@MikeMasters Been a while since a I supported you ( issue with PayPal blocking certain devs as adult content) so kind of out of the loop on what's going on. Do you have a roadmap of sorts as to whats being added when? Also I am aware you work your ass off however I am curious to know whether we might get bigger updates in the future and if so what would it take to do that?
Hi, this is an complicated question. I think the obvious answer would be that I do work alone (on most parts), so expanding the "team" should lead to a bigger and better content. But I'm not good at managing things or people, so expanding the team with my limited skills would most likely lead to a dissaster.
Especially in combination with my planning skills, which are practically nonexistent. I kind of shoot from a hip, so to speak. I have a general idea, what I want to do for an update, but other than that I do stuff as I go. It has a great advantage with the storytelling, because everything is more natural and fluid - Instead of predetermined outcomes I practically watch as the scene unveils, which makes the scenes more believable IMO.
But it also has huge downsides. Outside of bad management of time and workflow, I can't really get an outside help, because I can't tell them what to do for most of the time, because I'm not sure myself what to do at the moment. I can get stuck for a while, if I can't find a beliveable outcome of a situation that I've created. And there are dead ends. Some ideas doesn't work when I try to implement them - The scene doesn't look good, no matter what I do, the story doesn't fit the characters. And I make last minute changes. As I try out the new content, sometimes it doesn't make sense, or there should be one more image to better describe the scene or the flow of the scene.
I'm still learning on how to do stuff properly. It takes years for people to learn coding, programing, managing etc. I've been doing this for two years and my main focus has been on the development side, so it will take a while until I find a way to make my development cycle better.
I've done nothing like this before. I saw success of some individuals and I like playing this kind of game, so I thought to myself that this might be a good way to earn some money. I worked four months on a first version and I was very proud of the results, but it was terrible. You could say it was Anthem made by Bioware fan :-D Seriously, it sucked, it was short, but it had potential. So I stayed with it. I reworked a lot of since then and people started to liked it more and more and sometimes I'm not sure why. For example, I would never use RPG Maker again, if I'd start working on a new project right now.
In fact, if I knew back then, what I know now, I would never even try to create a game. The success rate of beginner developers is freakishly low and many never finish, what they started. Better games earn a lot less then I do a the market is very saturated now. If I knew that back then, I would be intimidated by that.
But I'm here and I try my best, but I know my best may not be good enough in some aspects. Focus, determination, planning, writing skills - everything can be and should be improved upon. Some more than others.
But I'm really proud of what I've accomplished. In fact, this is the only thing in my life I am truly proud of. So I'm sorry if I sound a bit self-centered here, but man, this is my life and I'm so glad that I took the risk two years ago, because I would be in a lot worse place than I am today. Give me two more years and it will be even better ;-)
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