cxx
Message Maestro
- Nov 14, 2017
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Well, Episode 18 has been released for free in May, about 8 months after the Patreon release. The releases of Episode 19 and the epilogues are now between 8 and 10 months ago. So at least Episode 19 could be free soon, the epilogues still could be this year as well.
Zephrah
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Sorry about the delay. Had some problems with the internet here.
As promised :
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it is and I have a feeling episode19 was kinda spoiled in it. I might be wrong but at the end of the episode18, there were some preview for episode19 and in that 1gb packet there is "Double Homework Ep19" pictures. thought maybe it is some bonus random pictures but atm I dont think so.
Zephrah
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I uploaded the bonus pics that were not in the mega file in the OP and also, the ones I've got left in my computer. The extra ones are the CG from the episodes that were not released yet to give you an idea on what to expect. And it's worth the 10$, I can tell you that.Thanks a lot Zephrah, much appreciated! Do you by any chance have access to February's Patreon content with Ms. Walsh? That is the last Bonus one I was hoping to see.
cxx
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BloodyMares
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Generally, I would agree with this assessment, when it comes to devs who only share their game with patrons consistently. However, Palmer himself stated that all of his games will be FREE once completed. For all intents and purposes, Double Homework is a FREE GAME. Patrons got exclusive Early Access for their $10, and the general public soon received their free episode. Why should one pay $10 now to play a FREE game? And what's more, Palmer or his family wouldn't get these $10. If anything, Love-Joint decided to ignore Palmer's promise to complete this game for free and are holding on to that last episode as some kind of Holy Grail for more than a year already just so that more desperate people decide to pay these $10 to them. In my eyes, this behavior is as morally questionable as pirating because now it looks like extortion. Even though the game wasn't made by Palmer alone, and I'm sure devs of Love-Joint were of great help, having to complete this game with him gone, this still to me looks like stealing Palmer's intellectual property and asking money for it when it should be free as Palmer wished. I knew Palmer back from the days when he worked alone and posted on Shark's lagoon (his Emily: Sister Attraction is one of my favorite games still), and what Love-Joint is doing with Episode 19 is just disrespectful to that person. I wouldn't pay a penny to them exactly for that post-mortem betrayal of the person who started all this and gave them their jobs.
If they won't release the final episode and epilogues for free, I vote to tag this game to be abandoned when it comes to F95 releases, because at this point it's been more than a year since the last release. It can't be tagged as Completed without those last pieces of the puzzle, so Abandoned would fit just right.
cxx
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well there are several type of devs, some do x amount of updates and finish game and start new, some do crap with bugs and start new when get tired to old, some do updates few times per year so game getting finished takes time, some just do pure scam, some do rewrites or have multiple projects going on so updates have much time between each update, etc.
They generally always seem to go in with a plan ahead of time with how the story is going to go and when the game is going to end. I kind of suspect they've made changes to the story as they go in response to fan feedback, which I'm fine with. But they do wrap-up their stories with the number of updates they plan. It's not some open-ended thing designed to milk their customers' endlessly, and having a last update already planned out means they have to have a reasonable progression of both the plot and the romance.
The more we talk about Love-Joint, the more I realize that even if their current game isn't really for me, I can still support them. Someone has to, since so many won't. Maybe the new game will get better, or more precisely I'll get to like it better. Or maybe my $10 now results in their next game being more to my liking.
you know, i had an epiphany of sort. if porn games/ service were not taboo in society their prices would have decreased since many would do it. I just realized this when I saw a campaign online about legalizing sex work.
If adult games in general and taboo games specifically were less taboo, then we'd probably see complete games being released versus a long stream of updates. In the days when AIF was all there really was for porn games, especially taboo stuff, people would release entire games at once then. They were usually text only, but still required a lot of programming. Graphics crept in, but so too did the idea of making money off of it. Which is something I'm 100% okay with. These people were spending a ton of time on these games, and as graphics were added more and more machine time and power were needed just for the renders. This coincided with the rise of places like Patreon, but also with general video games changing their pricing models to do a lot more DLCs, or "free-to-play", but if you want extras or the full experience it will cost you.
So it's kind of a shame that as a society we can't better differentiate between reality and fantasy, or something being taboo versus being actually illegal. That we can't stop stigmatizing people trying to earn a living via sex in some way or form, especially those more directly involved in it. If we could, we'd be awash in a wide range of adult games that catered to a variety of fetishes. We'd have kinks available that were illegal in real life, but recognized as being acceptable in the fantasy context of a game, just like murder is illegal in reality but pretty much 100% okay in videogames.
And sadly, things seem to heading down a more puritanical route, although "puritanical" isn't perhaps the best road, as arguably just as much if not most of the pressure is coming from the political left as it is from the right. To be clear, I don't think you can put just whatever you want into a game. There do have to be limits. It helps if there is some artistic merit involved. A game like DH should have been given a free-ride by the powers-that-be for the incest content because it was all artistically sounds as a story, even if sometimes I was at odds with the story itself. Instead, like everyone else that doesn't go the Subcribestar or patch route, they had to dilute their original story.
We'll see what happens. I don't think it's going to get better. So more and more, I'm thinking I need to support those that are out there now, while they're still around and able to somewhat do what they want.
The artist is dead so I feel like you shouldn't expect them to do much more in regards to releases.
cxx
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But any promises came from Palmer, and were never enforceable to begin with. You can't enforce a promise unless there is something of value being exchanged by both sides, or "quid pro quo" in legal terms. Now you've got the remaining people at Love-Joint trying to move things forward with a game that actually is brining them in money, although I suspect not nearly as much as DH was. The $10 that seems like such a lot of money to many of the people here? It probably means a lot to the people at Love-Joint too, especially when it had to be divided several ways. Their focus is going to be on Shale Hill Secrets and also trying to develop beyond that. If I were them, I'd never give out the remaining stuff for DH. At this point no one is going to go, "okay, I finally played the entire game. Now I'm ready to support." The main point of giving out free updates some time after they came out privately was to get people to support the game to get them in a more timely manner. So that they could actually afford to make them and crazy things like that. I don't think the older model of "enough people will willingly pay to allow us to eventually just release the entire thing for free" isn't going to work any more. The ratio of supporters to freeloaders has dropped considerably.
ZenGarden
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I get not wanting to release for free anymore due to the dropping subscriber rate, but sometimes I wonder if some people just got tired of the unrealistic melodrama that plagued DfD and this game. Admittedly, I tuned out after DfD, and never played this game because I was hoping someone would come out and say "It's great". But the reactions were more "This Dennis shit is pissing me off", which led me to believe it was just more of the same.
As far as how long it's been since a release was (Patreon vs. Free), this is all easily gathered from the blog history on Love-Joint's site (all dates are mm/dd/YYYY):
EP | Patron | Free | Delay (AS OF Oct. 15, 2021)
Eplg 2 | 1/31/2021 | | (258+)
Eplg 1 | 12/30/2020 | | (290+)
19 | 12/5/2020 | | (315+)
18 | 9/19/2020 | 05/07/2021 | 231
17 | 8/1/2020 | 02/26/2021 | 210
16 |7/1/2020 | 12/24/2020 | 177
15 | 6/1/2020 | 11/06/2020 | 159
14 | 5/1/2020 | 08/30/2020 | 122
13 |4/1/2020 | 07/17/2020 | 108
12 | 3/1/2020 | 06/12/2020 | 104
11 | 2/1/2020 | 05/04/2020 | 94
10 | 1/1/2020 | 03/12/2020 | 72
As far as how long it's been since a release was (Patreon vs. Free), this is all easily gathered from the blog history on Love-Joint's site (all dates are mm/dd/YYYY):
EP | Patron | Free | Delay (AS OF Oct. 15, 2021)
Eplg 2 | 1/31/2021 | | (258+)
Eplg 1 | 12/30/2020 | | (290+)
19 | 12/5/2020 | | (315+)
18 | 9/19/2020 | 05/07/2021 | 231
17 | 8/1/2020 | 02/26/2021 | 210
16 |7/1/2020 | 12/24/2020 | 177
15 | 6/1/2020 | 11/06/2020 | 159
14 | 5/1/2020 | 08/30/2020 | 122
13 |4/1/2020 | 07/17/2020 | 108
12 | 3/1/2020 | 06/12/2020 | 104
11 | 2/1/2020 | 05/04/2020 | 94
10 | 1/1/2020 | 03/12/2020 | 72
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Oh, the melodrama really got to me. Back when DH started I upped my monthly support then to $20/month because I liked the game so much. I recognized the drama in DfD and saw it as pointless, but it was something I could overlook. Then it came on at a higher level much earlier on in DH, and I absolutely hated Dennis and what he did to the game. I also just didn't like the protagonist. His back story was all drama that most people saw from the beginning as not really being his fault, but he obsessed over it. And he just let bad stuff happen to him, while at the same time basically using the women around him emotionally without giving anything back. We were only a couple of updates in when I dropped my support back down to $10.
But the visuals were awesome, even if the interface was painful. I liked- nay, loved almost all of the female characters. Hated pretty all of the men, protagonist included. It was written well on a technical level, but horribly as a story where we should want to identify with the protagonist and want him to succeed, or to be able to enjoy ourselves without the devs throwing a drama bomb in just because.
I was kind of on autopilot towards to last update, especially with the new drama bomb they offered us in episode 18. I also was honestly thrown by a lot of the story choices prior to that where suddenly every love interest seemed to have a secret in their background that made little sense.
I did keep subscribing until the first update of Shale Hale Secrets came out. Wasn't as impressed with the graphics from the previews, but had high hopes that they would take the criticism building during DH to heart. Instead, it was drama from the very start, with the protagonist once again saddled with a Tragic Backstory and a quite possibly purely imaginary disability that sucked the fun out of playing him and made the first update feel like it was in slow motion. I dropped my support out of frustration then. As I mentioned, I've gone back to the $10 level now as more of a show of support, but honestly have no real interest in checking out the updates after the first. Maybe I'll hear something about the game to draw me back at some point, or I'll once again just stop supporting it. We'll see.
Most of the people wanting episode 19 and the epilogues have probably never paid one dollar to support the game though. For all it's faults, it's easily worth a measly $10 to get in there and see how it ends, plus partially pay the devs back for the past fun. I'm sure there are people out there that somehow can't possibly come up with $10 on a one time basis, but I find that hard to believe. I'm sure they spend more than that on stuff they don't need and is even more fleeting than a video game. I think it's more they don't want to when they think they can get it for free. I worked with a guy at a convenience store one time that made good money from two jobs because he was a workaholic (recovering alcoholic, for context, which seems to turn people in workaholics so they aren't alone with their thoughts). Drove a really nice car, had a nice house. Ate at nice restaurants when he wanted. But he'd also go dumpster diving after our vendors would leave to recover the expired sandwiches and other food they had thrown away after they'd come in to check the shelves each week. He was better than that in so many ways, but he couldn't get around the idea that he was getting something for free, even if it was something he could easily afford otherwise. He'd go hungry rather than actually pay for a sandwich he'd happily pull out of the garbage for free the next day, and brag about it as he was eating it.
tl;dr DH is in my opinion a heavily flawed game that is still worth some support, because it does succeed on a lot of levels, and for me definitely delivered on some sexy fun. If people are on the fence about paying $10 to see the ending, go for it. It's only $10. You get the epilogues too. You support the devs of a small, possibly struggling game company. To me it would be an easy call assuming I already hadn't spent a good chuck of money support this game and DfD. It was a lot of money over time, but I did get a lot of enjoyment out of it.