As some of you might remember, I (Robin Ek, TGG) have written quite a few posts about DEVGRU-P’s games in the past (“Stay! Stay!“,”Panzermadels” and “Maid Mansion“). Well, guess what? Just recently I got a chance to do an interview with DEVGRU-P =) So we talked about everything from their past games, their upcoming game ”Mein Waifu is the Fuhrer”, #GamerGate, SJWs to censorship in games. So without further ado, please enjoy the interview 😉

Robin TGG
Would you be so kind and introduce yourself to our readers? =)

DEVGRU-P
Hello readers! We’re DEVGRU-P, the team behind a number of comedy Visual Novels.

Robin TGG
What’s the history behind DEVGRU-P? (how did the studio came to be) And how did you come up with that name?

DEVGRU-P
DEVGRU-P was formed during the development of Panzermadels: Tank Dating Simulator to bring everyone under one team name. The actual name, DEVGRU-P (pronounced Devgroup) is a pun on the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group (NSWDG), more commonly known as Seal Team Six, or DEVGRU. Since a lot of people refer to the team behind games as the “Dev group” and since our games all draw on a background of military humor, we combined them into DEVGRU-P.

Robin TGG
I would love to know how you guys came up with the idea for “Stay! Stay! Democratic People’s Republic of Korea!”. Furthermore, why do you think the SJWs became so salty over this one particular game of yours?

DEVGRU-P
Well there’s the obvious source, in that Stay! Stay! Democratic People’s Republic of Korea: My First (and only) Trip to North Korea is a parody of Go! Go! Nippon: My First Trip to Japan. How we came up with it though, is that I was playing Go! Go! Nippon when the girls in the game, Akira and Makoto, are telling the protagonist about a place that is open 24/7 where you can buy small amounts of almost every product, called a Konbini (spoiler alert: it’s a convenience store). The protagonist is all surprised and doesn’t know what the word means and I immediately thought “How the hell do you learn one of the hardest languages for a native English speaker to pick up… and not know that Japan also has convenience stores… the only thing crazier would be going to North Korea and thinking that it was South Korea that was the bad one.” And well, that’s where the idea came from.

I think they were salty because as opposed to going all “Song of the Volga Boatmen” for the entire game, we made the female characters more like normal people, who have a range of emotions, even in a terrible dictatorship. It would be silly to think that every moment of every day for North Koreans is filled with misery. They were also annoyed that Jeong, the older sister, was portrayed as being rather well endowed, which was meant to poke fun at the absurd body proportions seen in so many visual novels and anime. I mean seriously, does anyone actually think military uniforms fit like spandex? I guess that joke went a bit over their heads.

The massive outcry came after one person, Sam Wu (@WontonWu) subtweeted (as in obviously spoke about our game without tagging us so we could respond) around 20 times about our game being “offensive”. We all got a kick out of how much rage it must have taken to make 20 tweets about our game, instead of… just writing to us directly. So we made a couple memes poking fun at the situation, and I think that just enraged her more, in the end she wrote over 50 tweets complaining about us, which was basically free advertising for DEVGRU-P.

All of the memes we made specifically avoided attacking her (we’re shitposters, not assholes) but her little clique tried to report us for harassment, sadly to their dismay, “you can’t dupe the DEVGRU-P”.

Source:
DEVGRU-P has started a meme war against SJWs with their North Korean dating sim “Stay! Stay!”

Robin TGG
How did the ”Panzermadels: Tank Dating Simulator” game came to be? How has the response been? And since you released the ”full frontal assault” 18+ patch not so long ago. Well, let’s just say that I’m curious to know if the SJW camp has said anything about it yet?

DEVGRU-P
Panzermadels was a fun one to work one. We were a really small team back then, and the entire game was a shoestring operation. The base idea for the game came together when I photoshopped a swimsuit onto a tiger tank and sent it over to my friend. We both got such a kick out of it, that we made a game out of it. Panzermadels was very well received, and rated quite highly (90% positive) on Steam, which is saying something for an English Language visual novel programmed in TyranoBuilder by a team with zero experience.

A big key to me is that none of our in-house games are designed as pure 18+ experiences, as many of our fans just enjoy the humor and we don’t want them to feel like they have to wade through the adult content to get to the jokes. Some of our fans really enjoy adult content though, so we release it in patches to allow fans to choose if they want an ecchi experience or not.

No word from the SJWs, but Panzermadels really didn’t get much mainstream attention anyway (and I doubt many of our games will, unless the article is a full on “REEEEE THIS IS OFFENSIVE” response).

Source:
Panzermadels: Tank dating simulator, would you go to bed with a tank?

Robin TGG
What could you tell us about your new and upcoming game ”Mein Waifu is the Fuhrer”? And will that game be even more lewd than your previous titles?

DEVGRU-P
I wouldn’t say more lewd, but I can tell you it will be a funny one. The premise is essentially that the entire German High Command has been replaced with schoolgirls and the player has to prevent them from starting too much trouble… which obviously leads to World War II happening as a result. Plus, just imagine dating kawaii-Himmler-chan.

Robin TGG
What’s your take on censorship in games? Especially when it comes to localization in the West? I’m bringing this up since it’s said that Nintendo is taking their censorship madness even further with their future titles (as seen in the links down below).

Source:
http://archive.is/C7xfX
http://archive.is/ET8cZ

DEVGRU-P
I think the big issue in the debate is how we define censorship. There are so many forms of it, from the government enforced (don’t say this or we’ll lock you up), to business pressures (what we see most often in video games), to self-censorship (why I don’t run down the street yelling “Government get out REEEEEE” every time tax season comes around).

I think the first form, government mandated, is abhorrent. While the last form, self-censorship, is what keeps us living in a polite society. What worries me about business censorship though is that it can eventually lead to a de facto government censorship. Look at the MPAA rating systems, while it has no force of law (mindscrew for some of the kids here, but it is not illegal to go see an R-rated movie in the theater, it’s just an industry standard). The problem though is that after a while, well-intentioned business censorship morphs into a default ban on a lot of ideas because it modifies the idea of what the medium should be used for. I worry that in gaming it will result in video games being permanently relegated to being “children’s toys”.

Robin TGG
Since I just recently published an OP called “Why is today’s games media so disgusted and afraid of digital booty and sex?“ I would love to hear your take on that one and lewd games in general?

Source:
Why is today’s games media so disgusted and afraid of digital booty and sex?
Debunking the supposed link between sexism and video games

DEVGRU-P
I actually have never been a personal fan of lewd games, I mostly play strategy and simulation games like War in the East, Squad, and ARMA. But while I may not personally play lewds, I know all too well what it’s like to have your hobby attacked by the mainstream media (MSM). I have a very deep interest in firearms, and collect everything from MAC-10s, to MG-34s, to UZIs, a hobby that constantly ends up getting put on blast by the MSM whenever someone shoots up a random dinner.

Your article captures my same complaints about how the media reports on any subculture, they come in with a negative attitude from the outset, find a bad apple or two to represent the group as a whole, and then find some “expert” to give a contrived opinion laden with numerous errors that the average viewer will take as gospel. I think the only way we can counter the MSM narrative is to continue telling the truth through alternative media outlets like the TGG, and hope that honest and unbiased journalism wins out in the end.

(Also, since I have a chance to talk to the world now, here’s a quick run-down for any of you MSM reporters who may be a bit confused by gun terms. Magazines are not clips, there’s no such thing as “assault weapons” the term you want is “assault rifle”, and a barrel shroud is a safety device to prevent you from burning your hand not “the shoulder thing that goes up” <3).

Robin TGG
What’s your thoughts on the current situation in the games industry? (free-to-play”, “pre-order bonuses”,“paid-for DLC”, half-broken games on release, corruption and the SJW cancer).

Source:
GDC 2017 made me feel like game development isn’t even about games anymore
The SJW movement is destroying the games industry, the Gaming community fights back
Abrams Tank appears to be trolling ResistJam?
Gamers! Don’t let fascism happen to you!

DEVGRU-P
I’m torn on a lot of this stuff. I recognize that games have gotten astronomically more expensive to create over the last ten years, just look at any chart of highest production values per year and it shoots up somewhere around the end of the last console generation. As a result, companies are trying to shift games away from being a shrink-wrapped product that you buy, to a more long-term revenue source where you pay $60 for the base game, then $20 every couple of months thereafter to pay for each new DLC, essentially software as a service. Heck, even the editing programs such as Photoshop and Premiere have moved to a monthly subscription model instead of being a new edition to purchase each year or two (you’ll never get us to convert Adobe, I’ll use Photoshop CS5 until you pry it from my cold dead hands).

I don’t want to see the big companies or publishers losing money, that’s bad for the fate of the industry as a whole, and higher production budgets have led to a number of very cinematic experiences, such as GTA V, The Last of Us, and The Phantom Pain (plz no sue me Konami-san). On the other hand, a lot of companies see their player base as simply a cash cow, and not the person they should be serving (it’s software as a service, not software as a leach). So while I dislike the unnecessary and obviously tacked on DLC that we see with the yearly iterations of Battlefield and CoD, companies like CD Projekt Red find the perfect balance with their DLC for the Witcher III. They used it as an opportunity to take a new angle on their game and explored elements that wouldn’t warrant a full game, but were able to take center-stage for a smaller adventure. Hopefully more companies follow their lead.

Robin TGG
I’m most likely not the only person that has noticed that social activism and SJW agendas have spread like wild-fire throughout the established games media (not to mention lack of ethics and morals). So what’s your point of view on today’s games journalism?

DEVGRU-P
Modern games journalism was born out of all of those print magazines you would get with your membership cards at the brick and mortar game stores of the 90s. Even as a kid I recognized the issue with a media outlet reviewing things produced by the companies that buy the vast majority of their advertising space. I don’t think this is as much of an issue in traditional print media like newspapers, as their advertising comes from such a diverse group of sources and the reviews section makes up for very little of their content. Yet with games journalism being almost exclusively about products we can buy… the obvious conflict of interests should have been well… obvious? Basically, I sit in the camp that games journalism has always had a problem and some serious review of ethical advertising and reviewing practices needs to take place if the industry wants to be seen in a more favorable light.

Also, I just spoke with someone yesterday on the quasi-“grade inflation” in game review scores. Average movies will get something around 50% on Rotten Tomatoes, or a 5 or so on IMDB, yet your “average” game will get something in the high 70s. It’s almost unheard of for a mainstream gaming news site to give a AAA game below a 70. Not that it doesn’t ever happen, but there is an amazing amount of difference between user reviews and critic reviews when it comes to games, far more than exists with films.

Source:
Richard Stanton breaks code of ethics and Kotaku hides conflicts of interest?
Women play video games – A response to Kotaku’s nonsense post about female gamers
Brash Games is an unethical train wreck that exploits their writers and much more – Ethics 101
The issue with reporting in video games
Dear “games journalists”, keep your social activism and fascism bs out of our games!

Robin TGG
What’s your take on #GamerGate? And do you think that the games journalism and the games industry as a whole would have been in an even worse state if GG hadn’t kicked-off back in 2014?

DEVGRU-P
I think #GamerGate cemented the line that existed in the sand for years. Beyond revealing some of the bad apples in the industry though, I don’t think it achieved all of its goals.

Source:
Gamergate achievements (2014-2015)
Gamergate achievements (picture done by Bonegolem)
Bonegolem interview

Robin TGG
Is there a chance that we “might” get to play your games on other formats than PC in the future? (Xbox One, PS4, Switch, PS Vita and mobile).

DEVGRU-P
Lol, I see Nintendo wasn’t included in that list. Maybe we’ll move to Vita and mobile, I think there is a market for more quality visual novels there, but I don’t think they are interactive enough to warrant an Xbox One or a PS4 version.

Robin TGG
Since you used Kickstarter to fund “Panzermadels: Tank Dating Simulator” I would like to ask you what you think about crowd funding in general? (the ups and downs) And what was the Kickstarter experience like for you?

Source:
The risks of backing games on Kickstarter
Mighty No.9 backers still haven’t received their rewards?
Three months later Mighty no. 9 is still a failure

DEVGRU-P
I think Kickstarter is a great tool for smaller devs to help fund ideas that wouldn’t get made otherwise. Like anything in business though, you should have more than one funding source (Stay! Stay! DPRK was twice as expensive as our Kickstarter budget, but we planned for that and used Panzermadels revenue to cover the costs). I dislike when people use Kickstarter more like a store though. I can’t be the only one who gets annoyed at the absurd number of ads for watches and such on Facebook that are being crowdfunded on Kickstarter. I know why the creators put it on Kickstarter, but I don’t think it’s what the website should be used for.

Source:
Redefining Italian luxury watches filippo loreti

Robin TGG
I really like the designs and characters that you’ve made for your games, as I find them to be attractive and beautiful. That’s also why I would like to ask you if you received any complaints about sexist game design or misogyny for any of your titles so far? Furthermore, have you noticed that there is now an SJW trend among some game developers who do what they can to make their characters as ugly as possible?

Source:
Why does Mass Effect: Andromeda´s female characters look so ugly?
The Witcher 3 gets in trouble over sexist game design

DEVGRU-P
Beyond the aforementioned Twitter battle, I think pretty much everyone can tell that our games are lampooning visual novels and are not meant to be taken at face value. I think one GIF can summarize the ugly characters issue though, and it’s far less nefarious that we think…

Source:
3dtextmaker

Robin TGG
Do you have any idea what your user demographics looks like? (male and female players). I’m asking this since it appears as female players have started to play more and more lewd games as of lately. I would also like to ask if you have any plans on making a lewd game aimed towards a female audience? (male eye candy).

Source:
A response to Kotaku’s nonsense post about female gamers

DEVGRU-P
I think our biggest fan base comes from veteran an active duty military, but females make up a sizeable chunk of that group already. I would really like to publish an otome game or two, but sadly I haven’t found any that really caught my eye. So I guess this is a shout-out to any otome devs reading this who think no English publisher wants to work with the genre, send us an email <3

Robin TGG
What’s your plans, hopes and expectations for the rest of this year? And is there anything that you would like to say to our readers?

DEVGRU-P
Personal life? I’m really hoping we don’t get into a war with Russia.

Business wise though we have a ton of games coming out this year and I’m excited for the fans to get to play everything from a horror adventure game in Bali called Bunka no Kenkyu – Revival of Queen Leyak –, to a cute cat girl romp in Neko Club, to the ecchi fan service in Maid Mansion. It’s going to be a cool year and I think we’ll have a game for everyone, even you helicopter lovers.

And something to say to the readers? Uhm…Stocks make great Christmas gifts for the grandkids?

Robin “V-Act” Ek
Editor in chief
The Gaming Ground
Twitter: @TheGamingGround

More by Robin Ek:

• “Darkest Dungeon II” is coming to Playstation consoles on July 15th, 2024
• “Project Warlock II: Reworked Chapter 1” has just kicked-off its open playtest for PC
• The hardcore arcade racing game “DEATHSPRINT 66” is coming to PC via Steam in 2024
• The immersive fishing & Boating sim “Ships At Sea” is coming to PC via Steam EA on May 9th, 2024
• “Final Fantasy VII Rebirth” is now available for the PS5 worldwide

Tags: #GamerGate, DEVGRU-P, Indie games, Lewd games, Panzermadels, SJWs, Stay! Stay!