DavDR
Engaged Member
- Oct 14, 2020
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I agree, the Patreon (or Subscribestar for that matter) method of supporting and marketing Indie games has a lot of drawbacks and, I think, is ultimately detrimental to Indie Games.Episode 8 was my second long wait for the game. When I discovered BaDIK I binged 5 episodes straight for he first time and immediately started playing it again with different approaches. I was absolutely fucking hooked.
Episode 6 came out within a month so I was spared the agony, and I loved episode 6 as much as the previous episodes and then came my first excruciating 6 month (or whatever it was) wait.
When 7 came out I was somewhat deflated (after the ep6 Nicole and Sandy scene, Ep7 had the Madame to offer!), but I was still able to play it through multiple times and it grew on me and slotted in well with the rest of the game.
Now, after having hyped ourselves up for 7 months, episode 8 comes along and it's impossible for it to deliver on everything we desired, so once again the initial feeling for me was slightly deflated. After a few more playthroughs I'm content with it and once again, foolishly hyped for the next episode.
The bottom line: Playing these games in bits and pieces is, I believe, detrimental to the game. There are heaps of other games here that have great potential and may end up being great, but I can't be bothered playing them anymore (that includes City of Broken Dreamers) because they don't deliver on enough each time.
Even though BaDIK delivers an outstanding amount of content each episode, it still falls into the same category. Every last one of these games would be better played in one go (over a few weeks or whatever) from start to finish, rather than stopping and starting stretched out over years.
Personally, I'm thinking I might drop the long wait and forget about the game for a while, which may result in forgetting about it for a few years. Then one day, remember it again, pick it up and enjoy the whole experience. And that goes for all the cool games on this site. These days I just scroll through the "Completed" list.
We've often discussed the writing in BaDIK and other games. Every good writer I've met or even heard of has stressed the importance of re-writing to correct mistakes and tighten the story, and that's next to impossible with the episodic development that the games currently have.
This whole situation reminds me of Comicsgate and the crowdfunding of comic books on Indiegogo. Long development cycles are becoming a problem there too. There is some reason for optimism though, some of the creators having gotten a few campaign's under their belt's have built up enough capital to propose completing a comic before offering it to the public. Maybe we'll see the same with indie games?