Experiencing almost zero growth on patreon/substar

[gobman]

I think I've entered a sort of recursive cycle that has me only maintain the number of subscribers each month instead of gain. Every month I am losing at least £100 out of the meager 500 I was earning on Patreon. I have a substar at $500 but I am not experiencing any real growth for the work I'm putting in.

Of course it is ultimately the quality of my product that decides if I'll be successful but my page here isn't handled by me, the uploader is very supportative and helpful but he is still using images from the very first version, affecting the image of the game. Sadly this site is the only way I gain real traction, I'm not sure where else to promote my stuff. I've tried social media but am just not going viral. Should I upgrade to something with higher graphical fidelity? Here is some of the art I upload online:

Spoiler: Art

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Not even scraping 50 likes on these images. It's funny, when I FIRST uploaded to twitter I exploded and had a tweet get 13k likes. Then after that, NOTHING. Do I have to keep making fresh accounts on social media and other sites to game algoritms and newcomer bias?

I am thinking of moving on to DAZ, but another part of me asks "what's the point?" if my hard work isn't recognised at all because I have zero connections or means to contact popular influencers/ artists. Just floundering at the bottom here.

Please give your suggestions on what I should do to improve. I would very much appreciate any of it. Thank you!

 

[Deleted member 6462170]

Hi gobman. I am also interested with adult gaming industry for a long time ( I am a software dev and 2d/3d artist ).
Even though I want to write long-ass paragraphs, I will keep it short and sweat.

First thing first, I don't think the problem is your art style nor the uploader. I can say its a lot better than your average Daz3D renders while we can all agree that it's not the best 3d piece you can ever imagine. ( Also reminds me "Milf in Time", which is based game )

I believe what you are experiencing now is more about your target audience and the reality of this industry. I was playing creepy-rendered/written games in 2016-2020 era and it was like a heaven. But now, this industry evolved and over saturated with lots of games, or let's say lots of v0.0.1's.

What the hell am I trying to say is, if you are not shining much nor lucky bastard, this industry is not really worth for making bucks. If you are living in a 3rd world country, its another story though.

Btw, I remember your game, at least one of its early version. It was a generally good experience but nothing really interested in story even though I am a huge mom/son fan, lol.

 

[gobman]

Btw, I remember your game, at least one of its early version. It was a generally good experience but nothing really interested in story even though I am a huge mom/son fan, lol.

Yeah this is a problem lol because I actually do have a crazy story hidden behind the scenes but I'm afraid of revealing too much. I forgot that I was making a porn game, my previous experience was writing a grimdark psycho-thriller mod for Skyim. One of the biggest mods for the game. So it really is a departure for me to make a game like this.

The problem with my story is that it may be a bit "grim" and could turn away or anger my fans. It's very cliche and generic by design, to lull people for the twist. I just don't know if it's wise to do it.

I did this with my previous work because I wasn't focused on money or growth, but now I am and have to consider my audience's reaction.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

Ah, definitely an interesting scenario to be stuck in. there's only two things I can think of to push higher. 1 is I see lots of artist do two things to help maintain a strong community and thus keep their bottom dollar. 2nd are investment projects.

For artist and their communities, what I see is
- 1st is the artist tends to focus on a specific community or key fetish. even if that's not the art the artist will always want to make, one the artist blows up in a certain community, such as they made a bunch of art in a particular kink, they may start to pander more to that community as a way of having a foot hold community, a bottom dollar.
- 2nd are commissions and special events, these are more or less to make members of the community not feel like they are just part of the crowd, but able to personally interact with the artist. it helps strengthen the community or get members to know each other and feel more like a community and not just a following. this is really limited by your free time since these artist have to balance both doing this, getting familiar with their followers, as well as continue to pander to #1 as mentioned, art that keeps their base line community happy (with these special events allowing the artist to explore other art focuses without too much impact on their community's support).
So only full time artists I see do this really well (and why they eventually are able to lock themselves away into a mostly paid into community with few new followers able to discover them).

the 2nd technique, investment projects, I see you've already done, game making is one great example. investing time and energy to hope for a big reward. of course, if you make games regularly, then it kind of turns into the same situation as your art, where followers have a certain level of expectation, and that level of expectation in what you make regularly will be reflected in your income. if you are doing amazing stuff, then income go up, if you are doing amazing stuff but so is everyone else, meh. if you are doing amazing stuff but already have lots of followers and seem to not need help, then meh, no more new followers. its not something I know a solution for, and is actually why I prefer a different model, artist who make packs or comics and sell them on gumroad, I can support them without needing to directly support them or keep up on them, and they get support without needing to uphold a community. the trick is getting people to then buy what your selling, a different type of problem than a dollar a month, but can be less personal than what is required for patreon to work. I only support a few artist because I think what they do is unique (ie artist like sparrow have a following due to how extreme and unique their art is) and or don't have enough support (ie the more personal communities/friends). I don't really invest in game makers because I think my own projects are more important to me

 

[Deleted member 6462170]

I did this with my previous work because I wasn't focused on money or growth, but now I am and have to consider my audience's reaction.

It's a lot more hard to decide what the hell you need to do when you are into this, so I can understand your situation. But after long time searching all kind of big adult game forums, I can say that all these bastards also don't know what makes any game better for them other than these games including their fetishes.

My only important advice for you to decide your niche and play for the top if you are that eager to success. By looking your games, you probably wanna go with incest path, which is really valuable one.

 

[anne O'nymous]

[...] but my page here isn't handled by me, [...]

You can open a ticket (top left of the page) and ask for the developer badge (they'll ask for some evidences that it's you) and ownership of your game thread.

I've tried social media but am just not going viral.

Not a single game here is viral. Even the most successful creator (DarkCookie) have only 27.xxx patrons, what is ridiculously low in regard of the millions views that are needed for something to be viral.

Being popular and gaining attraction is a marathon. You need to be active enough and maintain that activity for months before it starts to pay off a bit.

Not even scraping 50 likes on these images.

50 likes is enormous for an indie dev.

Just floundering at the bottom here.

Like 95% of the thousands peoples who make adult games...

 

[peterppp]

I think I've entered a sort of recursive cycle that has me only maintain the number of subscribers each month instead of gain. Every month I am losing at least £100 out of the meager 500 I was earning on Patreon. I have a substar at $500 but I am not experiencing any real growth for the work I'm putting in.

Of course it is ultimately the quality of my product that decides if I'll be successful but my page here isn't handled by me, the uploader is very supportative and helpful but he is still using images from the very first version, affecting the image of the game. Sadly this site is the only way I gain real traction, I'm not sure where else to promote my stuff. I've tried social media but am just not going viral. Should I upgrade to something with higher graphical fidelity? Here is some of the art I upload online:

Spoiler: Art

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

Not even scraping 50 likes on these images. It's funny, when I FIRST uploaded to twitter I exploded and had a tweet get 13k likes. Then after that, NOTHING. Do I have to keep making fresh accounts on social media and other sites to game algoritms and newcomer bias?

I am thinking of moving on to DAZ, but another part of me asks "what's the point?" if my hard work isn't recognised at all because I have zero connections or means to contact popular influencers/ artists. Just floundering at the bottom here.

Please give your suggestions on what I should do to improve. I would very much appreciate any of it. Thank you!

if you earn $1000 or more each month i wouldn't say you're floundering at the bottom. depends on what you compare with, but most adult game devs earn less than that

every dev reaches a plateau sooner or later, it can be a temporary one before you continue to grow or you have hit your ceiling with your current projects and it's even or downhill from that point forward. in your case, you could probably market yourself better to get some more traction. seems you have a game called goldream too? can't find it on f95.

edit: further investigation reveals that you had to move the wants of summer to subscribestar in the beginning of this year. that lost you a lot of support on patreon but lately you are growing again from your other stuff there, so i don't really see you reaching a plateau. you're growing, but slowly.

You must be registered to see the links

add to that the $500+ you now earn on ss. i can't see your growth on ss but i'm guessing your total earnings on patreon plus ss is higher now than before having to move to ss, despite it being harder to earn on ss. be a little patient and market your new game and i think you could continue to grow

 

[Count Morado]

Just floundering at the bottom here.

You are far from floundering at the bottom. You have been on Patreon for just over 2 years and bringing in around $400-$600 USD or better each month from that platform for almost a year.

That places you near the top 20% of all adult game creators on Patreon (#1200 of about #5700) by money or by subscriber count. The median adult game creator on Patreon, even after 2 years, is right around the $100 USD mark. You are probably top third for all creators over 2 years on Patreon.

But yes, you have hit a plateau. Just like with about any endeavour, this is the time that tests whether a person will keep doing what they love doing or decide to step away and do something else.

If you are active with your subscriber, active in social media, continue to find ways to improve and add on to your product - you can build upon what you have. Like anne O'nymous mentions - this is a marathon, not a sprint. I'm not saying follow a cost sunk bias mindset - but that following good business practices are usually the best method to sustain and build.

It looks like your dip in January on Patreon is due to the impression you had a VN on there that had incest (and younger characters?) which had to be removed because of Patreon policies. From the looks of it, you were pretty successful in converting a good number of them over to Subscribestar and adding to that number.

One issue that may keep some people from committing to you is multiple projects at once. Particularly from a VN developer which doesn't have track record of completing VNs at this time. A far number of people want developers focused on only one VN at a time because then they "know" that the developer is serious and won't just keep starting new VNs without completing the ones already out. Since you already have two, I would recommend not considering a third in the near future - until you complete at least one of them first.

You mention graphic fidelity, but your graphics are fine where they are. There are VNs with worse graphics doing better. There are VNs with better graphics doing worse. From a quick look on the threads, while the artwork gets some criticism -- where the major portion of the criticism seems to come from is the writing - dialogues and narrative.

Sadly, writing for an audience takes time to learn. All writers should write for themselves, but if they want to build an audience - they need to write for that audience. That doesn't mean bending to their will - but it does mean considering word choice, character arcs, lines of tension, climactic rises, good resolutions, etc in each update. Each update should be alike a chapter of a traditional novel that fits the tone of the whole work, while being mostly encapsulated within itself with it's own rise and fall. Like a roller coaster. The entire roller coaster is the thrill, but within it are each hill and loop and valley giving riders an experience throughout while serving the whole run in its own way to add velocity and height or break and suffer lows.

Best of luck.

 

[anne O'nymous]

It looks like your dip in January on Patreon is due to the impression you had a VN on there that had incest (and younger characters?) which had to be removed because of Patreon policies.

Not necessarily.
The monthly dip is due to revoked authorization because the credit/debit card have been renewed. And there's generally more that goes from January to January. The owner had it when he was young, and there's two schools here ; the "it's your birthday, you're old enough" one, and the "this year you'll buy things yourself" one.

One issue that may keep some people from committing to you is multiple projects at once. Particularly from a VN developer which doesn't have track record of completing VNs at this time.

What is the reason why the activity must be constant. It don't fully compensate the negative impact, but show that he is involved and commit to his projects.

Since you already have two, I would recommend not considering a third in the near future - until you complete at least one of them first.

Creators would benefits to learn about Bright Sun Studios story.

He was a creator who finished one project, not a too bad one. Then, as many do, started another one, that failed. But, encouraged by his first success, he persisted. This time his game was effectively well received ; nice concept, new and interesting game mechanism, and not too badly handled. So he started not one, but two projects, before he even finish the one in progress. But, not surprisingly, three projects in progress do not mean three times more money. So he tried a collaboration, and a fourth project. All this without finishing the previous ones.
Starting there, and to summarize, during months he past his time saying that he'll stop a project if people don't support him more, effectively pausing one to make his threat feel real. The more he acted like this, the less he had support and, like a child, the less support he had, the more he continued to act that way.
At least until the moment his threat became, "I'll stop everything if you don't give me more money"... And, well, not too surprisingly, it didn't led to him earning more money, so when he was tired to repeat his threat he just did a childish rage quit.

He could have acted like an adult, saying that he'll pause all projects except one, and will resume them one by one, each time the previous is finished. He would be still making games and earning money from them. Like they weren't too bad, and some really innovative, he would surely make around US$ 5.000/month now.
But he was greedy, wanting all the fame and money, and wanting them immediately... So now he have no money, and we lost two really interesting and refreshing games. But at least he had the fame he wanted... But surely not the way he wanted it.

 

[Count Morado]

Not necessarily.
The monthly dip is due to revoked authorization because the credit/debit card have been renewed. And there's generally more that goes from January to January. The owner had it when he was young, and there's two schools here ; the "it's your birthday, you're old enough" one, and the "this year you'll buy things yourself" one.

Agree with most of your writing in the remainder of your reply. The above is where we may need to agree to disagree.

I'm aware of how Patreon subscriptions work. However, at the end of January and beginning of February the developer shared the news of the removal of one of his products from Patreon because Patreon staff thought it included content that was against their policies.

The huge jump up in January appears due to the announcement of the second project 11 January. It could be that the jump didn't hold and that could be the reason for the major dip the month later. I would also contend that the major dip happens the month directly after the announcement that the first project wasn't going to be available through Patreon anymore. His tiers are tied to uncensored content access. If the product you subscribed for is no longer offered - why stay subscribed?

 

[Michelangelo da Mouso]

Of course it is ultimately the quality of my product that decides if I'll be successful

dunno with AVN, but with consumer products, most of the time the success of a project does not depend on the quality of the product but on having a lot of investment to put your product in front of everybody's eyeballs.

Creators would benefits to learn about Bright Sun Studios story.

Thank you for sharing this story. Do you know any other creators, studios or projects that have success stories or cautionary tales like that?

 

[anne O'nymous]

Thank you for sharing this story. Do you know any other creators, studios or projects that have success stories or cautionary tales like that?

There's a ton, really.

One I'll not name, by respect for him, who lead himself right into the nervous breakdown wall because he wanted at all price to satisfy all this players. There's always a moment when it become impossible to conciliate all expectations, because some are too conflicting. And it was in a time before the NTR Vs Harem war.
Listening to the players is a good idea, but it's your game and you've to accept that some will be deceived.

Another case, a team this time, but I forgot their name and even the name of the game. They were making a Ren'Py game, but like none wanted to learn Ren'Py, they were using a tool with designed specifically to serve as gateway between humans and many different languages. You use the tool descriptive language, and it write the code for you.
But it wasn't an AI, more a compiler, and this kind of tools never works well with script languages. They were too limited by this approach to code the mechanism they wanted and, more important, to code without bugs. And like they had no clue what the Ren'Py code what meaning, they had no way to fix the bugs.
From memory, they blamed Ren'Py for this, while the most basic free roaming Ren'Py game have code more advanced than theirs.
Codding is merciless. Even if it looks like it, there's no shortcut. Either you know what you are doing, or you are doomed.

There's also After Invasion, the first real free roaming game made in Ren'Py.
It fit with the previous story, the game was good (at least for a 2017 game) and the story interesting. But the code was broken as hell. The dev found the right design for his code, and the statements to use, but never understood how they should be used.
It's not because it looks like it works, that it effectively works, and there's no "little annoyance" when it come to games. Every single little things that feel weird is the proof of a bug somewhere.


Dr. Amana, Sexual Therapist, and Ecchi Sensei, are also a big failure due to the code.
The first one had his code redone three times, and still not working. Yet what they want to do is really basic and easy, but they want to over complicate it.
Always think, design, and test your game mechanism before you start making your game.

As for the second, it's full of purely anonymous variables ; I don't remind precisely, but it's the kind of "decision1", "decision2" and so on, names. After three in game weeks (that represent 3 years of works), they totally lost the count and mostly don't know what variable mean what.
Making a game is a long process, especially as indie developer. Never count on your memory, and always ease your job by making thing as obvious as possible. It suffice of one hard week at your regular job, what will keep you away of your code for, well a week, and you'll forgot everything.
Incidentally, when someone respected for his codding knowledge tell you that soon or later it will blow in your face, listen to him, pause your game, and rethink the way you're doing it.


As for the success stories, I fear that there's none.
Not that no one ever succeeded, but all success rely on patience (DarkCookie team and their more than 27.000 patrons, or Adeptus Steve team and their more than US$ 100.000/month), or pure luck (BrainDrop who's making an average game, but released it at the right time).

 

[Michelangelo da Mouso]

There's a ton, really.

One I'll not name, by respect for him, who lead himself right into the nervous breakdown wall because he wanted at all price to satisfy all this players. There's always a moment when it become impossible to conciliate all expectations, because some are too conflicting. And it was in a time before the NTR Vs Harem war.
Listening to the players is a good idea, but it's your game and you've to accept that some will be deceived.

Another case, a team this time, but I forgot their name and even the name of the game. They were making a Ren'Py game, but like none wanted to learn Ren'Py, they were using a tool with designed specifically to serve as gateway between humans and many different languages. You use the tool descriptive language, and it write the code for you.
But it wasn't an AI, more a compiler, and this kind of tools never works well with script languages. They were too limited by this approach to code the mechanism they wanted and, more important, to code without bugs. And like they had no clue what the Ren'Py code what meaning, they had no way to fix the bugs.
From memory, they blamed Ren'Py for this, while the most basic free roaming Ren'Py game have code more advanced than theirs.
Codding is merciless. Even if it looks like it, there's no shortcut. Either you know what you are doing, or you are doomed.

There's also After Invasion, the first real free roaming game made in Ren'Py.
It fit with the previous story, the game was good (at least for a 2017 game) and the story interesting. But the code was broken as hell. The dev found the right design for his code, and the statements to use, but never understood how they should be used.
It's not because it looks like it works, that it effectively works, and there's no "little annoyance" when it come to games. Every single little things that feel weird is the proof of a bug somewhere.


Dr. Amana, Sexual Therapist, and Ecchi Sensei, are also a big failure due to the code.
The first one had his code redone three times, and still not working. Yet what they want to do is really basic and easy, but they want to over complicate it.
Always think, design, and test your game mechanism before you start making your game.

As for the second, it's full of purely anonymous variables ; I don't remind precisely, but it's the kind of "decision1", "decision2" and so on, names. After three in game weeks (that represent 3 years of works), they totally lost the count and mostly don't know what variable mean what.
Making a game is a long process, especially as indie developer. Never count on your memory, and always ease your job by making thing as obvious as possible. It suffice of one hard week at your regular job, what will keep you away of your code for, well a week, and you'll forgot everything.
Incidentally, when someone respected for his codding knowledge tell you that soon or later it will blow in your face, listen to him, pause your game, and rethink the way you're doing it.


As for the success stories, I fear that there's none.
Not that no one ever succeeded, but all success rely on patience (DarkCookie team and their more than 27.000 patrons, or Adeptus Steve team and their more than US$ 100.000/month), or pure luck (BrainDrop who's making an average game, but released it at the right time).

Thank you! That was a great piece of knowledge. Love that you split the "learning lesson" from the story. If I find more, I'll share them too.

 

[Monstrous Marshmallow]

Quality and marketing are the deciding factors.

There's a general saying that you shouldn't expect to be making much money, which is based on what the average AVN Developer makes.
But if you look at the average AVN game, it does not come close to the quality of the most successful games.

Making an adult game should be taken just as seriously as any other project or profession.
You need to analyze and criticize your own work to really dig deep.

While it's not healthy to directly compare yourself with other games, movies, art, and stories - it can be a great way to learn and get inspired by the people who know what they're doing. And that can be applied to anything.

 

[Michelangelo da Mouso]

you shouldn't expect to be making much money, which is based on what the average AVN Developer makes.

I want to belive that you should expect to make money if you take things seriously and invest time, resources and part of your life into it.

I see lots of people that create AVN as a hobby, and they're included on this "average AVN dev" group. The same group where there's people who left their jobs and bet all they have on this. To make this harder, there are som hobbyists that are so good that are easily mistaken by the second ones.

So yeah, you can be inspired by Usain Bolt, but unless you're entirely dedicating all your days to running, you'll hardly get that far... (and that's not even a fair example. This is not a race. You can't compare yourself with others who started years, if not half a decade, before you)

 

[jamdan]

Dr. Amana, Sexual Therapist, and Ecchi Sensei, are also a big failure due to the code.
The first one had his code redone three times, and still not working. Yet what they want to do is really basic and easy, but they want to over complicate it.
Always think, design, and test your game mechanism before you start making your game.

Overall good post. Just one correction, Dr. Amana failed not because of code, but because the developer couldn't make renders anymore due to a new job that is demanding. They tried to find an artist, and eventually did, but that entailed giving the game rights to someone else who is now basically making their own game with the same characters.

So I'll add another bit of advice that is related to that:

Most games are far too large for the developer to handle. Too many routes, too many characters, too many renders.

Eventually, that'll bite you on the backside. Even the largest developers run into this issue (like BaDIK being a yearly update despite Dr.Pinkcake working like a maniac with a dozen computers rendering all the time).



This ties into growth too. Besides marketing, having complete games will help expand reach (maybe put it on Steam/Itch). That will get more eyeballs on your newer (probably higher quality) projects.

 

[RedPillBlues]

I think I've entered a sort of recursive cycle that has me only maintain the number of subscribers each month instead of gain. Every month I am losing at least £100 out of the meager 500 I was earning on Patreon. I have a substar at $500 but I am not experiencing any real growth for the work I'm putting in.

Of course it is ultimately the quality of my product that decides if I'll be successful but my page here isn't handled by me, the uploader is very supportative and helpful but he is still using images from the very first version, affecting the image of the game. Sadly this site is the only way I gain real traction, I'm not sure where else to promote my stuff. I've tried social media but am just not going viral. Should I upgrade to something with higher graphical fidelity? Here is some of the art I upload online:

Spoiler: Art

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

Not even scraping 50 likes on these images. It's funny, when I FIRST uploaded to twitter I exploded and had a tweet get 13k likes. Then after that, NOTHING. Do I have to keep making fresh accounts on social media and other sites to game algoritms and newcomer bias?

I am thinking of moving on to DAZ, but another part of me asks "what's the point?" if my hard work isn't recognised at all because I have zero connections or means to contact popular influencers/ artists. Just floundering at the bottom here.

Please give your suggestions on what I should do to improve. I would very much appreciate any of it. Thank you!

You can always try cross promoting. There are devs that are very obnoxious with it, cross promoting other games more then they talk about their own, but it is a great way to get your game some visibility. With the added perk you are advertising to people who already pay for these games.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Just one correction, Dr. Amana failed not because of code, but because the developer couldn't make renders anymore due to a new job that is demanding.

The code is still the reason for the two restarts. They redid it from scratch twice, with one year of development without release between the version 1.1.5 and the version 2.0.

 

[Michelangelo da Mouso]

Overall good post. Just one correction, Dr. Amana failed not because of code, but because the developer couldn't make renders anymore due to a new job that is demanding. They tried to find an artist, and eventually did, but that entailed giving the game rights to someone else who is now basically making their own game with the same characters.

So I'll add another bit of advice that is related to that:

Most games are far too large for the developer to handle. Too many routes, too many characters, too many renders.

Eventually, that'll bite you on the backside. Even the largest developers run into this issue (like BaDIK being a yearly update despite Dr.Pinkcake working like a maniac with a dozen computers rendering all the time).

May I ask who's the second developer who's using Dr. Amanda characters? If you don't want to share publicly, DM will do too. Just wanna know more about this.

Also, Dr.PinkCake working with 12 pc's like a maniac. Is that something he disclosed?

You can always try cross promoting. There are devs that are very obnoxious with it, cross promoting other games more then they talk about their own, but it is a great way to get your game some visibility. With the added perk you are advertising to people who already pay for these games.

Is there any recommended number of crosspromos over a period of time?
Do you know any place where devs look for opportunities to build alliances or crosspromos?

 

[RedPillBlues]

Is there any recommended number of crosspromos over a period of time?
Do you know any place where devs look for opportunities to build alliances or crosspromos?

Would just not make it like half of your patreon page. Really depends on how much you post on patreon. If you are posting weekly then monthly would probably be fine, but if you are only posting monthly to start and every other post is someone else's game thats where it kind of becomes obnoxious. As for where, most devs I've seen simply do it via DM's, even some of the bigger one likes Knightly Passions do it this way. Their might be a thread for it on the developer forum here, or the big developer discord probably has a bit of it.