An insight on Psycho & Drama Visuals

Psycho & Drama Visuals had a bit of an interesting development when it came to the name. Individually, “psycho” and “drama” seem like obvious signs that my games will be dramatic and even “psychotic.”

Well…it’s not that simple.

I remember sitting in the bus once and as I’m thinking about the games I want to make, I realized that I needed to have some sort of logo…like a company name (such as the Sakevisual team, check them out!). So I’m thinking and thinking and thinking of all the possible names and visual representation of my logo.

(Mind you, I am terrible at designing logos and my knowledge on Typography is next to zero.)

Initially, I was going to name my productions “Instrospect.” (Yeah, I know). The reasoning was my primary goal to develop games that have interesting storylines or at least do not have common subjects (such as simple otome games or RPG/action). My goal is to go beyond that and create/portray characters who are, well, introspective.

But I didn’t like that name. So I searched deeper!

So once again, I’m thinking and thinking about this and I’m thinking of something related to the word “introspection” but not the word itself. So then I had another clever idea!

Catharsis.

Thank goodness for this word! I was one step closer to finding a name for the production. In the wise words of the dictionary, this is what this amazing word means:

"The process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions."

I almost opted for using this name, but for some reason it didn’t quite feel…right. Catharsis Productions? Catharsis Visuals? It didn’t have a nice ring to it, so I kept researching a bit more on this word. It was then that I found the medical use of the word catharsis and discovered an interesting word I never heard of: Psychodrama.

Now, psychodrama is a therapy for reaching catharsis. The session involves a group of people who act/role-play/etc. a certain scene of their lives in order to gain further insight of themselves.  This requires seeing other people act as them in order to see themselves in a different perspective and grow from what they have learned. As I am reading this, I found it interesting that some visual novels can exhibit this same sensation.

So, ultimately, I opted for this name and this meaning. However, because I felt that Psychodrama was too literal and too formal, I added an “&” between Psycho and Drama.

Thus, this is the story of how “Psycho & Drama Visuals” was born in one bus ride.