The man is writing his doctoral thesis at this point.
HTML Female Agent [v1.20.1p] [Crushstation]
Think you're mixing him up with someone else. He had a decent day job in an office and had never attempted a creative project before. So this is more like most first creative efforts and just super disorganized except he was given a bunch of money from the start.
That was my lesson years ago in this. If you're going to support someone on Patreon choose someone that's done it before and knows to handle all the usual pitfalls these things can have. He's instead described almost every kind over the years and made the amateur mistakes.
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While I concede a perfectionist might actually take half a decade to finish a mostly-linear VN, that also means that someone who's legitimately a perfectionist would probably be done by now. Also, legitimate perfectionists tend to actually have a plan.
Crush started out as a dreamer who went for a sandbox he has fuck all clue how to realize even today, but back in the day, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he just needs to figure out what he actually can do and then do that in a reasonable way and timeframe.
Unfortunately, instead of actually finding his way, he seems to have devolved into a cynical son of a bitch stringing a flock of mindless Patreon sheep along with excuses for his unwillingness to write to a deadline. None of his stuff is actually so mindbogglingly brilliant it could possibly justify taking that much time.
Crush started out as a dreamer who went for a sandbox he has fuck all clue how to realize even today, but back in the day, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he just needs to figure out what he actually can do and then do that in a reasonable way and timeframe.
Unfortunately, instead of actually finding his way, he seems to have devolved into a cynical son of a bitch stringing a flock of mindless Patreon sheep along with excuses for his unwillingness to write to a deadline. None of his stuff is actually so mindbogglingly brilliant it could possibly justify taking that much time.
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I'm pretty sure he's never openly said "Yeah I'm just milking you all"
On another note:
Yeah as far as I know, he's never said that in any clear way. Most likely he doesn't entirely believe that either, but being late doesn't feel good. This isn't the place for psychology, since people can jump up and oppose anything said, and since any speculation will never be confirmed. That sort of thing belongs in a far more controlled setting.
- Aug 18, 2018
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You've got to be joking. So when he said he might've hit the 30th October deadline, he had less than a third of it done? And this was after the writer's block? In what world did he even think setting that release schedule was a good idea?Hey guys! Sorry for the late report. I had a family thing at the weekend, and ended up taking both days off. I felt guilty and frustrated about not working – but actually I think getting a couple of days rest was helpful.
I got straight back to it yesterday and had an excellent writing day, sexing up a scene that in concept is hot but in execution isn’t exciting enough. The key is adding more build-up and characterisation.
Not all of the sex scenes in Bangkok are supposed to happen inside the club. (Many of the very hottest quests on the drawing board take the heroine out into different venues.)
Episode 1.17 happens entirely outside the club, which has raised new writing challenges for me. This time, our heroine isn’t actually required to do anything sexual with anybody, which makes the sex scenes tougher to sell.
Basically, I've to do a lot more work than usual on build-up and characterisation. Without that work, the sex scenes just feel gratuitous, and although gratuitous sex might sound like a good thing, at this point in the story it absolutely isn’t.
People have reminded me recently that perfect is the enemy of good. That’s generally very good advice, but this time I’m really not trying to get to “perfect”, just to “good” – i.e., as good as the previous episodes, which is not currently where it’s at. (It’s as good as the draft versions of the previous episodes, which weren’t good enough to release.)
Rewriting has taken longer than expected, but I really can feel it all coming together in this final editing pass. Here’s where I am exactly:
I know this looks like there’s still a ton of work to do, but fixing the early scenes has a much bigger impact on where you end up than fixing the later scenes. Build up scene 2 was the fucking killer this time. Now it’s good enough, I’m advancing fast on the other scenes.
I expect to finish nude scene 3 today, and will report on progress at the end of the week. Hopefully breaking things down into this level of detail will give everybody a clearer picture of where we are and when the release is ready than my (famously bad) time estimates.
Okay, that’s it for this report, I’m going to get back to editing. Apologies again that this is taking so long, I’m working so hard on it and I just want it to be good. I’ll give you an update shortly.
Don't forget that apparently he got tripped up on dialogue choices
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Yet apparently this only affected one branching sex scene (2A/B/C), this was one of the big hold ups.
Also, hottest quests? Drawing board? You're telling me this shit is actually story boarded in advance? You mean he already has an idea of what is "hot", despite apparently running into the same fucking "sexy" problem every. single. update?
Just stop setting deadlines and expectations if you can't meet them Crush. Your fans clearly are happy to wait, why let them down when you've no reason to?
I think this is the answer. Another game that I follow last updated more than a month earlier than FA's last, but there are no complaints about delay, because they don't have a (public) release schedule. Fans know that it will release when ready. It is also the case that FA will release when ready, but Crush unfortunately underestimated the work involved when setting his release schedule. He could continue to report progress as he is now without setting a date to keep fans in the loop, but no-one would be angry about missed dates.
Don't know which game it is, so have to ask: are you sure that's the reason? I'm pretty sure some rarely-updated games get less cricism than FA because when there is an update, it's a content drop for the game, as opposed to a content trickle that still doesn't actually get us to the supposed sandboxy game with places all over Bangkok to visit Crush still keeps rambling about.
- Apr 14, 2022
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FA isn't a sandbox game, no matter what Crush may think. With the way the game/story is written, you are only able to visit specific locations at specific times. Essentially the game is scripted with the occasional side quest (1 so far if I remember) definitely not a sandbox as there is no opportunity to go where you want when you want anywhere in the game as it currently stands
- May 25, 2017
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Developers saying they will release their game when it's ready is bullshit. It's only tolerated as long as there is hype (i.e. money) to sustain the development.
There are plenty of examples of games maintaining hype with very slow release schedules e.g. Our Red String (27,375 posts on F95), A Wife and Mother (108,473 posts on F95), Jessica O'Neils Hard News (17,692 posts on F95). Then look at other (in)famous properties like GRRM's The Winds of Winter or Star Citizen.
The very second money is at risk then you better believe that thing gets shipped warts and all e.g. No Man's Sky, Cyberpunk 2077.
In my opinion, the development of Female Agent is very far from the worst offender... it's fine... but that's not saying much i.e. so fucking what.
Someone quoted here that Crush was previously a Project Manager. If so, and they were managing themself as a creative they would probably put a x3 on all their time estimates i.e. they say it will take one month so it will realistically take three months. Time estimation that bad would, in my experience, usually result in performance assessments looking into how that person is spending their time because it is typically indicative of a big problem.
On the other hand, the creative process is not easy (seriously, do try to make a good game yourself). It can't feel good to disappoint a lot of people. It is not possible to live up to the hype if it is hyped up e.g. tiny development team making a sandbox that satisfies every esoteric desire. But the hype sustains your project.
tl;dr: The longer you go without releasing the worse it gets; the more you delay; the more people expect; the worse you feel; the harder you work; but you will never reach the finish because it's moving. RERO: release early, release often. Fail sometimes. Get feedback. Incorporate feedback into your next improved release. Make people happy. Work happy during the day. Sleep better at night.
I honestly don't think any "game" criticism is valid in this project, this isn't really a game.
Crush has shoehorned himself into a cycle of disappointing people. His whole "development cycle" is not one of a game, or even a VN, but one closer to a TV show or (weirdly enough) episodic AAA game.
In almost every "early access indie game" it is expected for parts of said game to be unfinished, unbalanced, buggy, or straight up game breaking. It is fine, it is what people expect from an indie early access game. Placeholders are expected. "This new weapon is overpowered" is expected.
And yes, there are exceptions, and I'm not saying that "truly finishing" one "episode" in each release is a bad thing...but you either do unexpected releases of finished content, or stick to a schedule of unfinished content. Doing the worst of both worlds is just a bad idea.
- May 25, 2017
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Oh, honestly, I could not disagree more with everything you have said.
I don't accept that this is not a game. That's a very strange delegitimizing authoritarian concept to me that I could never logically accept.
I don't accept that the releases, such that they are, are unfinished, unbalanced, particularly buggy, or game breaking. On the contrary, I think the Early Access releases are way far too polished and typically only require typo fixes. I understand that they release earlier versions than that to a coterie on Discord but I have no evidence that this is positive for the game.
I think our difference starts and probably ends with how well we view this game is supported financially. I think it's scraping by, making ends meet, at ~5K USD per month but to some that's a AAA game budget. I don't know what to say... we're pretty far a-fucking part on that!
I don't think you really understood what I said. The releases are, for the most part, polished and "complete" pieces of content (There's only a handful of placeholders in every release and there's even fewer of them lately). That is fine, and it wold be great if there wasn't a "promise" of a release schedule.
I never said anything about the budget.