"Pixie Dusk" Studio Strategy and Game Production

THE ART OF

PIXIE DUSK

STUDIO STRATEGY & GAME PRODUCTION

Written by: Pablo Murray-Campbell

THE ART OF

PIXIE DUSK

STUDIO STRATEGY & GAME PRODUCTION Written by: Pablo Murray-Campbell

CONTENTS Overview Who's Who

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What is a Visual Novel?

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PART I: INTRO TO PIXIE DUSK PART II: MARKET RESEARCH

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PART III: STUDIO STRATEGY

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PART IV: MARKETING STRATEGY PART V: GAME PRODUCTION

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Project Significance & Learning outcomes Testimonials

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Works Cited

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Acknowledgements

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(Front Cover) ST. LUCIA BEACH LANDSCAPE (DAY) Moore Page 1-2 HAUNTED HOUSE LOCKED DOOR Lucchino Page 3-4 "VAGUE JESUS DOORS" Thomas COFFEE SNOB Thomas REAL CAFE Moore & Moran

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WHO'S WHO OVERVIEW This thesis was an opportunity for me to put all of my favorite aspects of business of art and design into practice.

In a partnership with the Lewis Foundation, made possible by Ringling's Collaboratory department, I produced two visual novel games, and devised a strategy to turn this venture into a scalable and sustainable business.

MICHAEL LEWIS

ISA PINTO

SAM MCCOLLUM

Project Sponsor

Writer: Perfect Waifu Creative Writing Senior

Art Lead: Screamcap Game Art Senior

RICK DAKAN Project Lead: Pixie Dusk Writing Consultant Research Supervisor Creative Writing Faculty

MICHAEL PHILLIPI Faculty Advisor Artistic Advisor Game Art Faculty

KATHLEEN SOBR Thesis Supervisor Research Supervisor Business Department Head

MARILYN GARMAN Business Faculty Thesis Supervisor

LINDA LIAO Market Research Analyst Business Freshman

SHPRESA MEHMETI JULIET Thomas 7

The Art of Pixie Dusk

Market Research Analyst Business Freshman

KITT THOMAS Art Lead: Perfect Waifu Visual Studies Junior

JILLIAN KEIFER Writer: Screamcap Creative Writing Freshman

EUGENIA MOORE

MAE LUCCHINO

Background Artist: Perfect Waifu Illustration Sophomore

Background Artist: Screamcap Illustration Freshman

EMILY MORAN Background Artist: Perfect Waifu Illustration Sophomore

JAN TAMAYO Visual Development Artist: Perfect Waifu Game Art Freshman

AREN AGOCHA Character/Background Artist: Screamcap Illustration Junior

JO BAUMHOVER Character Artist: Screamcap Visual Studies Sophomore

DIRK XU

HYLEIN KIM

Character Artist: Screamcap Illustration Sophomore

Character Artist: Perfect Waifu & Screamcap Illustration Freshman

KHUSHBU POHANI

DAWN QUEDENS Coding Lead Game Art Junior

Graphic Design Lead Graphic Design Freshman

WHAT IS A VISUAL NOVEL?

Steins;Gate (2009) - 5pb. Inc., Nitroplus, & Mages Inc., Japan.

Hatoful Boyfriend (2011) - PigeoNation Inc., Japan.

9 hours 9 persons 9 doors (2009) - Spike Chunsoft, Japan.

Monster Prom (2018) - Beautiful Glitch, Those Awesome Guys, USA.

The Letter (2017) - Yangyang Mobile, Philippines.

Dream Daddy (2017) - Game Grumps, USA.

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (2010) - Spike Chunsoft, Abstraction, Japan.

Doki Doki Literature Club (2017) - Team Salvato, USA.

VA-11 HALL-A (2016) - Sukeban Games, Venezuela.

A visual novel (VN) is a "choose your own adventure" book turned into a video game. It combines text and static images to provide players with a unique gaming experience focused around narrative and decision making.

They were created and are primarily produced in Japan, but they also enjoy an ever-growing cult following around the world.

There is even a thriving market for original English language visual novels produced outside of Japan.

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The Art of Pixie Dusk

PART I: INTRO TO PIXIE DUSK

Beginning in 2018, the Ringling Collaboratory enlisted help from the best student writers, illustrators, producers and coders to develop visual novel games for a project sponsored by the Lewis Foundation.

They made several games under the name Jellycube in a paid immersion separate from the school's curriculum.

In the 2020 spring semester, this collaboration took a new form. Rather than a paid immersion, this would be an actual class.

A new studio was created named Pixie Dusk to differentiate games created as part of the class.

Over the course of the 2020 spring semester, we produced two original games, Perfect Waifu and Screamcap.

Part I: Intro to Pixie Dusk

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PREMISE Written by: Isa Pinto Perfect Waifu is a perfectly normal dating simulator set on the island of St. Lucia. Step into the shoes of one of three lovable characters: Juliet, Sonia, or Wendy, and help her vi for the attention of various suitors who come to her father’s cafe.

But what she doesn't know is that she is actually an android. After becoming awakened to the reality of her situation, it is up to you to decide how she will adapt to this new tropical cyber world. Will she sit back, relax, and go on dates? Or will she be instrumental to the robot revolution? The choice is yours!

PERFECT WAIFU LOGO Pohani ST. LUCIA BEACH LANDSCAPE (SUNSET) Moore

PREMISE Written by: Jillian Keifer ScreamCap is the hottest paranormal livestream on the net. But the team meets their biggest threat, The Entity while investigating the strange happenings around one of their friends.

In order to rid themselves of it, they must find clues detailing a strange past, talk to some ghosts (or chemtrails, depending on who you ask), and maybe just get to know each other a little better ;)

MAIN MENU DESIGNÂ McCollum & Pohani

THE NEXT STEP

PART II: MARKET RESEARCH

Although the process of making these games is a great learning experience for everyone, the larger goal is to actually publish them.

In the Fall 2019 semester, with the Jellycube games all but finished, Michael Lewis wanted to gain a better understanding of the market he was entering and seeked out help from Ringling students of all majors. This was where I entered the picture.

Part II: Market Research

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THE ASK

THE ROLE OF A...

Learn as much as possible during the 4-week period about how the visual novel market currently operates.

LEAD MARKET RESEARCH ANALYST Market research analysts study market conditions to examine potential sales of a product or service.

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Lead the research team for the duration of the immersion Communicate with key stakeholders Create presentations and documents to show all research findings

1. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, OCCUPATIONAL OUTLOOK HANDBOOK, MARKET RESEARCH ANALYSTS.

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Part II: Market Research

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RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Because visual novels are so niche, there is a real lack of any meaningful study on them. This meant that my team and I had to think creatively regarding how we would go about our research.

We organized our research around the four P's of marketing: product, place, price, and promotion.

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RESEARCH QUESTIONS 1. What is a visual novel? (product) 2. Where are VN bought and sold? (place & price) 3. How are VN promoted?

We searched the internet for anything we could find, looking everywhere from online forums, to fan-run websites like the "Visual Novel Database", Medium articles, YouTube videos, even asking questions on the r/VisualNovels subreddit.

OUTFIT VISDEV (HIPSTER/VINTAGE, SPORTY, VSCO GIRL, ALTERNATIVE) Tamayo

KEY TAKEAWAYS WHAT IS A VISUAL NOVEL? When explaining what a visual novel is, there is a simple answer and there is a complicated answer. The simple answer gets the point across, but the only way to build a sustainable business around a product is to really know your product.

Understanding video game genres can be a daunting task. A common mistake people make is defining them by certain gameplay or design elements, but I wanted to answer a more important question: why do people play visual novels?

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To help answer that question, a group of professors at Northwestern University in San Francisco developed the MDA Framework, which breaks down all games to their essential parts: 3

Mechanics "describes the particular components of the game, at the level of data representation and algorithms."

Dynamics "describes the run-time behavior of the mechanics acting on player inputs and each others' outputs over time."

Aesthetics "describes the desirable emotional responses evoked in the player, when she interacts with the game system."

"MDA is a formal approach to understanding games - one which attempts to bridge the gap between game design and development, game criticism, and technical game research. We believe this methodology will clarify and strengthen the iterative processes of developers, scholars and researchers alike, making it easier for all parties to decompose, study and design a broad class of game designs and game artifacts."

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- HUNICKE, ROBIN ET AL

2. "WESTERN RPGS VS JAPANESE RPGS - I: WHAT MAKES THEM DIFFERENT?" YOUTUBE, UPLOADED BY EXTRA CREDITS, 20 MAY 2012 3. HUNICKE, ROBIN ET AL. “MDA : A FORMAL APPROACH TO GAME DESIGN AND GAME RESEARCH.” (2004).

Part II: Market Research

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KEY TAKEAWAYS WHAT IS A VISUAL NOVEL? The framework describes 8 different aesthetics, four of which describe the core play aesthetics of visual novels.

CORE PLAY AESTHETICS

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NARRATIVE - "Game as drama" VN are ultimately a storytelling medium, by nature of being essentially just books "disguised" as video games. The entire game is dependent on the success of the narrative.

FANTASY - "Game as make-believe" VN are written from first person perspective, allowing the player to experience the story through the protagonist. This offers the player a unique sense of escapism and immersion.

DISCOVERY - "Game as uncharted territory" The primary gameplay element of nearly every VN is making decisions about how the story will develop based on a pre-determined set of choices. Those choices often take the narrative to unexpected places. It is extremely common for a game to look completely different at the end of a given route from how it started.

EXPRESSION - "Game as self-discovery" Especially common in English-language VN, they often have customizable or unseen protagonists which allow players to choose their name, physical appearance, clothing, even gender pronouns.

SULFUR SPRINGS (DAY)Â Moore & Moran

KEY TAKEAWAYS WHAT IS A VISUAL NOVEL?

TEAM SALVATO - USA known for: Doki Doki Literature Club

GAME GRUMPS - USA known for: Dream Daddy

WHO'S MAKING VISUAL NOVELS? The most popular English-language VN are independent games produced all over the world. They're usually made by either one person or a small team.

BEAUTIFUL GLITCH - USA known for: Monster Prom

A good quality VN can launch a studio, but even the studios responsible for extremely popular releases haven't had any follow-up games that aren’t sequels or expansions.

Hotel Computer Room Lucchino

SUKEBAN GAMES - Venezuela known for: VA-11 Hall-A

YANGYANG MOBILE - Phillipines known for: The Letter

Part II: Market Research

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KEY TAKEAWAYS WHERE ARE VISUAL NOVELS BOUGHT AND SOLD? DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION Steam is the main regulated marketplace. It's mostly used by professional studios. It is owned by the game distribution company Valve and is highly regulated.

UNIQUE REVENUE MODELS Some of the most popular VN are completely free to play. These games make money from donations and sometimes from merchandise sales as well.

Itch.io is the main unregulated store. It's great for independent creators because they have fewer restrictions to sell through their marketplace.

The extremely popular genre-defying visual novel Doki Doki Literature Club is completely free to play, but they make their money through donations and their merchandise store

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Part II: Market Research

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KEY TAKEAWAYS HOW ARE VISUAL NOVELS PROMOTED? ENGLISH-LANGUAGE MARKET The market is extremely overcrowded. Easy access to software like the Ren’py engine means that just about anyone can make their own VN for little to no cost.

This makes differentiation very important, because it is very difficult to break through the clutter.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS HOW ARE VISUAL NOVELS PROMOTED? The smaller scale of these games means that they don't have substantial marketing.

What marketing and promotion the more well-funded projects do have is usually an active social media presence that revolves around creating positive word of mouth to encourage sales.

Many also have the advantage of an attached internet personality.

Working either as an artist, voice actor, or producer, That person’s existing audience will help spark conversation and drive sales.

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CHANNELS

Monster Prom (2018) introduces its premise with the first post on their official twitter page.

Crowdfunding websites like Kickstarter are one way that independent English-language visual novels create early buzz around their game, offering various incentives to donors. This allows developers to gauge interest in their game's initial concept Traditional social media channels that allow image sharing and communication like twitter, facebook, and instagram are also standard.

Before publishing visual novels, Game Grumps was already an extremely successful YouTube channel. With 5.25 million subscribers, It is one of the leading "let's play" channels. Their debut title Dream Daddy featured "celebrity" voice talent including one of their hosts, Dan Avidan (pictured above), voicing the character Robert Small.

With the research completed, I continued the project independently.

PART III: STUDIO STRATEGY

Using the Pixie Dusk name, I wanted to build it into a legitimate indie game development and publishing company. I devised a studio strategy to give it a unique identity and position in this overcrowded and niche market.

Part III: Studio Strategy

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A 3-PRONG STRATEGY STRATEGY STATEMENT Pixie Dusk will operate as the first major independent studio to consistently develop and selfpublish high quality English-language visual novels.

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AUTHENTIC The relatively underground status of visual novels as a medium means that they're often where creators from marginalized groups turn to tell stories that otherwise wouldn't get made. By extension, audiences are sophisticated enough to want stories that are meaningful, inclusive, and innovative. We are no different, story and character are our main priorities.

PERSONAL The entire Pixie Dusk team is a diverse group of young professional artists. We aren't robots mechanically doing our work. The team behind the scenes is just as important as the games.

REPUTABLE Pixie Dusk is a studio that consistently creates high-quality original games.

Part III: Studio Strategy

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STUDIO POSITIONING There are three key differentiating factors between Pixie Dusk and the competition.

1. Varied content portfolio 2. Consistent release schedule 3. open intellectual property (IP) I explore this further in the marketing strategy portion, but one major part of our social media strategy is our full endorsement of fan works. We encourage players to make these stories their own.

In a time when it has never been easier to share transformative fan works through social media, this is the perfect time to begin introducing open IP to the entertainment market.

BAD GUY LAIR Moore & Moran

STUDIO PERSONALITY VISION To become the preeminent studio producing English-language visual novels.

MISSION Pixie Dusk tells bold, unique stories by empowering diverse up and coming creatives.

VALUES Authenticity Story and character are our main priorities as well as profit. VN players are sophisticated enough to want stories that are meaningful, inclusive, and innovative. As storytellers, we want those same things from our games.

Diversity The niche status of visual novels makes them a perfect medium for members of underrepresented groups to tell stories that would have a harder time getting made in a more traditional studio system.

Pixie Dusk already has an extremely diverse team creating games that are truly a reflection of the world around us.

Innovation Pixie Dusk is not here to put out a bare-bones games every five months, we want to tell stories that test the creative limits of both our talent and software to offer players a gaming experience like no other.

HOTEL HALLWAY CARPET PATTERN Lucchino Part III: Studio Strategy

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WHY THIS STRATEGY? The lack of any major VN developers gives us an opportunity to lead with our a studio identity at the same time as promoting our debut titles.

Pixie Dusk already has such a varied content library that includes not only Perfect Waifu and Screamcap, but also all of the Jellycube titles.

Establishing that studio identity up front allows us to display both the high quality games that we are able to produce and the variety in terms of genre, art style, and subject matter. Having a backlog of games also allows us to be more strategic in terms of release windowing.

STREET VIEW (NIGHT) Moore & MoranÂ

HIGH LEVEL MARKETING GOALS

PART IV: MARKETING STRATEGY

GOALS

OBJECTIVES

KPI'S

Create Brand Awareness

Reach 1,000 followers on all social media channels

Social media analytics.

Follower count Post engagement

Encourage game sales

Breakeven on game production costs

Sales analytics

Encourage fan engagement with open IP

1,000 posts from players in each game's official hashtag

Social media analytics Hashtag tracking Keyword searching

Part IV: Marketing Strategy

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OUTREACH & CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT A major aspect of this campaign involves creating fan engagement with our intellectual property. In this era of social media, our primary outreach will be done by the creatives working for the studio themselves.

Coordinated posts on their personal social media accounts will notify their followers that they have been working on these games and redirect them to the Pixie Dusk social media pages.

This allows us to reach people both within the VN community as well as people who may not have ever heard of them. Having the artists themselves promoting them reinforces the authenticity of the brand because they have an active investment in seeing these games succeed. This also allows us to bypass the traditional "influencer" marketing strategy.

INITIAL TARGET AUDIENCE So much of the future target audience is dependent on several factors. From the social media following of our team members, to the individual game genres. But there is one audience that, if the game is promoted using the standard tactics, are the early adopters.

CREATIVE "FANGIRLS" Age Range: 13 - 25 Gender: male & female AÂ Creative "Fangirl" is any type of fan who, instead of passively enjoying a given piece of media, They turn their appreciation for it into something constructive.

Often in the form of fan works like fan fiction, fan art, fan video edits, cosplay, etc.

Often more interested in characters and their relationships than lore or trivia.

Pursuing/aspiring towards a creative career such as visual arts or creative writing Share their work on social media Twitter Instagram Tumblr TikTok

MORGAN FINAL SPRITE Baumhover, McCollum, & Xu Part IV: Marketing Strategy

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CONTENT MARKETING The official pages would capitalize on content marketing tactics. There would be a regular stream of content to ensure that these games stay in our audiences’ consciousness, and a stronger push as the games get closer to their release date.

ONLINE CUSTOMER JOURNEY 01

Posts would include: Character introductions Trailers Featured fan art/fan works and most unique to Pixie Dusk, behind the scenes featurettes.

Released before and after the game launch They are all about getting to know the people behind the game.

Standard “talking head and b roll” format, but enough to paint a picture of who all of these people are.

JULIET, WENDY & SONIA PORTRAITS Thomas

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AWARENESS Dev. team post art and cross-promotional posts on their personal social media accounts with appropriate links and hashtags.

This leads the customer to the official Pixie Dusk accounts where they are further informed about the studio and its games.

Game trailers would also be available for viewing on YouTube.

The studio and each game release would have a press release sent out to major video game, anime, and other "geek" news outlets.

PURCHASE & DELIVERY The landing page and social media accounts will include links to purchase the games from the Steam and Itch.io marketplaces.

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EVALUATION

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POST-PURCHASE

From the Pixie Dusk social media, they are taken to the studio's landing page where they can browse the available and upcoming games, and sign up for a monthly newsletter.

The Pixie Dusk landing page would have a page with each game's downloadable assets, in keeping with the open source IP Pixie Dusk will have character and game inspired playlists on the company Spotify page.

A Pixie Dusk discord server would be active to encourage discussion and facilitate discussion between players and developers Development leads would also host Twitch streams to answer questions and do "let's plays" of new releases

Part IV: Marketing Strategy

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PART V: GAME PRODUCTION

In the 2020 spring semester, the Pixie Dusk class/collaboration began in earnest. All team members had to go through an application process to be admitted into the class.

The concepts for Perfect Waifu and Screamcap had already been developed as part of a brainstorming immersion in November 2019. (I was part of the group that came up with the initial idea for Perfect Waifu!)

We hit the ground running and began production on January 15, 2020.

Part V: Game Production

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THE ROLE OF A...

PRODUCER A producer oversees the development of a game and acts as a facilitator across multiple parties to ensure that it is seen through to completion.

Communicate with key stakeholders Organize and manage Google Drive digital asset repository Lead weekly update presentations Take note of sponsor and faculty feedback Track weekly assignments for each team member

RAZ EXPRESSIONS VISDEV Xu 51

The Art of Pixie Dusk

PRE PRODUCTION

VISUAL NOVEL PIPELINE As you probably guessed, there is no standard pipeline for producing visual novels. We only had a semester to work with, and though we had some veterans from Jellycube, it was a very agile and iterative process of developing the pipeline.

The art team works with the writer to understand the writer's vision for the game.

Summary & asset breakdowns are prepared Initial production schedule is developed.

Roles responsibilities are assigned Communication channels set-up Google Drive set up Naming conventions determined Style guide prepared

ASSET PRODUCTION & GAME BUILD Moodboard Visual development sketches Color studies Lineart Colors Asset added to the game code

PLAY TESTING & BUG FIXES Play-through Bug tracking Bug Fixes

LAUNCH! 53

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RAZ FULL ART PIPELINE Agocha, Baumhover, McCollum, Xu

SCHEDULING PRODUCTION DURING A PANDEMIC I had originally scheduled the alpha build both games to be completed by Wednesday March 25, 2020, but nobody could predict what would end up happening just a week before.

That week was spring break, and every Ringling student received an email that the break had been extended as a safety precaution against the Coronavirus outbreak, later that week we learned that the campus was going to be shut down and all students had to return home.

Needless to say, this was not an ideal situation. Several members of our team live outside of the state of Florida and some are international students who live in a countries on the other side of the world.

Following the order, the goal refocused and rather than have a complete alpha we were able to go back and work on some of our stretch goals like character expressions that make for a better gameplay experience.

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"the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry" Robert Burns

Part V: Game Production

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COMMUNICATION CHANNELS Communication with the teams was easy thanks to Discord servers set up by each respective art lead.

Through these I would remind the artists about upcoming deadlines and it was very helpful for tracking individual team members' progress.

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Part V: Game Production

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ASSIGNMENT TRACKING I learned a new software called GitHub (and its browser version GitLab) to organize and track each task.

Each task was assigned to an individual team member and given a due date.

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Part V: Game Production

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ASSIGNMENT TRACKING (CONT.) I also drafted twice-weekly contracts that all team members had to agree to prior to leaving every meeting to ensure that there was no confusion regarding their assignments for the next meeting.

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Part V: Game Production

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ASSET ORGANIZATION PERFECT WAIFU I was also responsible for organizing and managing the assets in the Google Drive digital asset repository.

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Part V: Game Production

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ASSET ORGANIZATION SCREAMCAP

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Part V: Game Production

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CLIENT COMMUNICATION Every class meeting on Wednesday, we would hold weekly update presentations with Michael Lewis over zoom, even before the pandemic.

These presentations were led by myself, the art leads, and the writers.

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PROJECT SIGNIFICANCE & LEARNING OUTCOMES

This project is the culmination of my four years at Ringling. With this project completed I can safely say that I have done everything I wanted to do when I applied here. I have learned what it takes to be a producer firsthand by working on not one, but two games at the same time. I created a strategy and marketing campaign for a real startup. All of the knowledge, skills, and abilities I gained (and retained) throughout these past four years have been applied to this thesis at some point or another, and it is a representation of the kind of work I would like to continue doing after graduation.

Part V: Game Production

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You did an excellent job managing the schedule and holding people to it, along with handling the huge challenge of transitioning during the pandemic.

Tracking specific progress and milestones was a HUGE value add for me as the facilitator.

TESTIMONIALS

RICK DAKAN

Your organization and ability to help keep the team on track was reassuring and beneficial.

MAE LUCCHINO

[The most beneficial/valuable aspect of your role was] Keeping. Us. On. Track. Luckily, my team had a really good producer last year, but I know some other teams had issues with theirs. You're understanding but push at the right times, it helps a lot.

ISA PINTO

Your role kept us on a timeline that helped us meet the deadline on time KHUSHBU POHANI

BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, OCCUPATIONAL OUTLOOK HANDBOOK, MARKET RESEARCH ANALYSTS, ON THE INTERNET AT HTTPS://WWW.BLS.GOV/OOH/BUSINESS-ANDFINANCIAL/MARKET-RESEARCH-ANALYSTS.HTM

WORKS CITED

HUNICKE, ROBIN ET AL. “MDA : A FORMAL APPROACH TO GAME DESIGN AND GAME RESEARCH.” (2004).

"SO YOU WANT TO BE A PRODUCER - HOW TO LEAD A DEVELOPMENT TEAM", UPLOADED BY EXTRA CREDITS, 17 MAY 2012 . HTTPS://YOUTU.BE/WUKCZ2TACIW "WESTERN RPGS VS JAPANESE RPGS - I: WHAT MAKES THEM DIFFERENT?" YOUTUBE, UPLOADED BY EXTRA CREDITS, 20 MAY 2012 HTTPS://YOUTU.BE/L_RVM6HUBS8

This book is dedicated to all of the "making of" books and behind the scenes featurettes that inspired me to pursue a career in the entertainment business, and to all the time I spent watching DVD bonus features instead of actual movies.

Thank you to the entire business class of 2020. (ALL FIVE OF YOU!) I had no idea what I was getting into when I transferred over from illustration in fall 2017. What I got was beyond my wildest imagination, you all gave me a home. A space where I was able to learn and grow, to be creative, to fail and succeed. I'll never forget that.

To Kathleen Sobr, the best department head I could ask for, always leading by example with professionalism and strength. With you at the helm, this department is going to continue to do amazing things.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To Marilyn Garman, Sarita Rene, and the late Jim Krause. I can confidently say that the three of you have been my favorite teachers. Equal parts patient, stern, kind, and quirky. I can't wait to bring the everything I learned in your classes into the professional world.

To Rick Dakan, Michael Lewis, and Michael Phillipi, thank you for trusting me, someone with absolutely no experience in producing anything, much less visual novels, with this project. I definitely leave this experience with a richer understanding of what it takes to be a real producer than when I started.

To the entire team at Pixie Dusk, thank you for putting up with all my annoying messages and double clarifications of what everyone's doing week to week. I can't even begin to express how proud I am of all of you, you've all done a phenomenal job on these games and I can't wait for them to be released into the wild.

Finally, to my family, mom, dad, and Annie, for supporting me throughout these four years.

For trusting me when I said I wanted to go to an art school to study illustration, and supporting me when I said I wanted to switch majors to business. For helping me move in and out of all those dorm rooms, and for everything else.

CONTACT

ENTITY Baumhover, McCollum & Xu BAD GUY Kim (BACK COVER) VAN INTERIOR Lucchino

pmcampbe@c.ringling.edu

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pablomc@outlook.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pablo-murray-34b05717b/