No week goes by without me finding something that ruins my day a little. Until yesterday afternoon, I actually thought to myself “Hey, it will be the first Wednesday where you have absolutely no topic!” Thanks to the rapid spread of news through Facebook, however, I am spared this fate. The small developer studio Dischan has come to an end. The name doesn’t ring a bell? I figured as much.
Who was that and why don’t I know them?
Malicious tongues might now claim that Dischan is a completely unknown studio, which I only bring up to somehow fill the Wednesday. But that would not be fair. Globally speaking, the statement might hold true, but not for me personally. Even though the biggest success of Dischan is the visual novel Juniper’s Knot of only 2 hours length, the story behind it has had a great significance for me. It is one of the main reasons why I love demonic characters so much, and it tells with an emotional depth that hardly any other story has achieved. With Nether, the story had such a strong impact on me that without it, I probably wouldn’t be working here at all.
But I’ve already raved enough about this game. I only advise everyone who has never taken a look at the free game to be sure to download it, because the website and the downloads will be disappearing in the coming days.
When a dream dies
So why does the closure of such a small studio affect me? Because it means the end of a dream for people, and that makes me sad. The folks behind Dischan were good. They celebrated successes, received good reviews for their free works. Even when things were going badly with the crowdfunding of the new project, they fought for over 2 years, only to end up failing.
Many interpretations can be drawn from the reactions of the operator and founder, Jeremy Miller, and most of it is disheartening. All blog entries from recent years are locked/gone. The only message on the site states that he will no longer respond to emails. When someone doesn’t want to talk about their projects after 6 years, then they are burying them completely. At least, that is my interpretation of the situation. You bury a dream, a creative vision that could not be realized, and which now has no future. Yes, in my cozy-fluffy-flower-world, I find that terrible.
Oh Cortyn, just shut up.
Sometimes I write texts where I know exactly that in the end someone will say: “Dude, Cortyn is just rambling nothing but melodramatic nonsense.” This was such an article this time. And yet I wanted to write it, as it was important to me.
All on my own. Dischan exemplifies the many small, good ideas that will never find realization because they cannot compete with the uniform mass. “Quality wins out” is just a fairy tale in my eyes. Otherwise, I can’t explain the success of the 2345th early-access survival title.
Please excuse the “Mimosen-Wednesday”, which turned out to be much more emotional and personal than planned this time. Next week I’ll be grumpy again. Someone will manage to create some coarse nonsense again.
