Alrighty, I just wanted to address something that's been on my mind with the Afterglow Persona collab coming up.

So, after the reveal of the Persona cards last week, it was kinda expected there'd be some controversy in regards to specifically Himari's card and the... let's say, implications the card has. I don't want to go into depth about that stuff because I don't want to cause any discourse.

That would be bad for me because well, I'm a staff member. And I gotta be professional and whatnot.

There was a post about Himari's card, and while I won't name-drop people, the comments on it got a bit heated. Not enough to be of grand concern, but I am glad that the people from that post have resolved that argument.

But there was something from that said post that irked me. It was a comment along the lines of "bushimo/craftegg have a male audience they have to appeal to."

Can I be perfectly honest? I hate this line of thinking with Bandori.

Yes, I know. Everyone says it about every single Japanese mobage with a cast that consists of mainly girls. "The developers gotta make fanservice-y content to rake in the money from the thirsty side of the fandom!! 💸" Yes, I know. When it's blatantly obvious fanservice, I will agree with this.

But... when it comes to Bandori, I just can never agree with it.

Yes, Bandori was a dying franchise 2-3 years ago and without the game, none of us would have never even known such a franchise existed. Yes, the game got the Bandori franchise the budget it needed to be able to create all this content and do all these great collaborations. Yes, the money the whales and dolphins and whatever other names we have for people who spend a lot of money on mobages spent is what keeps the game servers up and running.

But you know, the money comes from somewhere. It comes from the people who took the time to download the game, get invested into its story and its characters and felt a real connection to it. It comes from the playerbase.

Yes, there are game developers that forget this and maybe I'm biting off more than I can chew because I know literally nothing about the game development industry by saying this, but yes some of them will eventually lean towards the profitable side of the industry rather than the side that actually helps their games thrive.

I just don't think Bandori has those kinds of game developers. Not yet, at least, and hopefully, not ever.

I'd recommend you all to read this article. It's an interview with CEO of Craft Egg and one of Bushiroad's producers about Bandori, and I think it gives a lot of insight to how the developers think of their game. So next time you think, "the developers don't care about the Bandori playerbase," just know they genuinely do.