Game abandonment syndrome.

[fitgirlbestgirl]

Like I've said to others if your looking for just fap material go watch porn! If you want something with substance and to turn your brain on a bit that's what VN's are for.

This is one of the most annoying "arguments" that for some reason constantly gets repeated on this forum. It's basically just a version of "stop liking what I don't like" and can just as easily be flipped around into something like "you want substance, go read a book." You like story heavy games, cool, but not everybody wants to play some guy's amateur version of a young adult mystery novel with 5 nude renders somewhere in the middle.

I hate to say it but I'm sort of surprised that F95 is so willing to post just anything. It seems like a nice idea. It gives everyone an opportunity to shine. But it also fills up the website with a lot of junk. Steam and YouTube are doing the same thing. There's just no quality control.

And there shouldn't be any. I don't want someone else deciding for me if a game is "quality" and if I even get to see it.

 

[fitgirlbestgirl]

So all you're saying is that you like trashy image-loaded-nukiges, blah blah blah

This is the kind of pointless hostility and shitty attitude I expect from people making this argument. I don't tell you what you have to like and play, why do you want to tell me what I should like?

 

[215303j]

This is the kind of pointless hostility and shitty attitude I expect from people making this argument. I don't tell you what you have to like and play, why do you want to tell me what I should like?

Although I agree with gamersglory and 9thCrux regarding games (VN's) vs. porn I agree with what you are saying as well...

I would say, though, that generally speaking, a porn movie is a more efficient way to get to the sex parts, while a VN is a better way to tell an story, which is interactive to boot. Hmm...

 

[Hadley]

People see that Games like SummerTime Saga make 40k/Month and think they can do it themselves. Then they release a mediocre VN with broken English and don't get a huge following and abandon it after a while.

There are a few Games where I'm sad they got abandoned, because they were pretty good. But some people just can't deal with criticism on the Internet.

 

[fitgirlbestgirl]

I would say, though, that generally speaking, a porn movie is a more efficient way to get to the sex parts, while a VN is a better way to tell an story, which is interactive to boot. Hmm...

Storytelling is not a binary choice though, it is a sliding scale. The whole conceit behind this argument is flawed, you don't just have literary masterpieces with deep stories on one side and a progression of pictures of tits on the other.

There's also a big difference between character-based storytelling and plot-based storytelling, which is also not binary, but most games lean in one direction over the other. Let's take two games as examples to illustrate. Depraved Awakening is heavily plot-based, as in it has an overarching mystery plot and pretty much all characters and sexual encounters only happen as a result or in service to that plot.

By all objective measures it's a good game, maybe even a great one, but I didn't enjoy it very much. The nature of the game necessitates that you can never really let the characters breathe and develop or take a while to really enjoy a sexual encounter because you are always "on the go," rushed along towards the next plot beat.

Now let's take Good Girl Gone Bad, an example of more character-based storytelling. Does the game also have a plot? Yes, but it is a lot more loose and free-flowing, there isn't a big mystery to solve or an alien invasion to repel. The plot is only scaffolding on which to hang characters and sexual encounters. Instead of focusing on a deep plot, the game is free to focus solely on the characters, their motivations and their choices. Through this design it also has a lot more sexual content.

Needless to say I prefer the second type of game and it is pretty annoying to have that characterized as "lol just go watch porn you pleb."

 

[Agent HK47]

I agree with your points and can confirm that it is easy to start a game, but a much harder thing to actually see it to the end. I am working on a game of my own, purely for my own amusement. I don't know if it will ever be released, as I only want to post it when it is actually completed and worth releasing, but I have days or even weeks sometimes, where I just don't feel the "spark" and don't want to work on it.
I am happy that I haven't published an early build of my game or anything, cause I suspect that people would already be bugging me for updates and whatnot. And who knows; maybe I will suddenly decide to scrap the entire thing and start over with a new angle or idea. It is easy to do when nobody knows that you are working on it, but a nightmare if people are waiting for you to finish up and release it.

I will just keep on strolling along at my own pace and see where it takes me. Maybe I will have a finished game by the end of the year. Or in 2 years. Maybe never, who knows? Not me, that's for sure.

 

[polywog]

Perfection paralysis prevents a lot of people from ever getting started in game development.
Thinking that their work isn't good enough, they won't even begin.
To begin is half the battle. Respect to those with the balls to do it, even if the can't complete the project.
None of us would be here, if no one had ever taken a chance.

The images don't have to be perfect in games, the characters needn't be realistic, players will fap to stickman if the story is compelling. Ignore the critics, upload your game.

 

[HopesGaming]

Yeah, whenever I try to tell 'new devs' about how reality really is they tend to get offended.
So many 'I know better' people out there that act like they want answers to questions but in reality, just want confirmation.
But on the other spectrum, the abandonment also comes from dev who is not 'content' with what they have.
When I reached my first 100 I was overjoyed. I don't mean I made enough to do anything special but just the feeling of having a playerbase. Some devs are blinded by the negativity and end up missing the positivity of a situation.

About the story vs sex game situation.
I have been fighting the sex-crazy people at my thread since day one. Detest those kinds of people.
But, I am also not fond of people who berate others for not liking story-focused games.

It's just preferences. Nothing wrong with liking a quick fap, the slow-burn, the middle road, etc.
The one I detest are the one that does not simply accept something as preferences but wants it to be obligatory.
Going into games that are either story-focused or a quick fap and start acting like entitled brats.
"A game should have this and that." "This is an adult site. The game must have this or that." "1 star. Game is not to my own preferences."

Just let people have their preferences and if a game is not to your own liking, move on. This demanding attitude is so entitled and I am amazed there exist people like that out there. "I don't like the taste of cola, I must go to the cola headquarters and demand it be made into pepsi! How can I live my life like this?!"

This is in no way aimed at anyone specific. Just overall experience.

 

[Viktor Black]

I'd love to give my two cents here. I'm not in VN making but what I have to say after one and half year of my project.

1) Before starting development, you should understand that it should be your regular work. It means that you should spend your time for this on everyday basics.

2) You can't repeat the success of other creators by making clones. If you can't enjoy your content, nobody will either.

3) You'll have a lot of negative feedbacks, it's ok, welcome to Internet.

4) You'll spend your savings, cause in most cases you'll not have enough money for life by doing this project.

5)You'll depressed, you can't tell everybody what are you doing and sometimes you'll think that your product is bullshit and you need to re-build everything or start new one. Don't do it.

If you're ready for this, and you have minimum one year to spent, welcome do lewd dev.

But. People who like your product are good motivation to keep working. They really motivates you to do what you do. Be grateful.

 

[yihman1]

I was looking at the games listed on F95ZONE and noticed the number of abandoned games...

1022 Abandoned games, a lot of them are from 2018-2019 release...


I was remembering how I got into adult visual novels:
I was in LoversLab forum looking for lewd mods for Skyrim and I noticed this other section called "Adult Gaming", went to check it out and there is that I saw those curious games.
I was like... ok, is a story that you read while looking at slides on the screen, a novel that relies on images to make it more interesting and entertaining... visual novels or VNs.

At that time I wasn't familiar with the fetishes portrayed in the VNs, I played games like "Man of the house", "The psychologist", and many more that had incest as the main kink.
In my experience, incest was something people refer to make up jokes or to look down on others.

But I was taken by those games, by the taboo, some of those games had features that you find in other kind of games, like navigation systems, inventories, combat systems, maps, and more.

So I thought:
How hard can this be? It looks so simple! Those are just images and some text! Is not like they're making a full 3D environment. I can do it myself!
Seems like that is a common reaction to lewd games...
Then I learned about what I needed to make the renders, the coding, and the writing... It wasn't that simple anymore.

Almost everyday I see someone new saying that he/she wants to make a lewd game.
A few of them actually start to make their own game, but they get frustrated after a few months.

I can understand the feeling, making decent looking renders takes time and skills. Sometimes I spend almost the whole day, and part of the night, making scenes and renders in Daz Studio.
Long hours that translates in a few renders, and then you have people telling you how much they suck... even if they don't.
People telling you the content is rushed.
People telling you there is no content, that they want to see more lewd stuff.
People complaining about the story, because if it's not "dark" then is not interesting... according to them.
People complaining about the kinks you're not including.
Oh, and then the writing... a big one for ESL people like myself.

Can be very frustrating; sometimes I'm very inspired and very happy with the resulting renders, with the story, with the progression, but is not good enough for some people only looking for a quick fap. They come up with any and all the problems they can to try to make you do the kind of game they want... in most cases they're not even supporters.

The point is that you're going to get frustrated, people is going to be mean like emo teenagers, and they're going to dismiss your hard-work like is nothing.
Expect negative reviews, negative comments, and discouraging replies. Expect a long period of high difficulty.
Sometimes other developers, and their team, will jump in your game's thread to make it look bad. There is a lot of negative comments and reviews made with alternate accounts.
Another thing is the fights you can get in if you join a development team, that is another nightmare by itself...

So if you're new to lewd games and you think is easy and simple to make your own game; think again, don't just jump into trying to make your own game.
Don't add up to the abandoned games list.

A long documentary could be made about abandoned adult games, but it will probably never be made, I may as well tell my story anyway. Here is my attempt to humanize it.

I have abandoned 1 game. My first game. Different people abandon games for different reasons, and there are 1022 stories behind the list you mention as to "Why is this game abandoned?" I may as well tell mine, and rebut what you say. I can't tell anyone elses stories. I'm sure there are 1021 others, and more to come.

At the time I made my first game I had no clue what I was doing but pushed forwards anyways. "Fake it til you make it.".

When I very first started my game: https://f95zone.to/threads/the-home-v0-9-yihman1.36164/

Version 0.1 (Which was actually version 1.0 not knowing how to change the version number yet)

I had like barely any content at all, nor did I plan anything. I was pretty much making shit up as I went along without a plan. I started releasing pretty quick updates all the way up to 0.9 adding a little more content with each release. Went back and rewrote things then went back and rewrote the rewrites.... About 2 months was put into this game in spite of it having been on the 9th update, so at the time I was probably the most rapid-fire at releases on f95. Even had my protagonist check the games thread for comments and reply to them in-game on one of the updates to interact more with people.

That's when I first got in trouble... Was with f95 staff. They were like. You are releasing too often don't do that!. We are going to stop putting you on latest updates for a couple of weeks because [insert reason here]... I let that get to me for a little while, said fuck it and took a week of working on it. Kinda pissed me off, and tripped up my rhythm for a minute.

I never got around to monetizing things, never bothered with a Patreon. Wasn't doing it for the bucks was doing it for fun and to learn skills. So I don't feel bad for abandoning a project I was not being paid to do and was just being shared for fun with others. There is a difference I think if a project has financial backers (especially many of them) and if it don't when it's abandoned. Like the difference between cheating on a girlfriend who lives in another house, and cheating on a wife that you have kids with and live together. Both are "wrong" but one is a more serious offense.

Anyways, I got to a place where I am good enough at coding, and good enough at writing a branching story now. I built up those skills in working on my first project. Problem is you need a 3rd thing to make a visual novel. That would be visual assets. I was using a source of visual assets nobody else I am aware of is using. Using second life. I only have a laptop, and I can't make daz renders, and in spite of me being pretty darn good at editing photos in GIMP I don't have creative drawing skills high enough to draw 2d characters of my own creation (at least not yet). Have been tinkering with that a bit, but I'm not pleased with my "Pixel art" girls.

So, in second life my whole game is setup on a sim where I had a silent partner taking care of the land for me, and this friend in second life that was paying our rent for the place where I was shooting all the shots for the game in... Turns out this friend is a heroine addict in real life and she told me as she quit second life and then our second life house went bye bye so they have more time to persue their passion of getting their drugs on...

Continuing on this project got to be a bit painful for me as there are some druggy related things in my game. Personally I stay away from drugs and have been clean 10+ years, don't even drink coffee. Have had 3 beers in the past 5 years. Two when my grandma died, and 1 when a friend came home from a tour of duty to welcome them back.

I have another friend in second life that knows a bit about my story, and they have some spare land, even offered me about 3 times as much land to use for free as I was originally using for my game to use for free as long as it would take me to finish the game. I got connections... I thought about it and put a house on the new land for about 1 day... but I didn't furnish the house... Just stood in the empty building looking around with my character, it was that same house that my friend I have known for a long time gave up on second life in to do their drugs. My passion to make that particular game was pretty much gone. The following morning I told the friend I don't need the land I'm just going to abandon the game.

Second Life isn't really designed to be an art source for a game, but it can function as that if you are good enough with it. I'd prefer to use an alternative method such as Daz (I'd need a renderer) or 2d art (I'd need someone can draw). in a team effort.

Working on a game alone can be a lonely thing. Sit there for hours and hours writing code, making pictures finding the right poses, rewriting, adding this or that changing this or that and so on. Not a lot of human interaction going on. I got a girlfriend, but she is dumb when it comes to creative things and has 0 skill in game development, and time making game means time away from GF. On the other hand she did enjoy my project, and I even offered to make her her own little game about her cat "Mittens" a little cyoa renpy game about a cat that will never see the internet haha... Nobody would play that shit on here lol.

So I still got enough free time to work on a game anyways I don't want to at least not right now work on that game I was working on and released so I told the staff to tag it off as abandoned. I may "un abandon" it one day, in which case my protagonist would once again view the internet in game and view f95 and see the game abandoned be all sad lol... but not doing that at the moment.

Been working on a few very different projects at the moment. Made some patches for other peoples games as a modder, and helped someone else hunting for bugs in their game. Have 2 likely candidates for people I may make a game with, but going to make sure they don't have anything else on the agenda before release anything new. The projects I been working on solo have been unrendered projects where I make a little dialogue and do a little code and make some menus and getting some practice in to build up my skills. I'm still building up my skills every day.

My first project probably should have never been released, but I did it anyway because of no guts no glory. Just to get a feeler get that out there, and experiment making mistakes and getting messy.

There are certain abandoned games that I love such as https://f95zone.to/threads/my-sweet-neighbors-v0-12-pandelo.3304/

that I am thankful that the creator put that effort in... in spite of not continuing the journey. It was still worth playing even though it got abandoned.

Feel free to make mistakes and get messy. If you don't try anything you will never do it. All projects have a chance of abandonment. It is not easy to make adult games, but that don't mean you can't do it. If I can do it you can do it. Remember what Edison said...

 

[polywog]

A long documentary could be made about abandoned adult games, but it will probably never be made, I may as well tell my story anyway. Here is my attempt to humanize it.

I have abandoned 1 game. My first game. Different people abandon games for different reasons, and there are 1022 stories behind the list you mention as to "Why is this game abandoned?" I may as well tell mine, and rebut what you say. I can't tell anyone elses stories. I'm sure there are 1021 others, and more to come.

At the time I made my first game I had no clue what I was doing but pushed forwards anyways. "Fake it til you make it.".

When I very first started my game: https://f95zone.to/threads/the-home-v0-9-yihman1.36164/

Version 0.1 (Which was actually version 1.0 not knowing how to change the version number yet)

I had like barely any content at all, nor did I plan anything. I was pretty much making shit up as I went along without a plan. I started releasing pretty quick updates all the way up to 0.9 adding a little more content with each release. Went back and rewrote things then went back and rewrote the rewrites.... About 2 months was put into this game in spite of it having been on the 9th update, so at the time I was probably the most rapid-fire at releases on f95. Even had my protagonist check the games thread for comments and reply to them in-game on one of the updates to interact more with people.

That's when I first got in trouble... Was with f95 staff. They were like. You are releasing too often don't do that!. We are going to stop putting you on latest updates for a couple of weeks because [insert reason here]... I let that get to me for a little while, said fuck it and took a week of working on it. Kinda pissed me off, and tripped up my rhythm for a minute.

I never got around to monetizing things, never bothered with a Patreon. Wasn't doing it for the bucks was doing it for fun and to learn skills. So I don't feel bad for abandoning a project I was not being paid to do and was just being shared for fun with others. There is a difference I think if a project has financial backers (especially many of them) and if it don't when it's abandoned. Like the difference between cheating on a girlfriend who lives in another house, and cheating on a wife that you have kids with and live together. Both are "wrong" but one is a more serious offense.

Anyways, I got to a place where I am good enough at coding, and good enough at writing a branching story now. I built up those skills in working on my first project. Problem is you need a 3rd thing to make a visual novel. That would be visual assets. I was using a source of visual assets nobody else I am aware of is using. Using second life. I only have a laptop, and I can't make daz renders, and in spite of me being pretty darn good at editing photos in GIMP I don't have creative drawing skills high enough to draw 2d characters of my own creation (at least not yet). Have been tinkering with that a bit, but I'm not pleased with my "Pixel art" girls.

So, in second life my whole game is setup on a sim where I had a silent partner taking care of the land for me, and this friend in second life that was paying our rent for the place where I was shooting all the shots for the game in... Turns out this friend is a heroine addict in real life and she told me as she quit second life and then our second life house went bye bye so they have more time to persue their passion of getting their drugs on...

Continuing on this project got to be a bit painful for me as there are some druggy related things in my game. Personally I stay away from drugs and have been clean 10+ years, don't even drink coffee. Have had 3 beers in the past 5 years. Two when my grandma died, and 1 when a friend came home from a tour of duty to welcome them back.

I have another friend in second life that knows a bit about my story, and they have some spare land, even offered me about 3 times as much land to use for free as I was originally using for my game to use for free as long as it would take me to finish the game. I got connections... I thought about it and put a house on the new land for about 1 day... but I didn't furnish the house... Just stood in the empty building looking around with my character, it was that same house that my friend I have known for a long time gave up on second life in to do their drugs. My passion to make that particular game was pretty much gone. The following morning I told the friend I don't need the land I'm just going to abandon the game.

Second Life isn't really designed to be an art source for a game, but it can function as that if you are good enough with it. I'd prefer to use an alternative method such as Daz (I'd need a renderer) or 2d art (I'd need someone can draw). in a team effort.

Working on a game alone can be a lonely thing. Sit there for hours and hours writing code, making pictures finding the right poses, rewriting, adding this or that changing this or that and so on. Not a lot of human interaction going on. I got a girlfriend, but she is dumb when it comes to creative things and has 0 skill in game development, and time making game means time away from GF. On the other hand she did enjoy my project, and I even offered to make her her own little game about her cat "Mittens" a little cyoa renpy game about a cat that will never see the internet haha... Nobody would play that shit on here lol.

So I still got enough free time to work on a game anyways I don't want to at least not right now work on that game I was working on and released so I told the staff to tag it off as abandoned. I may "un abandon" it one day, in which case my protagonist would once again view the internet in game and view f95 and see the game abandoned be all sad lol... but not doing that at the moment.

Been working on a few very different projects at the moment. Made some patches for other peoples games as a modder, and helped someone else hunting for bugs in their game. Have 2 likely candidates for people I may make a game with, but going to make sure they don't have anything else on the agenda before release anything new. The projects I been working on solo have been unrendered projects where I make a little dialogue and do a little code and make some menus and getting some practice in to build up my skills. I'm still building up my skills every day.

My first project probably should have never been released, but I did it anyway because of no guts no glory. Just to get a feeler get that out there, and experiment making mistakes and getting messy.

There are certain abandoned games that I love such as https://f95zone.to/threads/my-sweet-neighbors-v0-12-pandelo.3304/

that I am thankful that the creator put that effort in... in spite of not continuing the journey. It was still worth playing even though it got abandoned.

Feel free to make mistakes and get messy. If you don't try anything you will never do it. All projects have a chance of abandonment. It is not easy to make adult games, but that don't mean you can't do it. If I can do it you can do it. Remember what Edison said...

View attachment 542336

Some Americans still believe that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. He admitted that he had seen working light bulbs, and knew that they worked, he just didn't know how. He copied the idea from the original inventor, but he didn't know what materials had been used. He experimented trying different materials 200 times before he finally got lucky. He wasn't working from scratch, he had a plan to follow.

 

[yihman1]

I think a more algorithmic solution works better. Don't try to curate it. Have an algorithm that tracks all the stuff I'm liking and commenting on, etc. Cross reference that with what other people are liking and commenting on that has some overlap with mine. Then "suggest" content to me that matches what other people who are into the same stuff as I am seem to like. It doesn't have to even try to figure out WHY I like it.

I don't want a computer to tell me what it is I like, or to have the power to make such choices over me. That part of youtube is so annoying. With the way their strange and ever-changing algorythms works if you liked a cat video once 3 years ago you are still going to be getting recommendations to view cat videos today. Also I think you may not realize what you are in store for in such a case... I'm going to lob a big hypothetical at you here and explain it:

Suppose f95 puts an algorithm like you propose into the site. Now imagine you have a fetish. Suppose this fetish is "Pregnancy". You gosh jolly love to see those little sperm swimming to that egg of your favorite lady, not unlike little tadpoles on the way to their goal of forming a new life. Fair enough? And let's say that you also absolutely fucking HATE with a passion NTR... that shit gets you mad and makes you grumble... Oh, but guess what... it turns out that the NTR fans as a whole absolutely LOVE pregnancy just like you! Isn't that wonderful!? All those NTR people love your pregnancy fetish... but they like it for a different reason. They want that black bull to knock your wife up. So you start commenting on the NTR games that just started showing up in your feed... "NTR is fucking lame, I hate NTR" because they are in your feed after all, and you are showing that algorythm who is boss! oh the algorithm picks up that you commented on these threads and knows you love that pregnancy fetish too so it says "Give this user more NTR PREGNANCY! MORE NTR MORE NTR MORE NTR" so that's exactly what it does... bull after bull are coming to knock your very special lady up since you wanted the algorithm to give you pregnancy... Well it did....

Pick what content you like for yourself. You don't need a machine to do that for you.