Sure, any single red flag doesn't mean much. But it's another matter if a single game displays many red flags that are commonly observed among abandoned games.
Bad quality CG, check. Totally average writing, check. Irregular updates, check. Author sometime disappearing, check. Four supposed red flags, yet as I said Drawing My Life have been finished. The problem is that you focus on abandoned games, and fail to see that the exact same "red flags" can also be observed in finished games.
The main point have been said by many others on this thread, the majority of the authors are amateurs doing this by themselves on their free time. And this change everything.
An author I know have disappeared during three weeks. Not a single word, neither on twitter where she's very active, on Patreon where she tend to post at least once a week, or on her private forum where she log at least once by day. Wow, this is a big red flag... unless she works alone on her free time, and therefore there's no one to tell the world that she had a car accident. Nothing too serious, but serious enough for her to not be able to use a computer for three weeks ; and also to not be able to works on her game for still some time, what will make her be really late for the next update, what is yet another supposed red flag.
Could you elaborate on this?
Edit: actually, allow me to elaborate in case there's a misunderstanding. I mean failed in a general sense. Merely receiving the 'completed' tag here does not equal success, any more than every app on the Play Store or Windows Store can be considered a success.
What is a success when you're doing something as hobby ?
There's authors who expect to be rich, but the majority just want people to enjoy their creation. One can tell that a game is a failure, because no one like it and/or it is abandoned, but telling when it's a success isn't as easy.
Earning US$ 1 000/month is already a success, it place you on the top ~20% of adult creators on Patreon, and with US$ 2 500/month you're in the top 5%. Yet I think that even with his US$ 297/month,
Cryswar see his game as a success. It don't have much support nor much fans, but from what I see in the game thread, the fans really enjoy the game ; and it's precisely what one expect to achieve when doing something as hobby, that the peoples who like it, whatever how few they can be, also enjoy it.
Must also be said that, for a one year old text based game, US$ 297/month is far to be bad. Minus the usual monthly 10% drop that all creator encounter, he
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.
"Here's what I'm doing in my bedroom when I have some free time, hope you'll enjoy playing it as much as I enjoy making it". And when the answer is, "yes, I enjoy playing it", then it's already a success. Not a DarkCookie nor AdeptusSteve success, but still a success.
I know this is an outside example and all, but that averages out to 40,000/yr over 60 years.
I'm old enough to have lived through the whole history of computer adult gaming. I only miss the few first years since I was only 10 years old when Softporn was released.
I've seen the cheesy commercial games, the games made by the friend of a friend, the games released on BBS, the 90's golden age, when XXX movie studios were releasing their own games ; between the commercial releases, the indie production and the Japaneses imports, a hundred of new games each month, and in France three press titles dedicated to them. I lived through the dark age that was the early 00's, and I'm still alive to see the modern adult gaming age.
It don't average a small portion of the scene, it cover it all. What you see here is less than 5% of all the adult games ever released. Obviously I haven't played them all, but counting the 00's stupid flash games I surely played more than the near to 6 000 that can be downloaded here ; yeah, I know, I'm a big perv.
Based on
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, that would put a household of one located in one of the most expensive areas in the US in the "middle income" tier.
Well, I have a bad news for you, but in the USA if you don't have a 6 figures salary, you
are in the middle income tier. And the income tier have never been linked to the place where one live.
In all countries, more or less the two third of the people living in the capital, or one of the biggest cities, are living above their income. They don't live there because they can financially afford it, but because they can't afford to live somewhere else if they want to have a job without a too long commute.
But then it's my baby, and I've done art/animation/writing/code/marketing/distribution/etc for it.
