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[Aura]

How exactly did Four Leaf Studios structure itself when it was making Katawa Shoujo?

Asking for a bunch of friends.

We divided the work so that everyone had a very clearly defined area of responsibility. So each route was written by a single writer and each character was primarily illustrated by a single artist. Everyone was able to work as independently as they liked, but also had the responsibility of organizing their work, keep others updated and coordinate with others as necessary.

Then we had a couple of leadership/management roles. The head writer tried to keep some semblance of coherence to the script, head editor bossed the editing team around, the producers dealt with general issues and the director figured out what assets were required. None of this was strictly hierarchical, at at times felt more ceremonial than anything.

That's the general idea. There's more to it, but that'd be a long writeup. If you're asking because you'd like to model your own development team after 4LS, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. We did things the way we did partly because of some of the weird qualities of the KS project and partly because we were really inexperienced. This way had plenty of negative effects, but on the upside we managed to finish and release KS partially thanks to it.

[Kon22]

Was it hard to find members that sticked around for the whole project? I'm guessing a lot of people misjudged the amount of work a VN could take, and not all of them decided to stay. This is specially true if you take into account that you didn't sell the game and that, as far as I know, no money was put into the making of the game. Artists and such are usually pretty strict about only taking comissions and doing paid work, so I would guess having people start working and leaving shortly after wasn't a rare occurrence.

In the same vein, did you think involving less people in a project like that (less than a writer and artist per route + other roles) would have been more helpful?

Sorry if I'm touching themes already covered.

[Aura]

Was it hard to find members that sticked around for the whole project? I'm guessing a lot of people misjudged the amount of work a VN could take, and not all of them decided to stay. This is specially true if you take into account that you didn't sell the game and that, as far as I know, no money was put into the making of the game. Artists and such are usually pretty strict about only taking comissions and doing paid work, so I would guess having people start working and leaving shortly after wasn't a rare occurrence.

In the same vein, did you think involving less people in a project like that (less than a writer and artist per route + other roles) would have been more helpful?

Sorry if I'm touching themes already covered.

Sure. It took over a year to gather all the members that formed the final KS project team, with many joining and quitting in between. KS is an incredible outlier in the world of creative volunteer projects on the Internet, only a tiny minority ever get released, much less those of KS's scale and scope.

Less people leads to more consistent results at the cost of increased workload. It's not directly "helpful" as such, it's a tradeoff. I think for KS, going about it the way we did was fine, considering the volunteer amateur nature of the project. KS is horribly inconsistent as a result, but I don't mind that. For a different kind of project, maybe different kind of thing would be better.

[JacobHallT]

Hello.

Question for Suriko, if he is still around: Lilly is my favorite. The Waifu, so to speak. You know,"She is the first woman I have ever felt connected with! Notice me Senpai! Lilly PLS!" Yada yada yada. Loved it; however, there have always been something that has bothered me in her Arc:

There is one scene where Hisao and Lilly are walking on school grounds (Act 4?) and run into ya boy Kenji where Lilly takes a tumble after Kenji pulls her down to the ground and she has a small outburst of rage. I don't think it was ever answered or discussed on why she went loose for a second after that fall. Was it because of the emotional stress? Because there are those points where the relation is shaky or she is stressed about the thought of moving to Scotland again, but I was never sure of the cause. It seemed out of no where and out of character to me, atleast. Of course, it was meant to be "out of character" so I'm not saying it was bad writing or anything at all. I'm just curious on why it happen.

Thanks for the help! I, like everyone else here, have a spot in my heart that Katawa Shoujo will always reside. It changed me for the better, and I'm glad I shown KS.

[ArcCain]

A bit of a weird question but I hope you understand, (doesn't have to do with KS);

There are a few things in the story that you guys have neither confirmed or denied, as well as some things you've preferred to be wage on. Do you think that it is important for stories to leave some stuff open ended/unspecified and how is "open endedness" best used in your opinion? Any books or games etc, that you can point to?

[Aura]

It's not important or necessary to have loose ends or unanswered questions. Sometimes it can be detrimental. It all depends on the style and type of the story and of course. execution. An example of an well known unanswered question I like is the one that the movie "Inception" poses during its final seconds. There's been lots of discussion about it and a variety of reactions (some people really hate it), but ultimately it doesn't matter for the story itself that the question is unanswered. Lots of classic Russian literature employs this nicely too, such as many short stories by Chekov and for example Brothers Karamazov, which really leaves a lot of threads loose.

A completely separate issue is subtext, which is important in any literature that's for more advanced readers than 9 year olds.

[cpl_crud]

I was going to say inception as well as it is a pretty recent example, although I think the point there was to show that the character had given up on being so paranoid about the dream world and started to "live" again..... In any case, I think it is exactly what that movie needed.

It really depends on what you are trying to achieve with your writing. Leaving something open in your main theme/narrative is a risk. You will almost certainly divide your audience into the "this is genius" and "this is bullshit" camps, or people won't even care.

I personally like to leave a little bit open to the imagination. I like reading that gets me involved, and something with a few loose ends gives you something to think back upon and maybe even re-read the story. But if you leave too much open then there is no sense of completeness and you start to wish for more from your author/creator.

I also think that in the case of 4LS we are really only talking about side-arcs that really don't have any major impact on the greater story. Just think about all the people from your past that you went to school with, or played baseball with, or maybe even went on dates with... and how many of those stories do you follow? Those are the stories that you can leave open in a story. But when they become involved in your story's main arc you need to bring them at least to a obvious conclusion.

There is a term that you can put in physics, QED, which stands for Quod Erat Demonstrandum in Latin, but basically means "I've shown you enough". Your physics professor will joke that it means "Quite Enough Done" and will snicker at his personal joke.
Essentially you use it when the answer is really just a matter of rearranging terms; i.e. you've done all the calculus and somesuch and all you need to do is a bit of basic algebra.

I like to think that you should get to the point of a "QED" ending; you've shown all the pieces but you've left a little to the reader. If you spell everything out it feels like you're being pulled through the story instead of being engaged with it.

Unfortunately, I can't really think of any examples of this at the moment! I guess in film you have the first Matrix (before the second two ruined it), or maybe Predestination.

I should also note that this doesn't mean things that just continue on forever without ending... Game of Thrones for example...

I'd like to say that I'll think of more examples but I know that I wont unless this question comes up a few more times...

[TheHivemind]

Any good story is going to have at least a few people wondering about something the author never really got around to explaining (or simply didn't care to explain). That is because a good story is generally well-focused, which is another way of saying it gets where it wanted to go and then stops when it does so. There will always be stories with things left unexplained (what's in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction is the one that springs immediately to mind) but these things are, generally, not critical to the telling of the story. Indeed, in the case of Pulp Fiction, it's Tarantino blatantly pointing out that the plot's not as important as the characters, only doing so in a winky way that wasn't quite as annoying at the time as it eventually wound up becoming (see: The Hateful Eight).

Most of the things we left vague were left vague not for any particular reason beyond "it wasn't important to the story we were telling," and sometimes it was done so on purpose to make a point (see: Emi's sexual history, which I didn't get into because perched upon my high horse I decided it shouldn't matter). The end result's the same either way though - lots of speculation and the odd bit of fanfic, and maybe we all learned something along the way.

The point being that good stories will have ambiguity in them almost by dint of being good stories. A story that strains to explain every single little detail and wrap everyone's lives up in a tidy bow is a story that gets tedious and, more to the point, never ends.

[Valjean Lafitte]

A question for Aura: in the early days of KS development, which received more attention, the prologue/Act I or Rin's route? I believe you've said before that you were responsible for the bulk of the writing in prologue and Act I, but did you (and possibly other writers) have to put own routes on the back-burner while you hammered out the beginning of the story in preparation for the Act I demo?

[Aura]

Of course, we all started from the beginning, and the first things anyone wrote for KS were for Act 1. We used it as a training ground, to learn to write and make a visual novel, so it went through a lot of reworks and editing during the first two years of the project. I did write the first draft of Rin's story before the final version of Act 1, but then completely stopped working on the route for something like a year to work on the release of Act 1. A22 did essentially the same, as his wordcount for Act 1 was massive due to the large number of long Shizune scenes in it.

[MikeKS]

First and foremost, I would like to thank all the writers and people who have contributed in creating this amazing game/VN.
I posted on Reddit about 2 days ago after I discovered the game in regard to the connections between my past and the VN hoping I could catch your eyes there and properly thank you.

After going through the staff list and looking around for the best way to reach you guys, I found the official forum is probably the best place to get a hold of you.
I would like to especially thank @cpl_crud for Hanako's route and @Suriko for Lilly's route. The two characters together have brought me back to a very special time in my past not long ago and brought a closure I never knew I needed so much.
Even with that being said, I would also like to thank @TheHivemind, Aura, and Anonymous22 for Emi, Rin and Shizune's routes. They brought many tears and joy for both my girlfriend Emily and I.

I would really love to have you read the story of a bittersweet past of mine as a gift of appreciation, but knowing it is a bit long, I am not sure if you would enjoy as much as I have written it. But if you ever have the time to spare, it is on the Katawa Shoujo subreddit. https://redd.it/4dt5a2

Once again, thank you all for this incredibly written and produced VN, I am forever in your debt, my girlfriend would also like to thank you for making her feel included within the story, same goes for me .

There's also a question I have been wondering, did you ever planned on continuing on the story of each characters' route for a bonus content? I mean I enjoy the freedom of theory crafting on our own creative minds, but I would also love to see a visual of how they spent their summer timer. And knowing there were a lot of controversy in the community over another studio kind of taking over the idea of creating Katawa Shoujo 2, do you feel they should've used the same name instead of coming up with a complete new one for their project and mention Katawa Shoujo as an inspiration?

Best regard,
Mike W.

[Aura]

There's also a question I have been wondering, did you ever planned on continuing on the story of each characters' route for a bonus content? I mean I enjoy the freedom of theory crafting on our own creative minds, but I would also love to see a visual of how they spent their summer timer.

No.

And knowing there were a lot of controversy in the community over another studio kind of taking over the idea of creating Katawa Shoujo 2, do you feel they should've used the same name instead of coming up with a complete new one for their project and mention Katawa Shoujo as an inspiration?

Of course not. If anyone makes KS 2, it's us. If someone wants to rip off the idea, they should use their own setting. I can't make Clannad 2 or Steins;Gate 2 either.

Thanks for the kind words.

[Kenji's Sane Brother]

https://www.thedodo.com/hanako-lonelies ... 33727.html

Is that Hanako related in any way to the one in the game? Did it help inspire anything in her route? Or is it just a coincidence?

[Silentcook]

Coincidence, and not a particularly far-reaching one either. Hanako is a fairly common name.

[ArcCain]

When was the last time you guy's meet in person?