1487: Uchikoshi’s Last Reward

Kotaro Uchikoshi, the creator of the two Zero Escape games 999 and Virtue’s Last Reward, opened an English language Twitter account today, even despite his own admission that his English is not all that great. Still, he felt compelled to communicate directly with his fans since, surprisingly, it seems the majority of the Zero Escape fanbase is actually in English-speaking territories — and that neither 999 or Virtue’s Last Reward sold well enough in Japan to make a third and final installment in the series possible in the immediate future.

This is… distressing to see, frankly. Uchikoshi’s Twitter feed is heartbreaking to read. Even through the occasionally slightly broken English — his English is certainly better than my Japanese, mind — it’s clear that there stands a passionate man who would like nothing better than to realise his grand vision for his magnum opus, a man constantly frustrated by the realities of the modern games biz — key word “biz” — and a man who genuinely feels bad that he’s letting his fans down. I find it incredibly sad that someone doing such wonderfully distinctive things with interactive storytelling has been put in such a position in this, an age where story-centric games such as Gone Home, The Stanley Parable and numerous others can be held up and celebrated — even declared “Game of the Year” in some quarters of the Internet. Surely the modern industry is diverse enough to support both the Titanfalls of the world and a third installment in the Zero Escape series?

Perhaps it is — in fact, given the outpouring of support I’ve seen for it today, I know it is — and Uchikoshi simply hasn’t yet found the right route to market. Despite the bleak, apologetic nature of his tweets, it’s clear that he hasn’t given up hope as yet. Following a heartfelt plea for any prospective investors to contact him directly via Facebook (I’m providing the link there on the off-chance that anyone rich is reading and feels like funding Zero Escape 3) he attempted to reassure fans that Zero Escape 3 “will definitely be released somehow, someday!” And I’d like to believe that he’s right.

The question is “how?” Uchikoshi claims that he’s considered crowdfunding but was concerned that it wouldn’t be “persuasive” enough, but this may partly be due to the fact that crowdfunding is still yet to make a huge impact in Japan; it’s still primarily a Western thing, with the exception of a few Japanese developers like Nigoro (though still in collaboration with Western publisher Playism, I might add) turning to the platform to fund projects such as La-Mulana 2. I would have thought that Kickstarter would be an ideal solution for Uchikoshi to clearly solicit and demonstrate fans’ support for the Zero Escape series, but this may not help the situation in his native Japan, which is where the problems really are. I’m assuming there are some sort of rights issues involved with developer Spike Chunsoft that prevent him from striking out on his own and making Zero Escape 3 as an independent developer, or releasing 999 and Virtue’s Last Reward (and Zero Escape 3) on PC, or…

Well, anyway. Sadly, I don’t have the power to do anything about the situation. But it will be absolutely criminal if someone with as clear an artistic vision as Uchikoshi isn’t able to realise his creative visions due to matters of “business”. This is something I hope that the industry as a whole can solve together; regardless of whether or not you liked 999 and Virtue’s Last Reward, you can hopefully agree that the gaming landscape is a richer place with titles like them in it. Creative, interesting games should be encouraged and rewarded; instead, if we’re not careful, we’ll drive people like Uchikoshi away forever and be stuck with an vicious cycle; an endless of soulless but profitable games, and no-one wanting to rock the boat by doing something a bit different.

That’s a Doomsday scenario, obviously, and unlikely to happen, particularly while the Western indie space is flourishing to such a degree. Now we just need the East to follow suit.

I wish Uchikoshi the best of luck in his endeavours to get Zero Escape 3 into the hands of those of us who really, really want to see it, and would urge you to support him in any way you can if you believe in interesting, distinctive games that do some truly creative things with the medium as a means of interactive storytelling.