, and because you're a squire, your job is just to help your knight. And you have four months before you're going to be, you know, conscripted off into this war. And what else is a squire supposed to do when he's pretty much screwed by getting killed in this war? He's got four months to try and lose his virginity.
Aileen: 11:04
Okay, that's a short amount of time for a squire.
Carlos: 11:08
So that one we got a bit more creative because we integrated-- there's a RPG system wherein, again, you're sort of healing and assisting your knight. You're playing basically the support role. And it's also got a stat management system where you're increasing your stats. And we had fun with that because when people, when people say dating sims especially like a bit more crass ones, like people think like, oh yeah, you know. You know, the girls are really pretty and there's a lot of fan service and there is fan service, but as writers, what we really try to do is we also wanted to take these characters very seriously, so I think one of the top reviews or when I read the reviews I think the consensus is sort of I came in because they were cute girls but I came out sort of sobbing because the you know the backstories of these characters are so intriguing and you know, I stayed for a good story so that was also very fun to do.
Aileen: 11:59
That's amazing. I think I'm going to tap out in the first 15 minutes as a squire, but I will have to definitely look that up.
Carlos: 12:07
Our next game afterwards is again, so after the, after Love Esquire. So, Love Esquire, I think was probably one of our bigger games in terms of integrating gameplay. So afterwards we had two small, we released two smaller, scoped visual novels. So, these are most mostly like kinetic visual novels, like there, there's a good ending or a bad ending, but the narrative branching-- it wasn't as like complex as The Letter or Love Esquire. So, for the first one, we had Perfect Gold, which is a Yuri, a lesbian love story between these two girls who are mages in a magical city. So, this one is very heartfelt. It was, you know, it was written so that-- it was written as a, as a sort of slice of life, but also drama. It's about these, so I think the, the concept pitch was, you know, how one of the more popular ships in Harry Potter is Draco X Harry.
Aileen: 13:03
Oh, wow. I didn't know that. Well, yeah, I guess I would, yeah, that makes sense. I can feel the love-hate.
Carlos: 13:11
Yeah, so it's kind of like that with the two with the two girls instead, right? And so it's a day in their lives and it's them sort of coming from a enemies to lovers kind of relationship and you know them finally getting other feelings with each other. The next story was Saint Maker, which is another horror visual novel this one is set in a haunted convent. So again, smaller, way smaller, smaller scope than the letter. But it's about, you know, this girl who comes in for a retreat and she finds, she wakes up at night and she finds that all of these statues of saints, these supposedly holy statues are moving on their own. And so it's about uncovering, like, okay, what happened in this convent? Was there what, what suspicious things were the nuns up to all these, all this time? So I, I think we marketed it as a religious and psychological horror. And finally, our newest game, which we announced this this year is High Time. So this also is one that's a bit more zany. You're, if you've played games like Valhalla or Coffee Talk, it's about, you're in a mood cafe and basically you're, it's a donut baking sim. So it's, if you're familiar, like good pizza, great pizza, like you're kind of making your own donuts, but these donuts also give people moods, like they alter moods. It's sort of like a sci-fi, future thing where and if you give someone cheer you can make them happier and it's about and it's sort of an anti-dating sim because rather than dating people all your exes are your customers and they're coming back for sure with them it's kind of like Scott Pilgrim Versus the World.
Aileen: 14:49
I love that concept that's very exciting so when can we expect the release of this game?
Carlos: 14:56
Next year. We're aiming for next year, definitely. And if you want, you can already check it out. The page is up on Steam. We don't have a demo out yet, but we're really excited for this game. It's going to be one of our bigger games in a while, right? And this one, again, similar to Coffee Talk and Valhalla, we really want to rope in more gameplay aspects into it.
Aileen: 15:15
Mm hmm. Okay, that's great. So how can people find you online?
Carlos: 15:20
Well, YangYang Mobile, you can search up our games again, once you find one game, I think there are links to the other to the others YangYang Mobile The Letter, YangYang Mobile Love Esquire, YangYang Mobile High Times, Saint Maker, and Perfect Gold, we also have a twitter and a website. So, yeah, just type in yangyangmobile.com, yeah.
Aileen: 15:43
Perfect. Thank you so much for your time today, Carlos. This has been very, very good. Thank you.
Carlos: 15:49
Thanks so much as well. I'm happy to be here and yeah, this was fun.
Aileen: 15:56
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