Developing for 3DS: August 2018 Update

   The main reason for this blog post is to issue a clarification: We expect our first 3DS game to come out at the end of 2019—failing that, the beginning of 2020. The "end of 2020" claim was based on outdated plans. Depending on whether Phantomatics is finished when we expect it, this means we are giving ourselves 11 to 14 months to develop the follow-up game. Worst case scenario, we miss our two deadlines by more than a month or two, meaning our first 3DS game releases ~April 2020. Best case scenario, having a bigger team means we have the teamwork to get both games finished early; our first 3DS game releases in September of 2019.

   I have more news. Paper-Soul Theater, our pastiche of late-90s/ early-2000s RPGs, will not be our first game on 3DS. We have decided on a new game that will be developed alongside Paper-Soul Theater and released first due to its humbler size. We will not reveal this new game until it is far into development, but I will say that it's being helmed by Trevor, not me, and that it's planned to be an M-rated game.

Current Plans for Paper-Soul Theater

A sample of lesser-known/ cult, 3D JRPGs. Notice both how the age rating doesn't deter star ratings, but also that star ratings go down over time. A lower price means more stars, but what's interesting is that it almost doesn't matter whether a game is a sequel or a new franchise. I never realized how important it was to be early to the party; the worst-rated game out of all six games is the one that sold the best, despite being a game that only a cult audience knows.

   The platforms Paper-Soul Theater will be available on are a subject of debate. This last week, I've heard mixed things about the future of the 3DS, and nothing but good things about the Switch. Industry veterans are calling for at least 18 more months of life for the 3DS, and yet eShop activity by users is low right now. Considering it might still take many years to finish PST, things are looking grim. 

    While I'm still skeptical of the Switch in some ways, I have to admit that I was wrong for seeing it as a bad option. What the Switch lacks in its userbase compared to 3DS/ PS4, it makes up in its focus on indie games. The Switch is like Steam in that indie game sales are super amplified...with the risk of being buried. Switch owners en masse will scavenge the upcoming page for games that speak to them, and that's something no other consumer does. PST is designed to appeal to Nintendo fans and is our most ambitious game to date (despite being more of a handheld RPG than a console RPG by modern standards) so it has a much better chance of surviving on such a risky platform.

   That's all the news for now. 

    Postscript: Development on Phantomatics is progressing splendidly!

—Matthew Kordon, Founder of Otyugra Media

You're doing what!? Making 3DS indie games post-2018

   "Some things just really are too good to be true," is what a long-time member of our team said, when I explained to him that this week is probably one of the best weeks there has ever been, and will ever be, to release an indie game on the 3DS eShop. Yes, you read that right--follow me word for word--now is among the most profitable times in history to finish putting a game onto the 3DS! Overnight, I have gone from thinking that to be "baloney," to seeing it as "so powerful in its truth, that fully explaining why would be like revealing a trade secret to my competition." 

The 3DS released in 2011, 7 years before writing this

Without giving away too many details, why is the 3DS a wonderful place for indie games in 2018?

• Competition is Low: If you look at any videogame digital marketplace over time, you'd notice not only how flooded each market was a few years ago but also how much each market has grown exponentially (from mobile phones, to Steam, to PS4, etc). Steam had 700 million games on its platform in 2014. How many games are available on the 3DS? According to Wikipedia, there are 1,290 games on the system, as well as about 200 virtual console games in North America. Let's be generous and say there are 350 virtual console games across all regions. Doing the math, for each 3DS game available in July 2018, there are well over 427 thousand games on Steam. On top of all that, very few games are coming to the 3DS in the future compared to literally everything else still on the market.
• Demand is High: Here's another bombshell: The 3DS is selling as good as it did on launch, which is to say, near record-high numbers of 3DS systems were sold this January! You better believe that some of those hundred-thousands of people will be checking out the new releases on the eShop, and I think the Switch has helped to improve the average Nintendo fan's respect and desire for indie games. Need I say more?
• The 3DS is Friendly to New Software: Since launch, Nintendo has been very generous with allowing anyone to put anything on their system, but because of the challenge of 3DS development, no one took them up on this offer. I did research into this. Miraculously, something big happened that allowed a new door into developing for the system, and finding this out was like discovering gold nuggets in a river bed! Let's just say Nintendo did something when no one was looking, and those developers are going to regret having not paid attention.
• The eShop is Quality and has an Indie Game Category: Part of why the 3DS is such an attractive system, aside from being a handheld for cheap and for predating VR, is that it has one of the best digital stores, period. Surpassing the Switch, and many alternatives to Steam, the 3DS eShop is loved by developers and consumers alike. Likewise, having an indie game category on the homepage is enormous free advertising.

2017: Not bad for a system that "already died."

   Don't misunderstand what I'm saying: this just means that people who are about to put their 3DS game on the eShop are lucky beyond words. I was talking about late-2018... not 2019, or 2020, etc.

   So what does the future hold, and why do we want to begin developing for the system right now? Honestly, all I can do is guess, and say that things are looking pretty good for 2019 and beyond. As the system "dies," sales for the system will finally slow down, and people will let the system collect dust. It'll be forgotten about, worse, people will develop a stigma against it for being "old." Contrary to some of my team, I just don't see that as enough of a reason to be pessimistic about the business opportunity left wide open. I don't believe it's too good to be true, I believe it's simply a smart move. Nintendo claims that the 3DS's "characteristics, price, and play style differ from the Switch, and [that they will] continue the 3DS family business separately and in parallel," and I think they have good reason to. One doesn't need to look farther than the Vita to know that a unique and beloved handheld can have a lifespan loooong after everyone declares it as "dead." 

   Lastly, what is our personal plan? 

   We're in a bit of a bad position to want to start making games for 3DS. We have our hands full with Phantomatics, which was designed as a homage to computer games--the way keyboard-and-mouse controls separate PC games from console games, so I unknowingly screwed us over with that design focus. Since Phantomatics was designed to take full advantage of the unique properties of a computer, porting that to 3DS would be a long process that would result in an inferior game. No thanks.

   Alternatively, we could port Paper-Soul Theater to the 3DS. On paper, this sounds like a no-brainer (you mean to tell me a game inspired by TTYD is coming to a Nintendo console!?). Problem is, we have no idea when exactly Paper-Soul Theater will release. It could come out in 2020, or it could come out in 2023 for all I know. I was asked, "who is going to be using a 3DS several years from now?" and that's a risky gamble that gets slightly worse by the month. Still, this seems like a strong candidate.

   A third choice would be to first release something else on 3DS. A new game entirely would have the advantage of being released by mid-2020, because we can design it with a due date in mind. If successful, it could help introduce us to Nintendo fans before Paper-Soul Theater comes.

   Regardless, we will be looking into the process, requirements, and costs as we plan our future. This isn't us saying "That seems neat," this is us saying "let's genuinely attempt this."

To summarize: The 3DS is a great system for us to expand to, and you can expect something that isn't Phantomatics to be sold on the system by late 2020. Paper-Soul Theater remains as our ultimate goal, however.

Eight Lessons I Learned from Golden Sun (2001)

It doesn't surprise me much that Golden Sun did well with reviewers and contemporary players: here's a new RPG franchise that pushes the GBA's graphics to their limit in the prettiest way possible. It's easy to forget that most GBA games were heavily scrutinized for their graphics, and praised when they hit it out of the park. People were divided about Wario Land 4, regarding its graphical leap from its predecessor, so much so many reviewers (IGN, TotalGames.Net, GamePro Mag, and Gaming Age) made that the primary reason for their verdict! At a time when graphics were literally tied with gameplay in importance, is it really so shocking that a visually-gorgeous RPG would be praised?

…But this isn't about what Golden Sun did right as an RPG, this is about why Golden Sun completely lost my interest and what mistakes I vow not to emulate.

1. Tread Carefully when Composing a Soundtrack - If you've ever heard the overworld theme in Golden Sun, you might describe it as subdued, yet bombastic, and hyper-victorious, sorta like an older Isaac thinking back to the good ol' days of trekking through the world. That's a huge misstep, and this is arguably the song you hear the most out of the entire OST. When I think of traveling between important locations, where danger lurks, I think "apprehension," "gentle excitement," "contemplation," "nature sounds." What I don't, and shouldn't be made to think about are "victory before the battle," "deep excitement," "nothing to worry about," "the regal sound of an orchestra." I can't stress enough how the tone of this one song makes the entire game feel boring: it deflates any tension and desire to see how it all ends by basically telling you in music form that everyone feels as if fate has already been decided in their favor.
2. Never Put the A-Plot on Pause - I don't care what countless TV shows do; you can't put the main plot on hold and forget about it when you tell a story; I understand that now. If you're telling me about your encounter with a Swamp Monster, I couldn't care less about your stop at a gas station on the way to the swamp! That's not what the story's about and not why I want to listen to it! Golden Sun is the story of Isaac and Garet getting the McGuffins and fixing their hometown against the wishes of a small, evil group; tell me that story, and don't interrupt it for HOURS-AND-HOURS to have them play hero in every city they come across, as if I'm watching mediocre episodes of the Pokemon TV show. I learned firsthand by playing Golden Sun that if you drop the plot, players will drop your game en masse. If you want to have a story without a through-line plot, you need to start it that way and you need to have interesting characters who change over time. 
3. Balance the Frequency of Battles (and Give Battles Depth) - Before you scuff at this, yes I'm aware of the feather item that prevents battles. The bottom-line is that, like all late 90s JRPGs, Golden Sun continues the trend of pushing boring, repetitive, mindless battles in your tired face every three seconds. With or without a "repel" item, this as absolutely intolerable to people who actually value the quality of the time they spend with a videogame. This is just the surface of a much worse problem. For the developers to cram so many battles into the overall experience tells you how little faith they had in the rest of the game, and how much misplaced trust they had in their boring battle system. What Paper Mario 64 introduced to me is the idea that battles don't have to be the only highlight of the gameplay of an RPG. Golden Sun puts zero effort into making gameplay outside of battle fun (or "feel good")… except for one or two of their dungeon puzzles which actually are interesting, rather than something even a 6-year-old can figure out by trial and error in a matter of seconds. The battles are bad for a few reasons. Firstly, there is not much in terms of tactics. Most of your options do effectively the same thing: more damage to a slightly wider group of foe. Some attacks take a turn to charge, or boast stats, and there are plenty of ways to heal someone in the party. That is literally the full extent of the battle system, you almost can't get more shallow than that, though it is interesting that you can't easily revive a "downed" party member. Lastly, the battle system is simply designed poorly. Certain items are completely underpowered, and some magic attacks are overpowered. Money is practically infinite, and most items you never need but clog up your inventory for emergency situations.
4. Never Subject Players to Nefarious Mazes - Remember how the graphics are so great? Not on the overworld they aren't. Imagine a GBA, blurry overworld where everything looks identical, and there are very few landmarks aside from the shape of the river that happens to be on screen. Congratulations, you're lost. Good luck meandering awkwardly around each corner, hoping to find a place you can go. Have fun being turned around when, at last you enter a town, because uh oh! the town is closed for some reason, time to start all over. Exploration should be exciting, not dreadful (see #3). Furthermore, going to the wrong place at the wrong time in Golden Sun means getting your ass kicked by a difficulty spike, as if a poorly-designed, randomly-generated sandbox world.
5. No Unnecessary Reuse of Awful JRPG Tropes - Every since Super Mario RPG/ EarthBound revolutionized the genre as mainstream games, nothing--and I mean no single game--has had any excuse; no game that peddles the same old trite deserves your money. Period. And guess what? Golden Sun peddles the same old trite that made 90s JRPGs age poorly. I'm talking about "every single town has a problem that you have to solve and no one living there is memorable." I'm talking about "NPCs only exist in towns, and every town has an inn, shop, and healer." I'm talking about "there are no explanation for why every-monster-ever roams the land." I'm talking about "there are literally no reasons for why said monsters can't just barge into a town and eat everyone." I'm talking about "it doesn't matter how young you are, you need to save the world, the whole world and everyone you come across because that's just who you are." I'm talking about "your only choices in dialogue are Yes or No and it doesn't matter which you pick." Enough of this shit. Maybe it was cute in the late 80s, and the early 90s, but it wasn't cute in the 2000s, and it still isn't fucking cute.
6. Backtracking isn't a "Good Incentive" - in Wario Land 3, if the player fucks up, he or she has to start from the very beginning and do it exactly right, and let me tell you, some of the enemies that send you back to the beginning don't play fair. This brutal, meanspirited game design is present in Golden Sun too, and for the very first time, I realized how powerful a time-waster an RPG can become when you pad it with awful shit that makes the player retrace their steps as "punishment" for not understanding something esoteric about your puzzle.
7. Avoid Repetitive Storytelling - This is straightforward: don't force the player to experience the same thing over and over in a story unless there's a good reason for it. If the first two towns have a dangerous problem that needs solving, don't write the third fucking town such that it has a community-wide danger that the player must solve. I did that twice already, Christ! Golden Sun in its entirety is extremely predictable, so much so that the second time the game was getting ready to add a character to my party, I figured it out within seconds, because they did it in a really similar way the time before, and this person acted the part.
8. Don't Have Dull Character Designs - Compare the NPCs of Golden Sun with the characters of Okage: Shadow King, and 3DS Fire Emblem games. I'll wait. Did you notice how infinitely boring NPCs are in Golden Sun? Or how easy it is to take regular humans and make them fun to look at? Seasoned fans of JRPGs or Anime will both tell you the same thing: boring character designs will kill their interest in your show/ game because it shows the team who made it have no dedication to quality and thinking outside the box. Mia the healer is arguably the only human exception to everyone being bland, and I must admit I love the Claymation look of the enemies.

Poor Golden Sun, how ripe it is for a reboot that fixes its fundamental problems! To its credit, it's got graphics on par with DS games, which is really impressive both from a visual-art and technical view point. Sadly, being technically impressive 17 years ago isn't technically impressive anymore, the opposite in fact. Time has a way of revealing what deserves to be remembered, and what doesn't, and if Golden Sun's pretty graphics are it's only saving grace, I can guarantee you that people will continue to move on to better RPGs and not look back...back to the days when RPGs copied all the wrong elements from each other for decades at a time until the whole genre became crusty and stale.

Pixel Art is the Foe of Typography

I'm going to keep this short and sour: Pixel artists, overall, are terrible at designing fonts for their videogames & artworks! Rather than bitch about an entire giant community, setting up straw men, and remaining unfocused, I think constructively consider a few real-life examples made within the last seven days would better demonstrate my point.

Exhibit A: Sabaku June 3rd, 2018

Take a look at something wonderful I found earlier today. This artist is clearly talented in almost every small way imaginable: the color scheme is well thought out, the anatomy of not only the people but snake are great (for example, person on the right has a shoulder distinct from his/ her arm), the user interface is professional, and she has a good knowledge of lighting with 3D objects. I could criticize the perspective and shadows, but more importantly, this is a well-executed image that I wouldn't be ashamed to frame on my wall.

...And yet, the text illustrated at the top is hardly legible! The Us look like Os—the As look like Hs—the LU looks like a W—Ps look like lowercase Es—everything is too close to each other creating two fancy rectangles, rather than blocks of information. Relative to the gorgeous art and wise design, the font in use fails at it's most important job.

Sadly, this is one of the slightly better uses of font I've seen lately, and I bet a lot of effort went into it no less. There is intention and logic behind why the font is the way it is: 90-degree angles, smooth corners, consistency throughout the letters. What I'm trying to say is that I don't blame the artist as much as I blame the medium she is working within. When it comes to pixel art and font, it is a no-win situation, because vector curves are the foundation and origin of this deep tradition. Perhaps I shouldn't even blame the medium—perhaps the people who look at an image like this and focus too much on trying to read it as soon as they look at it are the ones causing a problem. Is it perhaps that this use of the font is "right" for the image in question, and therefore the image is "progressive" for shaping text around pixel art traditions? Likewise, am I asking too much for fonts in pixel art to conform to traditional standards of prioritizing curves and distinction among the letters?

Exhibit B: Commission of a portrait of a cute youngster by @Sinistarino on Twitter

What about tiny fonts that have little to work with? Surely, any flaw I could point out would be difficult to fix without creating a new flaw, even for the best of typographers. Again, it's a no-win situation, so why play a game you can't even win? What if I am right that this is an inferior aesthetic for the font in the images in question—that the problem is with the artist's choice? Maybe the problem really is sticking too closely to tradition, not my tradition of curves and distinct letters, but of making everything uniform.

Here is my argument at last: Pixel artists act like Modernists who didn't learn the lessons taught by Postmodernism. The iron will of conformity is that all space within the boundaries of the image must be pixels in perfect grid form, no matter what. It's the "no matter what" part that is causing a problem. If we as artists close ourselves to alternative thinking, we lose the opportunity to improve. The only reasons I can think to keep the font pixelated with the rest of the image is to uphold a tradition taken to its logical extreme and to appease the people who want art from the artists. I bet you anything that Sinistarino has a lovely, deeply personal signature that would make this piece of art twice as great, but we'll never get to see that. Instead, the signature (ART BY SINISTARINO) looks awfully machine made and devoid of charm, and it, therefore, sticks out, comically. I want to see the fine curves of her hand stokes, the very thing that pixel squares can't convey in detail.

Father God in Heaven (or Mother Nature, pick one), when he created the universe, and all the cosmos within it, signed nothing with his name, so why, you might ask, should a humble man or woman put love and soul into their signatures rather than something that draws little attention? Because the creation of beauty is an act of love and compassion for the beholders, and if you are to be gift-givers to the world, do the best you can to make every inch—every centimeter—of your creation the most beautiful it can be, for that pleases the people of this Earth.

So, in closing, I ask two things to all pixel artists: take typography extremely seriously, and break conventions for the sake of beauty (example: just cause everyone else is using only one color in their font color-palette doesn't mean you should too).


Post Script:
By pure coincidence (as-in I did not pick these with this purpose) both images are made by women depicting women as subject matter. This is a minor demonstration of why I like democratic libertarianism: the market props up whoever is best at art. Women got a big slice of the top feature of the pixelart hashtag today simply because people got together and decided they liked their art the most. If women truly are equals to men, then logically, an unbiased market would give them equal chance at proving their value. Yet again today, when left to their own methods, the people were able to bring about something wonderful: subtle feminism.

Thoughts on Postmodernism

Lately, I've been noticing all the subtle ways Paper-Soul Theater takes after Alice in Wonderland, a surreal-humor book about a young Victorian girl who runs off to a place of confusion and dystopia and discovers that grass in such a place is not greener.

The book as a whole plays out neither as a counterargument to Postmodernism nor as a celebration, but it maintains some very important lessons for a modern reader. First of all, Alice, like both Generation X and the Baby Boomers, has no direction and saw it fit to let her intuition guide her. The Cheshire Cat, by contrast, is a master at predicting the future to the full extent any person could reasonably be, and it is enabled by its precaution of the future to find a path for itself that it likes. The grinning cat perhaps grins because it has the world figured out, which allows it to trick everyone that passes it by, even the king. Yes, it tricks most people because they are Modernists, but that doesn't mean the cat itself is a Postmodernist, because that would imply it's an equal with the mad hatter, whom it is wiser than. The mad hatter is a postmodernist who things making shit up and living life in anarchy will satisfy all his needs, when in reality he is blissfully unaware of the way this repels others from being his acquaintance and has trapped him.

Ever since the Beatniks, many people have fallen into the trap of trying to live like mad hatters: on their own terms with little regard for reason, established morals, or progress made in the past. I am hopeful that people of the Digital Age take after the Cheshire Cat, who has access to more options than ever before yet found the strength to pick a path rather than drift on the wind.

The problem is, Postmodernism as a mainstream norm refuses to go away and allow for the response to Postmodernism to take its place. Both my generation and Gen Z are in danger of falling into the same trap of choosing doublespeak over established order, of choosing no direction over any sort of plan, of having no backbone to reject what they think is wrong at the cost of stepping on someone's way of life. What I find maddening is that Postmodernism has become conservative, and a sort of Neo-Modernism (Digitalism as I call it) has become progressive.

With Paper-Soul Theater, I aim to demonstrate how Postmodern thinking can destroy a person's life and limit them much like modernism once did in a completely different way. The Cheshire Cat is content because he found direction in life in such a way that is neither rigid nor uncareful but instead nuanced.

Paper-Soul Theater is on hiatus: What you need to know

Paper-Soul Theater, a game in development directly-inspired by early-2000s Paper Mario.

For those who don't know, Paper-Soul Theater is a not-so-subtle continuation of the art style and revolutionary game mechanics of the first two Paper Mario games. It's an original property with a different direction: Paper-Soul Theater is not just a turn-based rpg but also a horror game to its core. Furthermore, PST layers on ideas from tactical rpgs such as Fire Emblem, and Final Fantasy Tactics, as well as experimental idea from story-focused indie rpgs like Lisa: The Painful and Undertale. That may sound like a radical departure from the Paper Mario formula, but most of the differences are things added on top of Paper Mario, or are there to directly subvert it.

It is no exaggeration that Paper-Soul Theater is a highly-anticipated upcoming game. Some argue that it's detachment from Paper Mario allows for it to coexist--perhaps even pick up where Nintendo left off a decade ago, which according to them, makes it more "Paper Mario" than Nintendo's latest offerings! Plenty of Paper Mario fans have emailed us to say how excited they are for this game, and some have gone as far as to ask to volenteer, as they see it as a Paper Mario community project, which is how we'd describe it too; most people who've worked on Paper-Soul Theater thus far have been fans.

Past, Present, and Future
"You said 'two years,' what has the team been up to all this time?" Learning through failure. I gained painful lessons about what not to do almost daily, and twice I've watched a prototype rise and crash to the ground. I watched team members join and leave with the seasons. It was development hell; we worked day and night to run in circles! In December, my business partner and I decided what we needed was to take a break by making a smaller game, Phantomatics.

Our smaller game, in which the player controls a spooky ghost in one hand, and a clunky robot in the other.

I wouldn't blame you for thinking that means Paper-Soul Theater is going to be forgotten about; developers often leave exciting projects unfinished to pursue fun new ideas. Allow me to explain why that isn't the case:

• The period of my life when I abandoned old projects to chase the newest, shiniest idea, is long gone. For about three years, I started/ abandoned five games with so much potential, all because I didn't have the strength to sit down and vow to finish anything. Paper-Soul Theater means the world to me, and I'm never looking back.
• 
  
• Phantomatics is being made to give us the experience of completing and releasing a game. We've never sold a videogame before, or done this professionally, so when PST is up to bat, I don't want it to suffer because we were amateurs. I know in my heart this game deserves better.
• Think of Phantomatics as a convoluted fundraiser so that we can make the Paper-Soul Theater Kickstarter and prototype. I don't like to beg for money if I don't have to. I'd rather make a small product that people want to buy on the merits of the product itself, so that we can properly earn the money.
• Eventually when Paper-Soul Theater is on Kickstarter or some other crowdfunding site, I want people to be able to look back at our past work and see that we are creative, capable of making a game, and hold ourselves to a high standard. Otherwise, they only have our word that we know what we're doing.

So if you're someone who considers the prospect of a Paper Mario spiritual successor to be exciting, here's what you can do in the meantime:

• Write "Paper-Soul Theater" on a sticky note and draw a doodle of a round plumber beneath it to give the words some context. Then, put that sticky note somewhere you don't look often.
• Sign up for the e-mailing list! When we resume development, you will be the first to know! Please send a tiny email to otyugragames@gmail.com; it's the best way to be a part of our community and to stay up-to-date without the fluff of social media.
• Read about the game on our website (otyugra.weebly.com/), then have the courage to show your excitement online, even if most people haven't heard of PST. Where's the fun in being a fan if you don't get to express your feelings?
• Tell your close friends about it, if they like videogames in general.
• Purchase Phantomatics when you get the chance. You'll get a neat little game and get to support us directly!

That's all for now. Thanks for reading.

Pixar's Coco: Modern Racism and Sterile Character Writing

Before I start, yes, this is a videogame blog; bare with me, I'll relate it to videogames soon enough. Before you ask, yes, I am well aware of the high critical score of Coco, the high approval from casual moviegoers, and the high approval from the majority of Central Americans.

In high school, I remember seeing a black motivational poster in some other teacher's classroom about the importance of not backing down when you feel you are alone in thinking something. I think it depicted a yellow, exotic, oceanic fish, but the point is, I'm perpetually shocked by how relevant that poster has been through the years. I never would have guessed I would go on to harbor so many deeply-unpopular opinions, that have frankly made me ashamed of myself. As an example, I found Thor Ragnorak to be so bad that, when I left the theater, the only thing on my mind was how ashamed I was to be a writer if being a writer means I'm a part of the same occupation that produced something that colossally embarrassing. Fortunately, mankind has always had the power of logic and reason, so those with unpopular opinions were able to avoid death by angry mobs. Thank God.

I think Ragnorak and Coco make for an interesting comparison because they are on the opposite ends of storytelling. Ragnorak is about putting consistent characters first and stringing together a random series of events to call a plot for those characters to react to. Coco is storytelling that has everything bend to the iron will of the plot structure, even if that means having 90% of your characters exist solely to be puppets for the plot. Most stories, even most stories in videogames, have both interesting characters, and a well-functioning plot structure. While most games sit in the middle of those two movies, Paper-Soul Theater, for better or worse, is going to be much closer to Ragnorak in terms of structure, and that's what's so terrifying to me. Well, that's not a fair comparison, because our game is character driven much the same way 1984 is, rather than the kind of aimless plot that a comedy sitcom might have. All the same, I am diametrically opposed to Coco's idea of "characters."

Coco does a lot of things right, regarding culture, summarizing ethnic groups, and accurately portraying a spiritual celebration, from what I hear from American Hispanics all across the internet. You don't need me to tell you that it does more right than wrong and that it is a worthwhile experience. It even deserves all the awards it won. It's a pleasant-long-cry from the old-school racist days of 1940s Walt Disney shorts. ...but that's just it, old-school racism, the kind when a race was exploited for money (exoticism, made exclusively for the dominate race), when negative and neutral stereotypes were the only kind, etc.

Modern racism started with pieces of media like Disney's Pocahontas. Pocahontas is a movie made with nothing but endearing respect for native people because of Walt's desire to make something progressive a la To Kill a Mocking Bird. Linsey, a movie critic, and an ex-friend of YouTube's Doug Walker, made a great video lambasting Pocahontas for its bad portrayal of native people, despite having good intentions, softening people's hearts for other races, and universal appeal. The truth is often tough to swallow, and one such truth is that racism is not something that can be whisked away using a magic wand and good intentions. No, racism is something you have to work your ass off to avoid, and to anyone who fights it fiercely, you are a hero who bears a heavy weight on your shoulders. Pocahontas may be an interesting character who stands out among other people of her race within her own movie, but she still exhibits traits that reinforce deeply unrealistic characteristics that skew our understanding of what native people are like. They're just fucking people, Goddamnit; they are nothing more--nothing less--but the movie treats them as if they're magic forest elves worth marveling at for their divisively-distinct foreign majesty.

If Pocahontas treated the main character like a magic forest elf, Coco completely treats Miguel's extended family like antagonistic-members of a dystopian society. There is literally a scene where the family forms a mob and bust Miguel's guitar, as it symbolizes their hate of music/ all occupations that aren't shoe-making. The movie intentionally makes them terrifying so that you root for Miguel who naturally doesn't want to submit to them. The executives/ writers were so afraid of the possibility of the audience disagreeing with Miguel, that they felt the need to turn his family into monsters.

Listen man, I don't need to think every last decision Miguel makes is the logical thing to do in order to want to follow him. Ash Ketchum is a piece of shit person/ Pokemon trainer who caused damage and trouble everywhere he went because he didn't have his life together, during season one of Pokemon, and you know what, I found it easy to root for Ash; his heart was in the right place and he was always working towards a concrete goal. Likewise, Team Rocket is a group of very sympathetic lost souls who do evil things but make it look charming and do it for misguided reasons. Most episodes, they get to say funny things, but their actions have consequences. Sometimes, I just want to give them a hug and beg them to change their ways. Guess what? They work well as antagonists because they oppose the protagonist for reasons that are easy to comprehend (though not agree with). 

Anyway, the consequence is that all the main characters of the movie, with three exceptions total, are dislikable, unrelatable, and weird to anyone who didn't grow up with Hispanics (until the end of the movie where they kinda sorta have character growth and change their ways). One thing Pocahontas did right was open the door for other cultures to understand the minority. This movie is very edgy about displaying Mexican family culture at it's thickest and most divisive, and if you've been paying attention, that should sound an awful lot like the modern racism I described earlier: exaggerating divides to make other human races seem interesting.

For Christ's sake, we're all human beings first and foremost! We need to approach writing characters from this mentality. If you want to add a black guy to your sitcom or your action movie, start be writing him like a person, and then make tiny adjustments for complex racial differences, then see how that character would naturally react to your plot. Don't fucking start by making him a template black person then molding him into something a little less cookie cutter. And you know? I wouldn't be talking about this if media like Coco agreed with my way of writing. You should never reduce characters to just "evil," or just "Mexican grandma."

Second, when you have characters bend to your needs, they lack consistency. Spoiler: Miguel's real great-grandfather goes from cross-dressing in a mad dash to get to Earth (followed by lying constantly to everyone he sees to get his way), to an innocent, soft-spoken, loving father with a good moral compass. Don't tell me he changed in the many years he stayed there because the movie never establishes that fact.

So in closing, I want Paper-Soul Theater's vaguely-Native-American-people to be a series of individuals that stay true to themselves. Yes, they all belong to a nation of people, but they also divide in more ways than can be counted. Some found religion. Some are quite proud of their occupation. Some are shitty people. Some happen to be masculine or feminine. Some are going through trauma. Some are quite social. Some lost a limb during a war. Some are quite intelligent. Some have interest in very specific things. ...But no matter who they are, they will always by dynamic people first and foremost. Even the background characters who have a small role should feel as if protagonists of someone's story briefly passing through. That's real life: no person left two-dimensional. None.