- Jun 26, 2018
- 8,529
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If it weren't because the developer (Komisari) has a comment three posts above yours.
Possibly Lucy is among my favorite LIs (although it's difficult to choose just one)
- Thread starter 7767
- Start date
- Aug 1, 2020
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- 98
O
I don't know why ppl whine so much about how long it is taking, take as example any other game of this kind and you can see that the time-content ratio is the same or even better with HHG, and you get way better quality game.. Yeah sure, there aint no monthly game updates, but I rather get a big honking update that will give me hours and hours of gameplay than get one or two ingame girl events per month. Anybody that goes "iTs AbAndOnEd" or whatever hasn't even seen his twitter page, or the discord where he regularly posts info and screenshots of the game's progress.
Keep up dat fine work Komi!
Oh, here in Arg if you get paid in US dollars from outside the country (like patreon), the state takes literally more than half of those dollars and the rest that they give to you they transform them to argentinian pesos (which aren't worth a damn) through a series of bullshit laws and bureaucracy (you basically get between 30% and 40% of what you earned)... I've heard of a couple of workarounds but are hard as fuck and you still gotta pay fees along the way.
I don't know why ppl whine so much about how long it is taking, take as example any other game of this kind and you can see that the time-content ratio is the same or even better with HHG, and you get way better quality game.. Yeah sure, there aint no monthly game updates, but I rather get a big honking update that will give me hours and hours of gameplay than get one or two ingame girl events per month. Anybody that goes "iTs AbAndOnEd" or whatever hasn't even seen his twitter page, or the discord where he regularly posts info and screenshots of the game's progress.
Keep up dat fine work Komi!
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You are going to give the poor poster diabetes if you do that.
Better rig up some apple farming to make apple cider (vinegar) drinking to keep the sugar levels down.
Thank you so much.
And yeah, as he said. They take from you more than half and then change them automatically to pesos using the "OFFICIAL DOLAR" that every dollar is valuable in 100 pesos. But not exactly, because there's another dollar out there that is valuable the DOUBLE, so 1 dollar = 200 pesos. So, you're losing half, again. You end up with almost 25% of your earnings. 50% from taxes and every stupid bureaucracy shit and then half of that 50% is transformed to pesos to the official. Losing half its value.
25% of 8k.
You know, I don't mind waiting for this game. But I am curious if there's room to discuss the pros and cons of its release style, especially using this project as a sort of jump off point case study. Well, maybe there's some subconscious internal motivation here, hoping that if we discuss this reasonably instead of in a judging or begging manner, we can get more info or a quicker release or something. Anyways, I actually personally like getting a massive update after a long wait though, because from my perspective I agree that that's actually to my benefit. There's plenty of quick fix games on here that are always unsatisfying to spend time with, I don't need another. A longer update is definitely more satisfying in the end as a player. I do wonder how it affects development though.
Because despite me not caring too much, I downloaded the very first update, and having followed this game on and off for a long time, I think all told it's a little on the slow side. I don't think that's a fault of the dev trying to cheat money, or the dev's work habit though. I actually think its a natural result of it. Slower releases I tend to associate with devs that have mentalities like perfectionism, wanting to be judged off their best face, and maybe a touch of artistic arrogance and superiority.
The result tends to be a superior product, but also I think there's a degree of waste, slowness, and it can create a sort of conflict of interests and mindsets between the dev and the consumers. The problem of a perfectionist combined with an infinitely postpone-able deadline is a person can always find something to work on. Something to perfect, and finagle with. For this project, I can't say I remember too clearly, but I remember some of its early updates tended to frustrated me. Because they were focused more on adding or refining systems that are fine additions, but also I don't particularly care for, instead of storytelling or, to be crude, fapping. Like, the animated namecards, the little animations when you interact with navigation, all the resource management/more game-like systems. For devs, I think there's a mindset of, if i get these things right, here and now, I don't have to worry about it later, and can focus on content in the future, and these features help the game feel more complete, and stand out. But I don't think there is a get it right the first time. Systems always need constant refinement and a feedback loop. Games are always adding these things in, then it ends up being something that has to constantly be revisited. Made easier, less time consuming, less resource intensive, etc etc. But a consumer often doesn't notice these things, and just feels like the game is coming out too slow. Even as someone who does take note and appreciates, I also can't help but wonder, isn't this a large investment for a dev's time, doesn't this unnecessarily inflate the game's size and computer's resource consumption? For a large team, a company maybe, enough people are working that some time can be spent on these refinements, but for a small team or single dev, shouldn't there be more... focus? I think regular releases can help keep a dev more on track, and better able to keep in tune with consumer priorities (though some of that artistic arrogance comes into play here, who cares about consumer priorities right? An artist's real target audience is oneself, after all).
A project I see as similar would be Sylphine.
Another project I once saw as similar would be Offcuts, and I want to specifically bring this up because I think there's a lot of danger to this mindset, because I think it is vulnerable to abandonment. The longer a project stagnates, the more pressured a dev can feel for a more and more perfect release to justify the time spent. The ratio of badgers to supporters also becomes worse. Eventually, I imagine this can evolve into a fear of and a frustration with communication, and then with the project itself. I think a lot of devs on this site that have caught quite flak actually do come with good intents, and strong artistic desires that are badgered into non-existence by the people here. This dev has held up well (maybe because of the very stubbornness that pushes her/him to insist on finishing the update before release), and has enough supporters so I tend to not be concerned, but I think there's a recurring issue here, and I can't explain it terribly well, but one solution is again, some form of project management.
As a small aside, going back a bit, speaking of feedback looping, I think there's a point to be made for regular releases speeding a game's development time through beta testing. I can't help but wonder how much time a dev has to spend playtesting their own games bughunting. Just saying, there's a pool of interested players, some of whom are willing to pay extra to do some of your work for you.
So I just want to propose there is a balance to be struck here. Proper deadlining can actually be inducive to a project's health. People's motivations tend to be shiftable. A person's passion can be exhausted. A person's life situation is infinitely chaotic. Incentives and accountability are more consistent. I think in this case, a self set deadline, or a public list of project objectives/roadmap would be a fine answer.
I guess since this is an unnecessarily long essay (apologies),so the tldr is something like this. Some projects need deadlines to encourage a dev to work. Others however, need deadlines to encourage them to stop. To remind them when its time to take a break and get some midway outside insight.
Anyways this is the two cents of a non patron who hates everything discord, and is therefore the thoughts of an ill-informed proletariat, who doesn't know everything about the dev from a team perspective, or project management, or if this discussion has happened elsewhere, and hasn't developed a game herself, etc etc, so sorry if this was a waste/pointless, just musing.
Because despite me not caring too much, I downloaded the very first update, and having followed this game on and off for a long time, I think all told it's a little on the slow side. I don't think that's a fault of the dev trying to cheat money, or the dev's work habit though. I actually think its a natural result of it. Slower releases I tend to associate with devs that have mentalities like perfectionism, wanting to be judged off their best face, and maybe a touch of artistic arrogance and superiority.
The result tends to be a superior product, but also I think there's a degree of waste, slowness, and it can create a sort of conflict of interests and mindsets between the dev and the consumers. The problem of a perfectionist combined with an infinitely postpone-able deadline is a person can always find something to work on. Something to perfect, and finagle with. For this project, I can't say I remember too clearly, but I remember some of its early updates tended to frustrated me. Because they were focused more on adding or refining systems that are fine additions, but also I don't particularly care for, instead of storytelling or, to be crude, fapping. Like, the animated namecards, the little animations when you interact with navigation, all the resource management/more game-like systems. For devs, I think there's a mindset of, if i get these things right, here and now, I don't have to worry about it later, and can focus on content in the future, and these features help the game feel more complete, and stand out. But I don't think there is a get it right the first time. Systems always need constant refinement and a feedback loop. Games are always adding these things in, then it ends up being something that has to constantly be revisited. Made easier, less time consuming, less resource intensive, etc etc. But a consumer often doesn't notice these things, and just feels like the game is coming out too slow. Even as someone who does take note and appreciates, I also can't help but wonder, isn't this a large investment for a dev's time, doesn't this unnecessarily inflate the game's size and computer's resource consumption? For a large team, a company maybe, enough people are working that some time can be spent on these refinements, but for a small team or single dev, shouldn't there be more... focus? I think regular releases can help keep a dev more on track, and better able to keep in tune with consumer priorities (though some of that artistic arrogance comes into play here, who cares about consumer priorities right? An artist's real target audience is oneself, after all).
A project I see as similar would be Sylphine.
Another project I once saw as similar would be Offcuts, and I want to specifically bring this up because I think there's a lot of danger to this mindset, because I think it is vulnerable to abandonment. The longer a project stagnates, the more pressured a dev can feel for a more and more perfect release to justify the time spent. The ratio of badgers to supporters also becomes worse. Eventually, I imagine this can evolve into a fear of and a frustration with communication, and then with the project itself. I think a lot of devs on this site that have caught quite flak actually do come with good intents, and strong artistic desires that are badgered into non-existence by the people here. This dev has held up well (maybe because of the very stubbornness that pushes her/him to insist on finishing the update before release), and has enough supporters so I tend to not be concerned, but I think there's a recurring issue here, and I can't explain it terribly well, but one solution is again, some form of project management.
As a small aside, going back a bit, speaking of feedback looping, I think there's a point to be made for regular releases speeding a game's development time through beta testing. I can't help but wonder how much time a dev has to spend playtesting their own games bughunting. Just saying, there's a pool of interested players, some of whom are willing to pay extra to do some of your work for you.
So I just want to propose there is a balance to be struck here. Proper deadlining can actually be inducive to a project's health. People's motivations tend to be shiftable. A person's passion can be exhausted. A person's life situation is infinitely chaotic. Incentives and accountability are more consistent. I think in this case, a self set deadline, or a public list of project objectives/roadmap would be a fine answer.
I guess since this is an unnecessarily long essay (apologies),so the tldr is something like this. Some projects need deadlines to encourage a dev to work. Others however, need deadlines to encourage them to stop. To remind them when its time to take a break and get some midway outside insight.
Anyways this is the two cents of a non patron who hates everything discord, and is therefore the thoughts of an ill-informed proletariat, who doesn't know everything about the dev from a team perspective, or project management, or if this discussion has happened elsewhere, and hasn't developed a game herself, etc etc, so sorry if this was a waste/pointless, just musing.
Half a million dollars is a reasonable budget for a game with a whole ass team working on it. Not for an indie game using public free tech to build on (renpy and KK). Come on. Be real here. That amount of money for this kind of game is nonsense.
I love discussing this and giving my point of view. People believe I don't have a deadline so I just make and make and make stuff infinitely, entering a weird loop with perfectionism and no deadline.
I don't know if I can consider myself a perfectionist, but I want this update to have extremely high quality, or at least, as much as possible, not ONLY to meet people's expectations but for the good sake of the game too. Making this as much quality as possible will help the game a lot in the future. Creating the complex systems right now and implementing them as soon as possible will help the game a lot in the future. As you said, I have to create the base to properly FILL this game with content later.
Everyone forgets that Hero's Harem Guild started with me having 0 experience in programming, renpy, and Koikatsu. 0, nothing.
And I like to learn, a lot. I like and admire games that you can feel the devs put a lot of heart into it. I want to do the same.
If I would have stuck with the gameplay elements of the first version of Hero's Harem Guild (v0.0.1) or with my experience back then, the game would look like this;
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After showing that, I'm sorry, but I don't want and I won't stop reworking, re-making, removing or creating all the necesarily system for the gameplay elements of Hero's Harem Guild. The gameplay is a BIG part of HHG. So I'll take my time doing this.
I could easily create Koikatsu events one behind another all day every day if you wanna have 5000000 hours of content. But that's NOT WHAT I HAVE PLANNED. Long is not a direct synonym of quality.
Hero's Harem Guild is meant to be a game with roughly 50/60 hours of STORY content (And I believe that's too freaking much and I will try to lower it down), divided into 4 or 5 chapters of 8/10 hours each, counting the prologue. So, this requires a lot of advance planning to meet the desired hours and show to the players the story I want to tell in that "deadline" of hours.
I belive that most players gets tired of clicking during 50/60 hours and seeing only dialogues and images, that's why the gameplay and free or sandbox elements have a big role BETWEEN the story events. It makes the player do different stuff during the game, and not getting burned by millions of images and dialogues every time.
In short, both the GAMEPLAY and the STORY/EVENTS requires a lot of anticipation and they need A LOT OF WORK to have the best possible quality in the 50/60 hrs of game.
I won't be able to get this the first time, as you said, this requires a lot of feedback and improvement to reach the final and polished version of the system/game.
My deadline right now is FINISHING CHAPTER 1. I have a deadline for this update, and the update will go live only and only whenever I finish it and some alpha testing with users before it goes live for the 20$ tier. And I already have an ETA for myself, but I don't want to say it to not promise stuff that I won't be able to reach. (Or cutting content to meet the deadlines)
I like the deadlines without time, but objectives. This is not a group of developers who every dev has something specific to do and ALREADY KNOWS how to do it. This is just me, and I not only have to DO THE STUFF, but also take my time TO LEARN AND TRY new stuff because of the inexperience. Also, in a group of developers having 1 developer having some busy days or problems irl won't change the content created THAT MUCH, but here, if I have busy days or problems everything gets freezed. Completely everything. These last week I was full of stuff to do IRL, and "losing" almost 3/4 hours of development time every day. I can't have a deadline based on time because of how """chaotic""" the life can be. And I don't see this as a problem, it's completely normal to have problems or busy days IRL, everyone has those.
"Then, Komi, with the millions of dollars you get from Patreon why don't you hire an entire team?"
Would you do it? I mean, really, someone here WITHOUT EXPERIENCE hiring people, managing a team, and having a game like this volatile (Because let's be real, HHG is still a concept game, it's not its final design, at least in terms of gameplay)?
Imagine from one day to another to stop working on the game YOU LOVE TO WORK to focus on managing a complete team of devs, asking them to meet specific deadlines, hiring the correct people and etc.
It is... scary... at least for me. I love HHG and I don't want to make a really radical and extreme change like hiring a lot of people for this. (Not counting HHG is made with Koikatsu and Renpy. They have not precisely too many expert devs from this, who do I have to hire? The devs of Doki Doki Literature Club?)
If I start a project with a team it will be in a completely different engine, with completely original assets and not using Koikatsu. Probably for the 2nd part of HHG or maybe another game, who knows?
I'm confident to risk money or time trying to manage an entire team from 0 in a new game, yes, it can go wrong and I think that's part of the risk and getting experience. But with HHG... it terrifies me. People already know this game, I prefer to be slow but secure than fast and risky. I don't want to mess it up with this game, my game. So please, people, be patient.
About the project being vulnerable to abandonment; I think what you said is 100% true, but in this case, I really believe it won't happen. It will maybe sound bad, but I care little to nothing about people judging if the update's content is justified (I mean, I of course believe it will be justified, but I'm not terrified by those who will say it isn't.). And also, as I think people already see it, I don't get threatened, sad, or angry about people judging the development time, content or even the game.
In these types of comments, I always answer with respect and try to make the user explain the situation from my point of view. Then, they are free to believe me or not.
I maybe didn't write that much about devs in general, but I decided to give my point of view based on your text! (That I almost totally agree)
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I agree that $500k for a game like this is too much. But your maths is way off, too. For $500k you don't get a "whole ass team" (the assumption was a 5 years time span). You will not even be able to afford two fully paid team members. Of course this will depend a bit on where you live. But average game programmers salary is 65k. Here we will have to pay for equipment ourselves, and while you'll probably not really calculate stuff like workplace and furniture because as a private person you have that to a degree, but technically you need to account for them because you're not using them for yourself. Hardware is an issue and will cost more money than just your PC at home, software will cost, even though RenPy is free, even electricity will go up noticeably. Add to that that, as we now know, the "$500k budget" translates to $25k a year salary thanks to the 75% tax-and-exchange-fun in Argentina - that is not a lot of money to earn.
- Nov 24, 2019
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Don't forget the cost of the pre-fab (KK packs, GUI assets, and other QoL stuff that the dev actually do commission someone else to do, albeit indirectly), the costs of marketing, including fair remuneration to spend time coming here and replying to trolls (time is money, after all...), and to make wallpapers and other non-critical stuff to keep patrons happy. As I said, for a 50/60h game, that is a... reasonable budget. You can't know what is "reasonable" or "unreasonable" if you don't try to make something this size. Besides, using free tech (e.g. Ren'Py) doesn't mean less costs, it actually means not having to reinvent the wheel, and therefore, better application of said costs and time. (For example, imagine the wait if Komi also had to write the engine, test it on every user system out there, and... oh the pain...)
I can assure you, managing a team of people... is a full time job.
Nah, for you, it is easier to hire someone to cover the non-critical parts (e.g. promotion, dev logs, moderation, erm, Real Life...) or to handle specific and tedious tasks (like filling huge arrays with repeated data, write the hints, etc.). In general, when hiring people, unless you want to go full manager, you should aim at minimizing the time you spend doing "boring" stuff and maximize your own time doing creative, "fun" work.
Wait, I was supposed to spend 8/10 hours on the prologue?
According to
renpy.get_game_runtime(), I'm pretty sure I already spent ... 13 hours (48081 seconds). And according to the quest log... I am supposed to reach max level with all the girls and meet Delilah in the market, so I definitely did not complete the prologue yet...You can keep your pace, I definitely can keep up with it
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Holy fuck... I mean I knew the return rates would probably bite you in the ass, but they didn't even leave you an ass left.
It's like they went "Emm... you have a tastey ass... let me have a nibble," then proceeded to bite off your ass but decided to leave you your pants in tact so you could fake still having an ass.
I think any more should any poster here complain about this OP having such patreon values, that the rest of the community correct them. "After Patreon cuts, government taxes, and conversion rates, this OP gets maybe 25% of what is shown. And that doesn't even go into the costs of development yet."
Hey man, this is simply out of curiosity, but is everything okay? It's been... a year? Since the last update, and I'm a bit worried about the progression of the game. I understand if you want to make it properly, but may I ask how's the developing going?
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If you'll read posts from the Dev over the last few pages, you'll get a full picture
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I may or may not have saved that for further use.
I may or may not have renamed the file though. "Timmy"? You don't know your own people?Tsk.
I don't know why, but I have this folder like this, I made the worst terrible mistake, I deserve punish
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*jimmyXtremeFriendshipWhip*
suddenly Jimmy headpats don't seem so appealing anymore