VN Ren'Py Abandoned Estate : Dominate [v0.36.1] [Henissart]

[gio1243]

A) B) From what I can tell he lives in the US so that stuff about other countries doesn't matter.
C) He says he did, and I don't really see any reason not to believe him, the updates were coming regularly for a while at the same time he was getting paid terribly.
D) He worked for a long time for far lower pay than the effort required. He already took the risk it just didn't pay off. For a niche game people need to be way more generous than normal for it to be viable, you know going in it's not going to have the same mass-market appeal and you can't rely on the quantity of customers, the customers need to be 10x more loyal than normal to make up for the 10x lower customer count.

When you grow up and get a job try doing work that's highly skilled but instead of getting paid at market rate you get paid 1/4 of that and at lower than minimum wage, see how enthusiastic to continue the work you are then. Working on this game probably put tremendous stress on his career and his home life, it's an insane gamble, he needed it to be a lot more successful.

When I grow up and get a job ? Right! Getting a bit aggressive here aren't we ? Almost as if this was somehow personal. But why would that be ?

Anyway, wish that phrase was applicable but fyi I am all grown up, in my 40s and my current job title reads Principal Software Engineer so I know a thing or two about development , market standards and what constitutes highly skilled work. Creating a VN with RenPy and doing a few renders in Daz / Max or whatever doesn't cut it. And if you want to have a realistic perspective on what this kind of work is worth I suggest you head over to UpWork and check out the bids for this particular skill set. Or better yet, perhaps this dev should head there and try to sell his highly skilled work for a better price than what he was getting from his patrons who are no experts in what this highly skilled work is worth!

Now ...
A)B) So you are saying that the dev should be paid based on his needs and not the worth of his work ? Let's just agree to disagree on this. But again heading over to any freelancer site will give you a rough estimate of what an equally skilled (if not more) developer from let's say India would get for the same amount of work.

C) Really ? No reason? Let me give you a few out of the top of my head ...
How about inflating his work hours so that patrons would give more or keep on giving while he is relaxing working on this a few hours a week?
How about he has lied several times to patrons about expected release dates ? Also this would be an excellent reason to get fired. I mean repeatedly lying to your project manager about delivery dates is right up there with not showing up for work!
How about it shouldn't take more than a month for a professional 3d artist and a professional software engineer to develop this game from scratch? Add the cost of leasing a render farm to it and you will get an estimate of what this is worth!

D) Well perhaps deceiving your customer base is a bad marketing strategy. But I'm no expert in marketing. Perhaps on his next attempt he can take his brilliant idea over to a VC. They are known to provide marketing experts for counseling. I'm sure that with this amazing skillset and unique approach to game development they would fund this next World of Warcraft right of the bat. Unless it's a very common and easy to make porn game.

 

[taler]

When I grow up and get a job ? Right! Getting a bit aggressive here aren't we ? Almost as if this was somehow personal. But why would that be ?

Anyway, wish that phrase was applicable but fyi I am all grown up, in my 40s and my current job title reads Principal Software Engineer so I know a thing or two about development , market standards and what constitutes highly skilled work. Creating a VN with RenPy and doing a few renders in Daz / Max or whatever doesn't cut it. And if you want to have a realistic perspective on what this kind of work is worth I suggest you head over to UpWork and check out the bids for this particular skill set. Or better yet, perhaps this dev should head there and try to sell his highly skilled work for a better price than what he was getting from his patrons who are no experts in what this highly skilled work is worth!

Now ...
A)B) So you are saying that the dev should be paid based on his needs and not the worth of his work ? Let's just agree to disagree on this. But again heading over to any freelancer site will give you a rough estimate of what an equally skilled (if not more) developer from let's say India would get for the same amount of work.

C) Really ? No reason? Let me give you a few out of the top of my head ...
How about inflating his work hours so that patrons would give more or keep on giving while he is relaxing working on this a few hours a week?
How about he has lied several times to patrons about expected release dates ? Also this would be an excellent reason to get fired. I mean repeatedly lying to your project manager about delivery dates is right up there with not showing up for work!
How about it shouldn't take more than a month for a professional 3d artist and a professional software engineer to develop this game from scratch? Add the cost of leasing a render farm to it and you will get an estimate of what this is worth!

D) Well perhaps deceiving your customer base is a bad marketing strategy. But I'm no expert in marketing. Perhaps on his next attempt he can take his brilliant idea over to a VC. They are known to provide marketing experts for counseling. I'm sure that with this amazing skillset and unique approach to game development they would fund this next World of Warcraft right of the bat. Unless it's a very common and easy to make porn game.

I'm not going to respond to all of this especially since you seem to care way more than I do, but I will say that it is clear from all this you seem to value only the renders while the skill I was talking about is the writing. It's is in the top 1% I've seen on this site, qualitatively better than every game that makes more money than he does.

But yeah I agree too bad he's not Indian, if only everyone is from a poor, colonized country that we can exploit and force to work for us for peanuts. That would be great.

I don't know why you keep on harping about what this game is worth, maybe he can market it better and get more value out of it, but that's not really in contention. It's a question of opportunity cost, he can get literally any other job and not go homeless. Realistically, that's preferable.

 

[gio1243]

Fair enough. I don't know how time consuming the writing may be and it's also a very individual metric for each writer. But I will note that on bdsmlibrary there are several stories that are significantly longer than this story line and imho of significantly better quality. Some are actually "Novel" quality. Now given the fact that they are posting their writing for free I am guessing it's not a full time job for them.

Also makes me wonder, do highly skilled writers in the US make 120K a year ? Cool if they do!

Look I am simply contesting the premise that he is both highly skilled and works on this full time. IMO it's an outrageous claim. Newbie developer would require full time , a highly skilled one would yield this result working on this on the side. Newbie would be paid a junior salary, a highly skilled one would be paid a part time senior salary. No company would pay 10K a month for this kind of progress. So I don't know what you are talking about when you say: "Anyone with his skills can easily get a job that pays 10k a month".

Just for reference according to Glassdoor Netflix pays an average of $126K/y ( $74K to $215K , but I am guessing the former is for Junior Devs ) for the Gameplay Engineer position and has the following requirements:

• Skilled in Unity
• Significant experience in C# or C++
• Expertise in one or more areas of game engineering
• Ability to communicate effectively with other team members
• Two or more shipped games
• Desire to contribute to world-class interactive stories!
• BONUS: Experience with mobile or console development
• BONUS: Desire to contribute to world-class interactive stories!

These are far far away from being a RenPy script kiddie demanding a Senior Developer salary from your patrons.

 

[taler]

I don't think he's in STEM at all, much less a developer. You can become adept at renpy in a month, everything else... no.

Skill just means he's educated, can literally do anything else and make an average income

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to avoid being homeless. Who knows wtf his career is, could be a lawyer or politician for all I know. Writing at this level is pretty rare on f95, I've seen a couple of VNs here that sounds like they were written by English majors, but they were deathly boring (Ruin me, Shattered). Being able to distill his fantasies in such an approachable and natural way is not common. This game is way up there for me, I like it a lot more than the VNs that are traditionally praised for having good stories on this site, like Harem Hotel or DeLuca Family. Those are relatively "mediacore" imo. And... this game has one of the best route designs I've seen and close to the top quality renders.

It's not wrong to be passionate or disappointed, I just think the direction of the anger is misplaced. You should be mad at the market for not being more accepting of femdom and not supporting this game as much as they should, and use your passion more productively. Maybe promote or market this game online and help him out with some free marketing.

Honestly do feel like some of you guys have never worked on a job in your life. You really can't be paid this little, produce something this good, and then watch everyone else who are way less skilled make waayyy more money than you and stay motivated. But the genre is just niche so... that's just how it is.

 

[Brown195]

Hey guys! What are we arguing about today?

 

[Fantajack]

I understand the argument that the dev was not making enough money off of this game. That is a valid reason, for him to stop development on the game. It is however NOT a justification for deceiving people that are generous enough to actually donate to him though. It is the syndical dishonesty that makes me angry with the dev, not his disillusionment.

Does anyone want to try and directly defend his lies?

 

[gio1243]

Skill just means he's educated, can literally do anything else and make an average income

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to avoid being homeless. Who knows wtf his career is, could be a lawyer or politician for all I know. Writing at this level is pretty rare on f95, I've seen a couple of VNs here that sounds like they were written by English majors, but they were deathly boring (Ruin me, Shattered). Being able to distill his fantasies in such an approachable and natural way is not common. This game is way up there for me, I like it a lot more than the VNs that are traditionally praised for having good stories on this site, like Harem Hotel or DeLuca Family. Those are relatively "mediacore" imo. And... this game has one of the best route designs I've seen and close to the top quality renders.

Being able to write a decent story line only proves that he is not illiterate and has some talent for it. It by no stretch of the imagination proves that he has higher education such as a college degree or a masters diploma. Furthermore I say decent because aside from f95 there's an entire world of erotic literature out there and it would be unfair to all the great artist out there to name him the Picasso of the field just by comparing him to other writers on f95 alone.

He could very well be a high school graduate with a talent for writing, which brings me to my second point that crude use of the term "average income" can be misleading. On the Wikipedia link you provided, there is a "See also" section and in that section there's a

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link. If you follow the link and scroll down to the by "By educational attainment" section you will see a table illustrating median income by education which is at least a lot more accurate than the $68K and change that is mentioned as an average of the entire US population. And still going of a median feels wrong. There's a free market out there which is defined by supply and demand, and unless you can pinpoint it to a specific occupation that would fit his particular known talents everything else is pure speculation. And by that standards in my speculation he is a high school dropout that can only write well when it comes to expressing his own erotic desires and the only professional alternative is flipping burgers making minimum wage. Now that would be $7.25/h and working 8 hour shifts 25days per month that would be $1450/month so when he was short of that on patreon I would say he was doing pretty well. Now I don't really think that , just making a point on why going of assumptions can lead to falsehoods.

Also when it comes to professional endeavors I am a strong believer in the aforementioned supply and demand principle. You can't blame the people for not liking femdom enough. You cannot blame them for not liking his particular brand of femdom. And you can certainly not blame them for not liking his particular style of doing "business". And on that last "business" part , and this is just my 2cents on this, I believe he could be a lot more successful financially with this game had he the patience of building this like any other business. Had he kept on with frequent updating and good communication with his "customer" base he could very well reach an amount that would allow for a decent lifestyle. And just like any other such business venture you need to build a clientele before you can start cashing in on your hard work. Instead he chose to be arrogant , insult the intelligence of his patrons and try to make a quick buck without doing the work. Yet you somehow blame them for not giving more support ?

Lastly idk why you think comments like "Honestly do feel like some of you guys have never worked on a job in your life." will earn you anything but the contempt of the very people you are addressing when you offer advice on how to better support this game. This, on principle is the exact type of arrogant behavior that imo drove quite a few patrons away. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the people who can actually afford the patronage are the people who actually work and have a few bucks to spare on this. Do you honestly think that insulting them will make them reconsider their decision to no longer support this game ? I have news for you ... they are far more likely to think that this kind of entitlement means that this judgement comes from , to say it politely , someone who has limited experience in the workplace.

 

[taler]

I understand the argument that the dev was not making enough money off of this game. That is a valid reason, for him to stop development on the game. It is however NOT a justification for deceiving people that are generous enough to actually donate to him though. It is the syndical dishonesty that makes me angry with the dev, not his disillusionment.

Does anyone want to try and directly defend his lies?

See it's the takes like this that makes me say...

Look, have you never worked in a place where you watch people, colleagues, etc feel disrespected and then not put in max effort? When you think your stuff is underappreciated, not properly rewarded, people would rather pirate than support, you just start phoning it in. Doesn't mean you're "lying", just that your intrinsic motivation takes big damage, and if not properly supported externally, suffers to a huge extent. That's why companies invest a lot in supporting employee morale, offering them team building, benefits, trips, titles, etc anything to make them feel like they are valued. It is the job of HR to make sure this doesn't happen, and if it happens, help them recover from it. A lot of the times this can be exacerbated by other issues that pop up in life that are distracting from their work.

Why do I know they're not lying? Because what already exists is already long and high quality, this ain't no scam guys, it's clearly just a case of a dev who's gotten worn down over time. He probably wants to do right by people but is battling a myriad of issues that hurts his productivity.

 

[taler]

Being able to write a decent story line only proves that he is not illiterate and has some talent for it. It by no stretch of the imagination proves that he has higher education such as a college degree or a masters diploma. Furthermore I say decent because aside from f95 there's an entire world of erotic literature out there and it would be unfair to all the great artist out there to name him the Picasso of the field just by comparing him to other writers on f95 alone.

He could very well be a high school graduate with a talent for writing, which brings me to my second point that crude use of the term "average income" can be misleading. On the Wikipedia link you provided, there is a "See also" section and in that section there's a

You must be registered to see the links

link. If you follow the link and scroll down to the by "By educational attainment" section you will see a table illustrating median income by education which is at least a lot more accurate than the $68K and change that is mentioned as an average of the entire US population. And still going of a median feels wrong. There's a free market out there which is defined by supply and demand, and unless you can pinpoint it to a specific occupation that would fit his particular known talents everything else is pure speculation. And by that standards in my speculation he is a high school dropout that can only write well when it comes to expressing his own erotic desires and the only professional alternative is flipping burgers making minimum wage. Now that would be $7.25/h and working 8 hour shifts 25days per month that would be $1450/month so when he was short of that on patreon I would say he was doing pretty well. Now I don't really think that , just making a point on why going of assumptions can lead to falsehoods.

Also when it comes to professional endeavors I am a strong believer in the aforementioned supply and demand principle. You can't blame the people for not liking femdom enough. You cannot blame them for not liking his particular brand of femdom. And you can certainly not blame them for not liking his particular style of doing "business". And on that last "business" part , and this is just my 2cents on this, I believe he could be a lot more successful financially with this game had he the patience of building this like any other business. Had he kept on with frequent updating and good communication with his "customer" base he could very well reach an amount that would allow for a decent lifestyle. And just like any other such business venture you need to build a clientele before you can start cashing in on your hard work. Instead he chose to be arrogant , insult the intelligence of his patrons and try to make a quick buck without doing the work. Yet you somehow blame them for not giving more support ?

Lastly idk why you think comments like "Honestly do feel like some of you guys have never worked on a job in your life." will earn you anything but the contempt of the very people you are addressing when you offer advice on how to better support this game. This, on principle is the exact type of arrogant behavior that imo drove quite a few patrons away. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the people who can actually afford the patronage are the people who actually work and have a few bucks to spare on this. Do you honestly think that insulting them will make them reconsider their decision to no longer support this game ? I have news for you ... they are far more likely to think that this kind of entitlement means that this judgement comes from , to say it politely , someone who has limited experience in the workplace.

TBH my ability to debate with you normally took a big hit when you suggested his pay be compared to an Indian's. If your reaction to an exploited and colonized third-world worker's pay is not to increase their worker's pay but to lower everyone else's to that level then I just legitimately think you are anti-progress and kinda a bad person.

Anyway, I'm not the one speculating on his pay or career, I just talked about the average, and the majority (66%) of Americans are college-educated. While the federal min wage is 7.25 most big cities have higher min wage, I'm from New York where the min wage is $15 and California's is $14. I don't feel like I need to know exactly what his situation is to think he's underpaid. Matching his "known skills" to an actual career is just crazy talk. And keep in mind wage != actual compensation. In the US healthcare, taxes, and daily costs are things that are covered by the employer and could easily make total comp 1.5-2x of the wage.

Anyway, I agree that despite the unpopularity of the niche and whatever, he can still be successful with persistence and dedication, since the hardest part, that being talent, is already amply covered I think. However that's just hard to do because of the slow growth and stuff I explained in this post: https://f95zone.to/threads/estate-dominate-v0-36-1-henissart.29298/post-8075111, dude could become homeless or lose his family in that time.

Regardless, begging the market or the pirates to pay more, even if you talk to them with perfect PR, isn't that great of a plan and unlikely to result in much. The only actual thing he can improve on is marketing I think, I don't think he did much outside of F95, and good marketing can make a big difference. Anyone know if he tried promoting this on femdom communities or bdsm communities?

 

[Finain]

Henissart is not american, why is this whole talk centered around the fucking United States?

 

[taler]

Henissart is not american, why is this whole talk centered around the fucking United States?

Do you know where he's from then?

 

[gio1243]

Yeah he did , just google Estate Dominate ... technology is a bitch lets you find out all sort of information ;P

You have to take into account the cost of living in each country.

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. What is a poverty income in the US makes you rich in India. You are telling me that if he was living a life of luxury in Mumbai on his current $700 you would still think he is underpaid ? But yeah, I won't deny it, I am one of those bad bad people who own t-shirts with I love Capitalism on them. I also believe that real progress can only be achieved through sacrifice and if I had to choose between funding research and feeding the poor I would always go for the former.

I don't feel like I need to know exactly what his situation is to think he's underpaid.

That's exactly what you need to know. Cause if he lives in a village in India he has already made enough money out of this game to live the rest of his years. See, I can make assumptions of my own therefore I don't need to use yours.

The rest and more is covered on my previous posts. Just cut back on the selective reading.

 

[Ottoeight]

Honestly, do you really think we're interested in your off-topic rants?

 

[Fantajack]

See it's the takes like this that makes me say...

Look, have you never worked in a place where you watch people, colleagues, etc feel disrespected and then not put in max effort? When you think your stuff is underappreciated, not properly rewarded, people would rather pirate than support, you just start phoning it in. Doesn't mean you're "lying", just that your intrinsic motivation takes big damage, and if not properly supported externally, suffers to a huge extent. That's why companies invest a lot in supporting employee morale, offering them team building, benefits, trips, titles, etc anything to make them feel like they are valued. It is the job of HR to make sure this doesn't happen, and if it happens, help them recover from it. A lot of the times this can be exacerbated by other issues that pop up in life that are distracting from their work.

Why do I know they're not lying? Because what already exists is already long and high quality, this ain't no scam guys, it's clearly just a case of a dev who's gotten worn down over time. He probably wants to do right by people but is battling a myriad of issues that hurts his productivity.

Henissart's current Patreon page says he is making 749.86 of a goal of 2500 a month, directly under this is a statement from Henissart that begins with the following words. " This is "the goal", if you will. I'm already working full-time on the game....."

By leaving this one statement up on his Patreon page, he is Lying to his donors.

If he were to change this to something like "I started off, with the intent to work on this game full time but then I lost steam because I didn't make the kind of money I thought I would as fast as I wanted to, I have now decided to never give game development updates again, and possibly only make monthly wallpapers from here on out, because that is all I feel 700 dollars a month is worth." then I would not continue to point out his lies.

On his Patreon page, he is selling the idea that he is working "full time" on this game, and that by donating to him, you can be a part of bringing the completed game to fruition. Regardless of how jaded or disillusioned he has become with the world or this project, THIS IS A LIE that combined with monthly wallpapers continues to generate 750 dollars a month for him. He is defrauding everyone that is kind enough to donate to him.

You also shared the idea that because henissart is not making enough money, his lies are not actually lies they are just his way of slacking off, like an employee at a corporate job where he and his work are undervalued. . Well he is not defrauding a faceless corporation with his lies, he is literally disrespecting the very people who believe in his work enough to support him. This makes him guilty of not respecting or appreciating his donors just like some corporations do to their employees.

For me donating to creators on Patreon makes me feel like im stepping outside of the corporate system that I often feel undervalued in and becoming a part of something better. Henissart's cynical response to not making "enough" money quickly enough just shits all over that idea and makes me feel used.

I truly dont understand how you dont see this as a lie.

 

[taler]

Henissart's current Patreon page says he is making 749.86 of a goal of 2500 a month, directly under this is a statement from Henissart that begins with the following words. " This is "the goal", if you will. I'm already working full-time on the game....."

By leaving this one statement up on his Patreon page, he is Lying to his donors.

If he were to change this to something like "I started off, with the intent to work on this game full time but then I lost steam because I didn't make the kind of money I thought I would as fast as I wanted to, I have now decided to never give game development updates again, and possibly only make monthly wallpapers from here on out, because that is all I feel 700 dollars a month is worth." then I would not continue to point out his lies.

On his Patreon page, he is selling the idea that he is working "full time" on this game, and that by donating to him, you can be a part of bringing the completed game to fruition. Regardless of how jaded or disillusioned he has become with the world or this project, THIS IS A LIE that combined with monthly wallpapers continues to generate 750 dollars a month for him. He is defrauding everyone that is kind enough to donate to him.

You also drew a parallel between low donations and being unappreciated at corporate job. Then justifying slacking off because of it. Well he is not defrauding a faceless corporation with his lies, he is literally disrespecting the very people who believe in his work enough to support him. This makes him guilty of not respecting or appreciating his donors just like corporations often do to their employees.

For me donating to creators on Patreon makes me feel like im stepping outside of the corporate system that I work in every day and becoming a part of something better. Henissart's cynical response to not making "enough" money quickly enough just shits all over that idea and makes me feel used.

I truly dont understand how you dont see this as a lie.

It would be a lie if he felt that way, but he probably still intends to work on it and come out with an update. Productivity can get very low if people feel demotivated, but they don't think they're not working. It's just very low productivity. I think your take is too cynical, lots of games on the site get super delayed but are still worked on... like milfy city just got an update after eons of nothing, and don't even get me started on ecchi sensei.

 

[taler]

I like this game enough that I want to play all of it. But going through the sub route is just so ugh, feels like forcing myself to brainwash myself into some kind of disturbing mental state that I don't want to be, lol, anyone else feel that way? Honestly will probably stop and drop it.

 

[Futa_Buddy]

I like this game enough that I want to play all of it. But going through the sub route is just so ugh, feels like forcing myself to brainwash myself into some kind of disturbing mental state that I don't want to be, lol, anyone else feel that way? Honestly will probably stop and drop it.

Yeah I get what you mean, the sub route is pretty hardcore, and if Henissart had continued the story it probably would've gotten worse (MC getting castrated)... but there is a neutral and domination route, each one with different content, you should check those out...

 

[Futa_Buddy]

Henissart is not american, why is this whole talk centered around the fucking United States?

No idea why people are talking about the US, if my memory serves me right Henissart is German (not American)...

 

[taler]

Yeah I get what you mean, the sub route is pretty hardcore, and if Henissart had continued the story it probably would've gotten worse (MC getting castrated)... but there is a neutral and domination route, each one with different content, you should check those out...

I did the dom route which I quite enjoyed, played that and immediately came to this thread to simp. Will check out the neutral route too, the routing in this game is top tier. Actually really impressive, but in the end it may end up being too complex for him to manage well.

 

[Fantajack]

It would be a lie if he felt that way, but he probably still intends to work on it and come out with an update. Productivity can get very low if people feel demotivated, but they don't think they're not working. It's just very low productivity. I think your take is too cynical, lots of games on the site get super delayed but are still worked on... like milfy city just got an update after eons of nothing, and don't even get me started on ecchi sensei.

He literally says he is working "full time" on this game. Even if he thinks he still working on this game its obvious he is not working "full time" on this game. The phrase full time implies 40+ hours a week. No reasonable person can believe that the developer even thinks he is putting 40+ hours of work into this game weekly.

I also did not bring up all the times that the dev promised us that there will be new content released in "about 2 weeks". The first of those Development updates were made over a year ago.

So even if the dev has the deluded perception that he is still working on the game and honestly believes that he is going to finish it "some day" he is still a liar because he has to know that he is not putting 40+ hours per week into it like his Patreon description implies he is.