VN Ren'Py Being a DIK [v0.10.1] [DrPinkCake]

[test7777]

Ok, but that's not how the "business" work. Money you spend is not a waiste, is an inversion, and DPC knows it better than us couse he has actually heavely invested in the game in the past and even in the present.
If DPC bought the equipment and that acelerate the production speed he could stop loosing patreons or even increasing them and in turn he would make more money, and not less as you claim.
He has lost 3 k patreons in the last 8 months couse increasing times of development. As you will understand the delay damage him in terms of money, doesn't benefit him. So if you claim is that he delays the production for money... well, no, that's simple unrealistic.

I will put this in the most simple way. He looses money couse he makes updates take longer and longer. His patreons finally told him so in his face. And his answer was, "I don't give a fuck, I will do it how i like it":

That's the exactly oposite from a guy driven exclusively by money.

Lets say he takes another 2 years to complete the game (I wish, more like 1 episode in the next 2 years) and gets 60k per month, that totals at 1.4 Million (assuming he stops developing after that).

Looking at the patreons he has lost since Nov 2021, if (hypothetically) he earned 60k back then he would now be at 52k (assuming every patreon pays roughly the same). So if he slows down development and is able to stretch it for e.g. another 3 years, that would total at 1.87 Million (obviously this assumes an average on 52k)

Given an increase in Patreons after every release that will happen and a slow decline until the next one and so on, increasing the development time is always the smart choice.

You could probably do a complex calculation of patreons declining over time + increase on release etc., but then again, he does not care anymore because he has already earned more then enough money.

Maybe DPC heavily invested in the past, but he definitely isn't doing it anymore in proportion to his funding.

 

[Heycock]

Lets say he takes another 2 years to complete the game (I wish, more like 1 episode in the next 2 years) and gets 60k per month, that totals at 1.4 Million (assuming he stops developing after that).

Looking at the patreons he has lost since Nov 2021, if (hypothetically) he earned 60k back then he would now be at 52k (assuming every patreon pays roughly the same). So if he slows down development and is able to stretch it for e.g. another 3 years, that would total at 1.87 Million (obviously this assumes an average on 52k)

Given an increase in Patreons after every release that will happen and a slow decline until the next one and so on, increasing the development time is always the smart choice.

You could probably do a complex calculation of patreons declining over time + increase on release etc., but then again, he does not care anymore because he has already earned more then enough money.

Maybe DPC heavily invested in the past, but he definitely isn't doing it anymore in proportion to his funding.

Yeah but is not going to take 2 years, is going to take at the very least 6. Again, if money is the issue, he has no reason to stop. He can cut episodes in half, shorter updates but faster. He can made 30 episodes instead on the planned 16. He can make Badik 2 after he ends Badik or he can make a completely different game. There is not a big dev who lost his supporters after they end a game, on the contrary they kept growing including DPC. The only reason that has significantly hurted a consagrated dev was the lacks of updates after long terms. As such increasing development times is not the smart choices, on the oposite, it's literally the worst, and that's why their patreons are complaining in the first term.

Now you lost me completely with this: "he does not care anymore because he has already earned more then enough money.".

If you think he doesn't care for the money anymore... what are we even talking about? I am arguing that money is not his only motivation and that his refure to make faster updates is not driven by money... How can you think that a dev is a milker if you don't think he cares about money? That's pretty much the oposite.

 

[ffive]

Does anyone know how many episodes this season is going to have?

16 is a common guess, given there's 4 episodes per "season" and the Interlude, i.e. a piece which typically takes place in the middle, was added after 2 seasons.

 

[Geralt From Rivia]

I think "narc" in this case might mean an undercover cop or something.

I'm not very good at English slang words, so I translated "narc" as a drug addicted.

I mean that's what I do. I feel like that's pretty fair, though. I don't want to wait for a whole season on Steam. I don't know shit about the other platforms and even if I did, they might be sketchy. It just makes sense to get it straight from the source as a one-time transaction rather than an ongoing donation.

I'll buy all of Season 3, but until it's out, I'll be waving a pirate flag. Patreon is too expensive. If I take a subscription for a month and buy each episode, then it will be $80 for Season 3.

 

[DatBoit]

DPC has already earned more money than most people earn in a lifetime and could literally stop working right now and still get tons of money from Patreons over the next 2-3 years at least with some posts and previews once in a while.

Therefore his claim that he would continue development even if noone would support him or that people who do not share his vision should stop supporting him are just empty words. If he truly meant what he said, he would do something to show his appreciation of his supporters like pausing payments until release, lowering prices or giving some of the higher tier benefits to lower tier patreons.

As he isn't doing anything in that regard, it just shows that DPC is running his business as usual and isn't "developing the game for himself", but just using that excuse as so many creators do, same as the "you are not buying a product, you are supporting the development etc." stuff.

I do not like the fact that DPC does not hire any help with the amount of money he earns, but he is a control freak and has his vision so that is still kind of acceptable (except for those Jill previews and otherwise screwed up renders, like come on, get someone to do quality control on your renders and re-render them if they turn out bad)

His loyal supporters are defending him for many things, but when he is claiming that the animation render queue takes a few more weeks, when he could easily upgrade or scale out his system just from a small percentage of his monthly earnings, then you know that he is milking it for all its worth and I don't see any argument that would proof the contrary.

Sadly, money corrupts and you can clearly see it with DPC over the last few years. If you are rich you just want to get richer, so instead of buying some more hardware which he wouldn't even notice on his bank account he knows that he can just let things render for weeks and still get paid.

This game is one of the best and every release is awesome, but if DPC truly invested the money that people give him in "support of development" in any reasonable matter, you would see 2 updates with the size of EP9 per year with probably even better quality.

I don't think that DPC is milking. Milking is what creators such as ICSTOR have been doing: raking in support without working on the game, and doing the bare minimum to keep the support going. DPC is not doing that. He is taking his sweet time, sure, but the update will also contain 5,000 new renders, and likely a total animation length that is longer than his previous updates. Therefore, I cannot accuse him of milking, because he is producing more with the extra time he's spending.

However, I would be lying if I said that I didn't think creators take note of the fact that they can spend an increasing amount of time on updates without losing any support over it. When Episode 9 finally rolls around, it will have taken 2-3 months more to produce than Episodes 7 and 8, yet DPC's patron count has been hovering around the same level. As DPC's income is directly tied to how long he develops a game, it makes sense for him to extend that time as long as possible. I mean, why would you release a game in three years, when you can just as well take five years and generate more income?

As mentioned, though, I don't think he's milking, because it's not like he sits around on his ass waiting to release an update that is already finished.

 

[The Dick]

Are you a patreon?
A)No. ..... ...... ...... Then simmer down you self-centred scumbag.
B)Yes. ....... ...... So stop paying him??? He literally said that if you don't like it you should stop paying him/being a patreon.

Have you ever heard about prospective customers? And can you realize that a business with your mindset would go bankrupt in the long run because it will have less and less customers over time, with only boot-licking-centered customers left? And I'm not even talking about disgruntled former customers yet ... Yeah... Because former customers have the right to be disgruntled about businesses that didn't meet their expectations or even treated them badly... That's how life works...

 

[Harveztrau]

\

I don't think that DPC is milking. Milking is what creators such as ICSTOR have been doing: raking in support without working on the game, and doing the bare minimum to keep the support going. DPC is not doing that. He is taking his sweet time, sure, but the update will also contain 5,000 new renders, and likely a total animation length that is longer than his previous updates. Therefore, I cannot accuse him of milking, because he is producing more with the extra time he's spending.

However, I would be lying if I said that I didn't think creators take note of the fact that they can spend an increasing amount of time on updates without losing any support over it. When Episode 9 finally rolls around, it will have taken 2-3 months more to produce than Episodes 7 and 8, yet DPC's patron count has been hovering around the same level. As DPC's income is directly tied to how long he develops a game, it makes sense for him to extend that time as long as possible. I mean, why would you release a game in three years, when you can just as well take five years and generate more income?

As mentioned, though, I don't think he's milking, because it's not like he sits around on his ass waiting to release an update that is already finished.

What if DPC is a team? just a long con?

 

[shazba]

Have you ever heard about prospective customers? And can you realize that a business with your mindset would go bankrupt in the long run because it will have less and less customers over time, with only boot-licking-centered customers left? And I'm not even talking about disgruntled former customers yet ... Yeah... Because former customers have the right to be disgruntled about businesses that didn't meet their expectations or even treated them badly... That's how life works...

Remember though, he started making these games as a hobby. Hardly any of the AVN developers can afford to quit their full time jobs, so it's not likely that was his goal, until it started looking like that was a possibility.

Being able to go fulltime is a bonus, getting paid to do something you were gonna do anyway.

But if he starts to worry about waning customers, it'll influence his creation, and that runs the risk of being disappointed with the final outcome.

If the game takes another 4-7 years (7 episodes remaining at who knows how many episodes per year at this point), the Patreon and Steam income will have provided him a retirement nest egg, not to mention what he's already put away leading up to this point.

From a financial perspective, he can do no wrong at this point, unless he's started living the highlife and needs to keep earning 300K a year to maintain it...

 

[SinisterFrog]

Very good story.

 

[Geralt From Rivia]

I'm doing that too so it's not a critique but just a comment... Is it that expensive now? Because, when I subscribed to play the episodes unavailable at Steam (I bought season 1 there, and there was up to episode 7 on Patreon), I paid $10 bucks for everything and even got Acting Lessons as a bonus.

It all depends on your patience. If you're willing to be patient, he releases an update for low-tier patrons after a certain amount of time. If you are ready to wait two weeks, you will spend only $5.


But if you want the game RIGHT NOW at the time of release - pay $25

 

[Agahnim]

**EPISODE 8**

* 10/22/2021 – Final status update / Start of beta testing
* 02/11/2021 – Final preview released
* 03/11/2021 – Beta testing status report
* 09/11/2021 – Release date announced
* 19/11/2021 – Episode 8 released

Historically, there is about 1 month between when DPC announces beta testing starting and the episode being released. If we are hopeful that the animations will be on the faster side of the 4-5 weeks, that puts us at the status update for 02/12/2022.

If that turns out to be when he announces beta testing, it is feasible that a January 2023 release is possible. I think a lot of the initial testing will be internal during this month of render time and so hopefully the work load for his beta testers will be smaller, however this is still the largest update to date and with an assumed huge number of variables due to the new path system. We could be looking at a normal to long beta test period.

Just going to steal my post whole cloth and not give any credit? Alright, alright...

 

[Harveztrau]

Very good story.

I see
You do not read a lot

 

[alex13_zen]

I started a new playthrough from the beginning, and I had forgotten how grainy the images were. Even in season 2, they look bad for today's standards.
I had also forgotten that Quinn surprise-kissed Maya in a pool scene, when Maya was trying to change mothers.

 

[shazba]

Sorry, but I beg to differ on this one... The fact someone does something while keeping a job doesn't necessarily mean it's a hobby. Of course, it could be, but then DPC would donate his hobby to mankind. This is not what DPC is doing. He's asking for money to do it and doesn't even give the final product, as some devs do, but sells it on Steam and other stores. So he kept his job out of necessity while doing the best entrepreneurship he thought he could do while still a slave to the grind.

About his intentions, one can only speculate... You say it wasn't his plan, but I'd rather bet that living out of it was his plan since the beginning. That's what every entrepreneur hopes for. Of course, his rhetoric is another thing, but, as a quote I read says, "a man is not what he says but what he does". DPC is a very smart man and knows how to sell his product, manage his brand, and keep his following. It doesn't mean we shouldn't take his words as a case of branding as we do with every other capitalist business on the face of the Earth.

P.S.: I have no comments about his financial situation, but, according to average estimates, he's earning ~50k/month, which means that, even if he's saving half of it for retirement, he may be living a 300k/year lifestyle. Mind though that 300k a year in some parts of the world is not that much... According to people in this forum, he lives in Sweden, which is an expensive country (and don't forget about Scandinavian tax rates)... And he may have a family, which means 300k/year would mean even less (I know he has a wife because he commented on Patreon... He may also have children...). His earnings put him in the upper class but do not make him uber-rich... And he only reached 10k patrons in 2021. Until 2020 he was the average successful AVN entrepreneur with about 3k patrons, and this was the year he boomed. So his 300k lifestyle (halved after Scandinavian taxes) is recent news.

Graphtreon calculates his earnings to be between 29K and 85K.

I did an independent correlation with other games that reveal their earnings a while back, and came up with 30K - 80K.

Taken from random internet sources:

"A person working in Sweden typically earns around 45,100 SEK per month. Salaries range from 11,400 SEK (lowest average) to 201,000 SEK (highest average, actual maximum salary is higher)."​

DPC's earning fall between 330,000 SEK and 550,000 SEK month. So even taking the most conservative estimate of his earnings, he's smashing the high average salary in Sweden.

Even 2 years ago, when he only had around 5,000 subscribers, that's still between 140K SEK and 350K SEK.

So unless his living expenses have ballooned commensurate with his new income (and I accept, a lot of people simply spend whatever they earn, no matter how much it is), DPC is probably very, very well off.

And if he falls back down to 5K subscribers, he's still gonna be earning a very decent wage. The point being, he doesn't need to panic if he starts losing some customers, and even if they trickle down to 0 across the next 5 years, depending on his age, he'd could probably retire comfortable anyway.

Slightly separate not: I'll be very interested to see where his subscriber count spikes to this next release though. Will it even exceed his 17K count? Was COVID a big part in the success of ANVs over the last few years?

 

[ThaDude1977]

Windows key + print screen saves screenshots in your pictures/screenshots folder. Be aware sometimes it sort of..."lags" a bit, so you may have to tab out then back in to the game THEN take the screenshot to get the proper image. Trial and error will get you used to it.

TY

 

[shazba]

I completely agree with you, but mind that I said he's upper class; I was just saying he ain't über-rich, like, Hollywood-style celebrity rich. For Swedish standards, he's like a super CEO (also from an Internet source: "The average pay for a CEO is SEK 2,091,571 a year and SEK 1,006 an hour in Sweden. The average salary range for a CEO is between SEK 1,248,668 and SEK 3,459,459", which roughly is between US$10k~US$25k/month). So, taking the average of Graphtreon, he's beating the top average Swedish CEO by ~ two times (but CEOs get bonus, so he's probably just like a top Swedish CEO). This puts him in the upper class, top upper class, very comfortable, but not über-rich. And Sweden is a very egalitarian country; if it were in the US, he'd be an average CEO even after making the adjustments between USD and SEK. And let's not forget about Sweden high taxes... And people standards of living also grow as they earn more (even more likely when you have a wife...) So, yeah... He can live quite comfortably, but he also can't be negligent about his future finances, like any CEO...

As for you other comment, I don't think he'll beat his previous record (but it's just a hunch... I may be wrong...), but I don't think it'll be COVID related... Of course, people staying at home made people look for things to do at home, but I think most of the AVNs audience was already interested in gaming, and before COVID there were already AVN's success cases. COVID may have helped a li'l, but I think it was just a small amount and, as there were AVNs before, there will still be AVNs after COVID...

I don't think he'll top his November 21 tally either, you could see for that year the subscribers just kept rising until the release when it spiked hard, whereas this time around, they've just kept slowly falling, there'll surely be a spike, but probably not as much.

What I am hanging out for though, is a fantastic episode 9. Recent top tier games' (from this site anyway) updates have been rather disappointing of late, with limited content and minimal payoff.

 

[TuffyTenToes]

This thread between updates is painful, you have a lot of shit that can be discussed every Episode yet the conversation always revolves around why does Zoey even exist, Maya's tuition, Jill is a goblin, the goddamn milking or how the Interlude is the worst thing ever.

I tend to avoid dropping comments specifically because of this but in the past few days it has been even more unbearable.

 

[Harveztrau]

This thread between updates is painful, you have a lot of shit that can be discussed every Episode yet the conversation always revolves around why does Zoey even exist, Maya's tuition, Jill is a goblin, the goddamn milking or how the Interlude is the worst thing ever.

I tend to avoid dropping comments specifically because of this but in the past few days it has been even more unbearable.

We are just the scapegoat of morons flaws aren't we?

 

[UnoriginalUserName]

This thread between updates is painful, you have a lot of shit that can be discussed every Episode yet the conversation always revolves around why does Zoey even exist, Maya's tuition, Jill is a goblin, the goddamn milking or how the Interlude is the worst thing ever.

I tend to avoid dropping comments specifically because of this but in the past few days it has been even more unbearable.

It's been like, a year. All the "good" shit was discussed after 1 week, there's fuckall left to talk about except what you listed.

 

[88stanford88]

This is a vry very boring game!
Inconsistent story!