Meaning Less
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You use HS renders... Nothing wrong with that, just don't try and claim that you prefer to pay for everything you use...
[Discussion] — The Curious Case of Abandoned Games
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Joshua Tree
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Well, it was your own words right? You willing to support those that does it for free. How would that cost you anything to supoort if they do it for free?
I pay for a lot of things. My game cost me over 5k $+ to make. A couple thousand for assets, 500$+ for music (and got banned from audiojungle because of 15$ audio scam they sell dispute on their site
) a couple of K for some 3D work, etc. That's not counting expenses on hardware and commissions.But please, tell me what it takes to make a game. Obviously, you know better.
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Meaning Less
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Still sounds like you are just paying for that you "need" instead of paying for what you feel like deserves to be paid.
By your logic noone would buy games since you can just download them for free in websites like this?
But reality is that there are many users that really appreciate creators and willingly decide to support them both as a thank you and also in hopes of seeing more of that content.
If I paid you to create a game for me following my specifications then I would expect professionalism... But when I support you as a patreon it is because I hope you make good use of that money to follow up with your vision at your own pace, not mine.
That's the main difference between paying for a service vs willingly supporting a creator you already appreciate.
Joshua Tree
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Uh where does that make any sense what so ever?
Meaning Less
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Because he bought a few modded assets he needed but is still using HS for the rest, which is not only illegal to monetize but also virtually free?
Again I'm not complaining, I actually prefer HS/KK over other solutions visually, just don't try and claim that you aren't being heavily assisted by "free tools".
And it is those free tools and cheap alternatives that are carrying most amauter devs around, without them none of those games would even see the light of day.
That's the thing, it is easier to start something therefore it is also easier to abandon something, simple as that.
By your logic, renpytom does not deserve any income because he did not invent python, same goes for blender guys, lovelabs modders etc.
You make a lot of assumptions without knowing anything you talk about. But good luck riding your high horse.
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Joshua Tree
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If he spent 5000 USD on create his game so far. I'm quite sure he done more than just bought a few models. Creators need funding somehow to invest into their creations. They can't just pull money out of their own ass to cover your need to fap. So not only do you expect them to regard their time as free holding no value, you expect them to fund the game out of their own pocket to give you for free as well?
Just because certain tools might be free to use, doesn't mean models, graphic assets, sound, music etc is free to use as well.
Meaning Less
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Not sure why you feel like I expect anything, I'm just explaining why it happens so often with the patreon model, which was OP question.
Personally I already have very little expectations of western incomplete projects and I pointed a few of the common signs that usually lead to project abandonment.
If you feel like putting 5$ into a dev creating something for free because he likes doing that is a worse bet than putting those 5$ into a dev that makes a lot of hollow claims and basically implies something on the line of "If I don't get paid enough I will drop it", good luck.
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assets were brought and ported for my game. That includes environmental assets like
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,
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, and
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. That's
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of
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. Just a title theme cost me
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because any other song would not do justice. I considered to commision whole BGM for the game, but it is out of my pocket unfortunetly. Anyways, it's not JUST a few as he claims. It happens with everything. Start-up businesses have an even worse failing ratio with 9 out of 10 businesses closing in a few first years.
It's not exclusive to the Patreon model.
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OP makes a lot of baseless assumptions like you do. Like "all abandoned games are work of scammers". It's easy to debunk it by pointing out that if it was true, all of them would be made with a focus on the broadest player base (incest harems).
I'd say it's more the issue with determination. Everyone can make a quick idea and exhaust it. Only a few have enough discipline to stick with it for years and finish when they realise how much work making games is. It's not just fun&games. A lot of it is boring and routinish work and many devs fall because of that.
Except no one made such claims. Many starts with an idea they want to make (like I did with the idea that making games and learning Is fun, and earning a couple $ would be cool for something I find fun to do), they see how much work it is (it's a real job), and they exhaust themselves, especially when it gathers 0 attention with very few feedback. The player base is a huge motivation. If you spend 100 hours on an update and see only 5 comments for it, it hurts something inside. Then a wife starts complaining that their kids need new shoes asking them to stop sweating his ass on the chair, and urges him to find a real job. Or no sex.
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Meaning Less
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Making a game is not a business, you are free to decide how big or small your game is going to be, if you planned something you can't deliver unless you get paid more it means you put yourself to failure.
What about making a small game first? showing what you can do, the only thing you are giving evidence of is that poor planning is a thing, noone is denying that.
It is implied by many.
Some barely started and show signs that they are expecting a lot more money, not a good sign.
Others are clear amauters but promising something that would take them 10+ years in their current pacing, poor planning.
Others have no goal and it shows in the randomness of their project, if they have no goal aside from making money it means the project will either never end or end somewhere random.
Others are trying way to hard to please their current patreons instead of focusing on their project, wasting hours that could be put into the game itself.
And more. There are quite a few signs to notice which devs have an idea of what they are doing and know they can deliver something vs. the ones trying to just sell you a dream itself that has very little chances of turning into reality.
Start small, deliver something you enjoy, improve and move to the next project.
You know. I've been disagreeing with a lot of what you said so far. But this? I really agree with this post.
Sadly, I'd say this is a lesson that only experience can bring someone to consider. And I dont think this viewpoint is really one that many dev even get to. You have to have a lot of awareness, knowlegde and experience to start understanding the limits of what you can do this way.
It happens, but at the same time highly successful games, like Summer Time Saga and What a Legend were the most ambitious and also the first games of those devs. This has to do with wasting time "practicing" vs putting all of your life into one fantastic game.
A mistake I personally made, and many devs made is that they believed they needed to practice with many smaller games and projects. Personally I made five games over the last five years, almost all of my free time for two years, and then I left my job and worked for three years full time living on savings making games.
None of those games were very successful because a small game with a small story very rarely will get people's attention.
If I could go back and do things differently, I would have spent those five years working on only one single game. As I got better at writing, I would have went back and rewrote parts of it. As I got better at graphics I would have went back and redone the the art. When I decided that 2D art was something I preferred, I would have gone back and redone the art to be hand drawn, and as I improved in my drawing abilities I would have continued to redraw and improve the art to make it better. As I learned which game engine people preferred, I would have transferred it to a new engine, and continued to improve it in all areas as I learned...
but I would not have spread those five years out over multiple smaller games. This isn't a mistake I will make again in the future, but one that people don't realize how bad of a mistake it is until they've actually gone through it.
Hopefully another up and coming dev reads this and can avoid a good portion of their lives lost on small projects.
Another mistake I see devs make is those who will spend five years without going back and redoing the art and writing, only pushing forward with their story which is just as bad.
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Meaning Less
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And do you truly think things like summer time saga were made by complete amauters? High quality hand drawn art and interactive gameplay from the getgo?
Devs that start with successes already know what they are doing, they probably have many incomplete/complete games under their belts, some of which they never even released in the first place because that is part of your learning experience.
In the history of mankind what artist started with their magnum opus?
Are you sure it was all bad? Or maybe those were necessary steps to improve and continue learning, maybe if you had stuck to a single boring project you would have burned out by now.
You are not considering all the valuable things you learned in the process, and what you can create by continuing in this path.
I don't know for sure. It's a theory. I have heard that Summertime Saga's art has been redone, and it didn't start out looking that good. According to the comments the initial release had "3 minutes of gameplay or less". But I've never seen or played the original release, so I'll admit this is speculation. I can't find any earlier games from that creator, and F95 doesn't allow games to be deleted even if they are abandoned. But on the other hand, people did praise the art on the initial release so this may have been an artist with plenty of experience from the get go.
I know for sure it was what a legend creators first game, although they did have a life time of experience in art and writing.
That is a good point. I could see myself burning out and getting bored. And some of my attempts were so catastrophically in the wrong direction and unsalavagle that if I redid every aspect of the game, art/graphics/sound/gameplay/core concept, it wouldn't be the same game at all anymore.
Certainly that is true.
Harem Hotel would be another highly successful and highly ambitious first time dev. But now that I think about it, those devs probably did gain tons of experience before starting their first game. It may not have been in the form of making games, but it could have been from playing tons of games and taking note of what works, writing stories, and/or creating art.
Or like you said, some of them may have tried to make games but never wound up releasing them here.
I've heard it said that Dark Cookie was a professional backgrounds artist before starting work on SS. Dunno if it's true or just an urban myth, but it would explain how he was able to paint relatively high-quality art from the beginning. 2D is incredibly difficult and time-consuming to get right. People underestimate the amount of time, effort, and skill that's required for even mediocre 2D art.
Learning is independent of working on one or several games. You learn from experience, regardless of form. The learning steps I've taken over the last year have all been within my game, I imagine other devs who have big scoped projects learn the same way.
A single boring project? If you're passionate about what you do, it's never boring. Unless you are doing something purely commercial, something you don't like, then it will burn you out.
Meaning Less
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Many japanese indy game developers worked for years doing standalone artwork and comics way before even tackling their first game, some just do it under different names or purely as a hobby.
It is only natural to get a good grasp of at least a few required skills before putting everythig together into a game, at least if you want to start strong.
Even with 3D it takes skill and experience many overlook, just because you can buy some ready made models doesn't mean people won't notice the difference from those that actually go the extra mile and know their way around 3D tools.
You can hit nails all day long and you will be pretty good at doing that but you won't learn new things.
Some things you will never learn from repeated experience alone, you will have to venture outside of your confort zone and actually study/attempt new things to learn new stuff.
Exactly, that was my point, anyone doing something purely for commercial reasons will burn out.
And even if you are making money out of it after a few years doing the exact same thing without any goals and endpoint it will start to become boring and mundane.
With nothing new to learn and not being able to try new things unless you change the entire game you will be stuck with something that you probably don't care as much now and will feel boring to you.
It is actually pretty common to have devs hating their games by the end of it, and that only becomes stronger if you have no goalpost planned.
Very interesting thread. I'm currently working on my first game in Sugarcube and it has been quite the journey. The scope of my project definitely grew over time, I've put 100s of hours into it and I'm nowhere near the finish line. And it's not even using 3D assets, it's a text based game. Writing takes time, as does planning and coding, especially if you're aiming for a complex game with branching storylines.
Normally, it's quite easy to spot the Patreon scams. Just look for generic assets, copy&paste design ideas and subpar writing and you're good to go. Of course, there are the big ones like that MILF game we all love to hate. People see the most successful games on here and think "Hey, I can do that, too" without realizing how much work it actually is to create a quality game.
Time doesn't equal quality automatically, though. There has to be a vision. Patreon often leads to the spaghettification of plot lines, as some characters / fetishes are added by stretch goals. As a developer, you can't please everyone. And you don't have to.
Breaking down large projects into little chunks is where it gets complicated. The more complex a game gets, the higher the risk becomes to get lost in micromanaging loose ends. It definitely helps to have general experience in coding / project management, but I've seen fantastic amateur games on here. You don't have to reinvent the wheel to create something nice.
Normally, it's quite easy to spot the Patreon scams. Just look for generic assets, copy&paste design ideas and subpar writing and you're good to go. Of course, there are the big ones like that MILF game we all love to hate. People see the most successful games on here and think "Hey, I can do that, too" without realizing how much work it actually is to create a quality game.
Time doesn't equal quality automatically, though. There has to be a vision. Patreon often leads to the spaghettification of plot lines, as some characters / fetishes are added by stretch goals. As a developer, you can't please everyone. And you don't have to.
Breaking down large projects into little chunks is where it gets complicated. The more complex a game gets, the higher the risk becomes to get lost in micromanaging loose ends. It definitely helps to have general experience in coding / project management, but I've seen fantastic amateur games on here. You don't have to reinvent the wheel to create something nice.