One of the most commonly asked questions that I get is about the possibility of a KS2. It’s usually teamed up with “Why don’t you allow mods?” or “How can I give you money?”.

I’m not going to comment on the last two. My thoughts on these have been repeated a number of times. But the KS2 topic is something that I’m never sure I’ve addressed. Of course, there may be other 4LS devs out there with differing opinions, but I’m sure that their opinions wouldn’t vary by too much.

When I think of KS, I see it differently to the way the fans see it. I see it as a triumph of will over poor planning. All of that acclaimed writing, music, direction and artwork that you all love was hard-won. At one point we estimated that each of the writers had probably written at least half a million words for the game. That means that about 80% of what we wrote was lost on the cutting room floor, and that doesn’t even start to begin to count the hours of discussion about what “good” writing was, how to structure plots, and also what a “Visual Novel” was in the first place.

We were also very young. I started writing KS when I was a freelance theatre technician. I was able to come and go as I please, and on long night shifts I was able to double up; writing KS scripts whist I was on stand-by. And I was one of the “older” (although by no means the oldest) members. There were a few members who were also students at the time, also low on wages and high on spare time.

Now I’m a dad with a job that makes me travel a lot. Even as I write this I’m jet-lagged, in Germany, and it was either write a blog or try to sleep off the ‘lag. My time is split between work, playing with kids, and sleep. There’s not much left over. I made the claim early in KS that I could spend about 20 hours a week on the project; now it feels like I can barely muster up 20 hours a week for sleep…

There is also the issue of money. Back in the day we didn’t want to get paid – it was an amateur effort, and one based on wanting to make a great game. At the time, money would have brought unrealistic deadlines and torrid arguments about who gets what share. If nothing else, working in 4LS showed me how simply impossible it is to put deadlines on creative people (if they don’t want them).

But now, all of us have some form of employment, plus bills to pay. Raising a family on $200 a year of eBook sales simply isn’t feasible. If I was pressed for a conservative estimate of making KS2, I would think that it would cost about $1 Million per year, and take at least two years to make. This would get all of the original devs on board, get them working solely on the project, and include the marketing. That’s a lot of $1 patreon donations.

Is that possible? Maybe, but then there is the biggest question: motivation. Sure, I’d love to drop my jet-setting career and become a full-time writer, but it’s unrealistic. But if I did do that, I don’t think that it could be based around writing high school/university love drama. I feel confident that I could write a compelling story, but it wouldn’t interest me enough to keep doing it. I’d rather write about space battles and ghost snakes.

I want to have new and interesting stories. I want to build worlds. I think that the Zemlya universe could have more stories in it, but even then I’m not really considering a return to that universe (even if all the Kindle experts tell me that I need to have about 10 books on the same topic before I can even consider having a return on investment).

So, not only would KS2 be expensive and take a long time to create, it’s quite possible that it would be bad. The motivations would be different. The styles of all of the creators have evolved and headed in different directions. And, most of all, that “fire” would have gone.

In a way, it reminds me of the scene in Bohemian Rhapsody where Freddy Mercury goes off to record a solo album. He is surrounded by sycophants and can’t get that creative “spark” that comes from unbridled conflict. Whilst I’m sure that Aura, Delta, SilentCook and Suriko would call me out on my shit, it’s not going to be the same as it was when we didn’t know any better.

Maybe I’m over-thinking this. Maybe we could get together and create something great. But then there is the last point – I don’t really want to tarnish KS with a sub-par sequel. That’s one of my personal reasons for not wanting mods. Fan-fiction, meme images, fan art… all of those things compliment the original, not detract from it. But once you make a sequel, authentic or not, you’re adding to the “canon” of the game. And if it is worse than the original (as sequels often are), then you’re bringing down the average greatness of the game.

KS is special to me. It has years of emotion wrapped up in it, and about a decade of “thank you” messages that I still turn to when I’m going through a rough patch. I don’t want to compromise that for anything; for fame, for money, or for more adulation from a grateful fanbase. So I’m happy enough to go for the harder slog with newer, less-popular things (like Sci-fi or nuclear-powered Aboriginal legends…). I’m willing to sell-out on a lot of my life, but I think that the amount of money it would take to coax me into working on a KS2 is more than would be commercially viable, and I’m only one out of 22 devs that you’d need to bargain with. That being said, if you’re a gave developer or a Saudi prince with cash to burn, you’re always more than welcome to slide into my DMs….

I’m happy to answer questions in the comments.