Rixen

Member
Jun 3, 2017
353
540
2017 was the year that this game originally came out. It was also the year that Nintendo released the Switch console worldwide.
In fact, a couple of months AFTER this thread was created, the Syrian city of Raqqa was liberated from ISIS occupation. You've already forgotten about them? Well, they were at their peak when this game started.
A couple of months after that, the Russian olympic teams were banned due to doping. Since then we've had enough time for investigations, several documentaries to be filmed and released, and for people to even feel nostalgic about said documentaries.
Portugal The Man - Feel It Still was the hot new song. Conor McGregor was the top athlete, 2 division MMA champ at such a young age. I wonder how far he will go!
Now I feel old, i hope you're happy
 
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fortuna95

Lezz kiss for peace!
Donor
Feb 7, 2018
3,793
18,718
:devilish:
1712071780962.jpeg

Hey guys, happy Easter! The Big Mac date scene is going well. It’s hard to talk about without dropping spoilers, but I’m finding it easy and fun to write.

It’s just a side quest, so it’s not supposed to change the world, but it does feel like a nice little change of vibe and pace. The main NPC, Mac, is kind of rugged and unpretentious, and some of the fun is our heroine going on a date with a different vibe than the previous swanky restaurants. Spies (and hookers) need to adapt and perform in situations high class, low class, and somewhere in between, so it’s good practice for her.

I want to get this episode out as fast as possible, so I’m working long hours on it. I stopped today at about 8PM and I’ll get right back on it first thing tomorrow. I hope you guys had a lovely Easter and I’ll report on more progress soon! ❤
 
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CassieBare

Lead Developer of Blue Swallow
Game Developer
Jan 25, 2020
525
1,294
Assuming full work days, rest on weekends, and the date of the previous update, we can calculate how many words per hour our esteemed artist produces.
I will speculate the number will be underwhelming.
Interesting. We actually *should* do a retro on how many words per hour, whenever the update actually drops. Should be incredibly easy:

1. Take previous update. Load up Notepad ++
2. New update, Notepad ++
3. Scroll to final line, compare line totals.
4. Determine days since last release
5. Total lines / days since release = lines / day
6. Then have fun running the amount of line(s?) per hour he wrote per day.
 
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Ripe

Active Member
Jun 30, 2017
912
812
Interesting. We actually *should* do a retro on how many words per hour, whenever the update actually drops. Should be incredibly easy:

1. Take previous update. Load up Notepad ++
2. New update, Notepad ++
3. Scroll to final line, compare line totals.
4. Determine days since last release
5. Total lines / days since release = lines / day
6. Then have fun running the amount of line(s?) per hour he wrote per day.
Why would you want to do that???? Do you really want to see him write something like 0.5 words per day?
 

Ripe

Active Member
Jun 30, 2017
912
812
100% I believe it will lead to better content, if you trial and error anything, you usually get better results through that grind...
That only works if you know what you want to achieve in the end... which, I'm not sure Crush does. I'm not even sure he knows what kind of game he wants to write.

But yeah there's no reason updates should be longer than 3 months, especially for a side quest. Sucks that he stopped the good pattern of an update every 3-4 months, and fell back into old habits.
For a primarily text based game with almost no graphic anything over month, month and a half at most is unacceptable... so no, pattern of update every 3-4 months was not a good thing when this game is concerned.
 
Dec 8, 2023
71
148
But yeah there's no reason updates should be longer than 3 months, especially for a side quest.
No reason? He gets paid monthly regardless of how good his planning or work ethic is. If he ever actually finishes the game, then people will stop paying him. There is every reason updates should be as long as possible and planning should be nonexistent.
 
Dec 8, 2023
71
148
the only thing one can argue is that it's less work in a certain time frame to drag out an update. but it's probably even lesser work to do your update in 2 months, and take the third month off, no one would even have to know you do that.
Why even work the 2 months?
 
Dec 8, 2023
71
148
Bro, I don't know what's going on in your head, but if you need to be physically imprisoned in order to stop working then you are not a normal healthy individual. Normal, healthy people work because they need money.
 

Mr_Ainz

Member
Oct 26, 2017
337
571
I can understand the points that Sharpx23 is making but reality is never so simple. Let's say that I start a game and do updates regularly and get good rep, money and all that stuff. 6 months into development I lose motivation to continue working on that and start another job. Why should I stop Patreon or whatever it is that's making me money? I can release small amounts of content in large periods of time and get passive income until people realise that it's a waste of money.

Can I maybe make more money if instead I put more work and keep the monthly releases? Maybe, it's never assured that success will get to you even if you put in the work.

Also let's say that 60% (I'd even venture to say 80%) of the developers don't understand just how difficult making a game by yourself is. Most have an initial idea and then see themselves that they don't know how to continue the story (maintaining a certain amount of quality) and the complexity just gets out of hand. Yes, they could do a lot of things instead of milking (start another game with better planing, get outside help, take a vacation and come back with renewed energy) but time and time again we see examples of games slowly dying out.

I wish it wasn't like that, I too believe it doesn't make a lot of sense. But it's the reality we get.
 

Senor Smut

Member
Aug 11, 2020
220
860
I'm utterly convinced that Crush is scamming, but even I don't think he's doing nothing when he's not writing. Maybe he's working a part-time job or maybe he's got a lot of hobbies he's involved in. It doesn't matter though, because he's still taking money every month and bringing in a comfortable living without producing an acceptable level of return.

I've said it before, but I think he started out with the best intentions: he wanted to give back to the community by making a game he hoped people would enjoy. But he had no clue what he was doing so he just charged ahead and very quickly found himself in the weeds and overwhelmed. That's not a crime, it happens in...well, the majority of games on this site. Making a game is a lot harder than most people think. But where most overwhelmed Devs abandon their games, Crush decided to keep milking his cash cow and doing juuuust enough to keep those on the train, on the train. That was where he went from good guy to bad guy in my mind.
 

Senor Smut

Member
Aug 11, 2020
220
860
Maybe I'm just unusual as a person, because if I couldn't give regular updates on my game, i'd probably tell my patreons that updates will be delayed from now on for x or y reason. Or I'd just pause the patreon at any time I knew I was doing completely nothing for longer than a month.

I think the problem is Crush is doing too much scope per update. IMO he should aim for an update every 2 months, so write the game in smaller batches, and upload what he has at the end of 2 months. I'd also like to see more transparency. lol Am I like totally unusual or something? Cause if I made a game update in 3 months, and then decided to delay it one month. I would actually release what I had done in April, and then what I did until May, together, so people could see the differences and why I chose to take another month to edit the game. Like it makes zero sense not to do this. I love being honest I guess. And I also love feedback. I'd want to know what people think, if the month of edits were worth it, if it was justified and so on. I guess crush maybe does something feedback oriented with a select few people? like 4 or 5 testers? maybe?
You're where I was 18 months ago. I'd only been watching the game like a year at that point. But over on his Discord you get update after update, all saying that he's working very long hours on the game, day after day, then week after week, then month after month, and always that the update will be out SOON(TM). Enough of those and I was forced to finally admit that it's all BS -- if he were writing 50 words a day -- less than this post! -- then his updates would be be much more frequent and much larger. Instead they're short, trivial side stories that don't address the main story and endlessly recite "Why am I getting turned on by this?"
 

rbx4

Member
Jan 21, 2018
244
311
Well I may leave this thread if it stops having dedicated people saying 2+2=5. However, I'll part with this thought. If someone can't take criticism, that is: if they become hostile in the face of reasonable criticism, or if they become devastated in the face of it, you know you're dealing with someone with no good coping mechanisms. That's more serious than it sounds. Without good coping mechanisms it's likely that a person will go into substance abuse or abuse of others. That's why I was here--I could tell that something like that was going on. Maybe I'll be back, but I hope not however.
 
Mar 10, 2021
70
498
I think Crush is special.

He's telling a story about someone going under-cover in a Bangkok titty bar and he's struggling to come up with erotic situations to put his character in. That's next-level creative brilliance right there.

I can imagine him taking his patreon fortune, flying to Thailand, sitting in some Soi 6 bar in Pattaya, he's got ladyboys rubbing their junks against his arm, he's got Thai girls falling over themselves to transform his patreon dollars into orgasms and Crush is just sitting there frowning into his overprice lager going 'Nope... this does absolutely nothing for me. Maybe if they bought a new pair of shoes?'
 

Hooah

Newbie
Nov 12, 2019
74
145
You're where I was 18 months ago. I'd only been watching the game like a year at that point. But over on his Discord you get update after update, all saying that he's working very long hours on the game, day after day, then week after week, then month after month, and always that the update will be out SOON(TM). Enough of those and I was forced to finally admit that it's all BS -- if he were writing 50 words a day -- less than this post! -- then his updates would be be much more frequent and much larger. Instead they're short, trivial side stories that don't address the main story and endlessly recite "Why am I getting turned on by this?"
I've been following this game on and off a lot longer. I think the big turn was like 4-5 years ago, when he was endlessly fucking around with the sex scene generator he thought would save time. He mentioned taking trucker pills just to keep writing longer-and then there was a crash followed by a long hiatus.
 

42ftw

New Member
Aug 1, 2017
10
34
Studies should be done on the level of copium that fills his discord.
Not so long ago, I hypothesized the same idea. I really am waiting for the paper to be published. Such a fine study it is indeed.

After this I'd say that I'm pretty sure that this whole thing got to be a research on methods of copium production and milking patrons. I mean ~5-6k per month almost for nothing! That's huge! Can't wait to read the paper.

And look how much "results" are produced. A decent sum of milk™ on Patreon every month and huge amounts of malding and copium (mine included) in this thread.

Bravo!
 
Mar 10, 2021
70
498
I imagine Crush's Discord must be like one of those cults after the apocalypse fails to materialise.

There was a book written about that phenomenon and the anthropologist found that, rather than causing communities to unravel, failed prophecies actually bring communities together because everyone a) doubles down to save face and b) relies on everyone else doubling-down to convince themselves of their own bullshit.

It's an interesting dynamic but what's *really* interesting is that there are a number of Devs on here who have questionable update records but not everyone gets either the loyalty of Crush's consumers OR the degree of anger on here.

There's one dev who has a game that has been rebuilt three times over seven years and has never gotten much further than day 2 of his plot and NOBODY defends them. Conversely, you have the femdom guy who basically did one very short update in a year and while there was some criticism there was also a lot of 'how very dare' - evidently Crush is a better cult leader than the 'choose to be gay or straight' guy but not as fine a cult leader as the femdom guy... which kind of makes sense.
 
Apr 3, 2019
294
940
If you spend just a bit of time on the discord you'll see that it's not exactly a cult, it's much simpler than that. It's a community, and people are only there for the sense of community. They have the same inside jokes and mannerisms that every community with a shared interest eventually develops. Them defending/encouraging Crush isn't really so much as "No, I totally believe he's the greatest person ever and hardworking and everything" as much as "Hey, we all like the same things, don't insult us"
 
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