I thought I was being so clever when I started. Didn’t realize this style of game was dime-a-dozen.
Originally I was looking at real-porn games and then I was inspired by Press-Switch’s repurposing of sprites from other visual novels. In both cases, I realized my story would end up being really limited by the photos/CGs available, so I explored the possibilities of image editing. Wasn’t really satisfactory.
I started toying with the idea of using Illusion’s character-makers to do my own sprites/CGs back with PPD, but it didn’t really seem like it would work until I got to SBPR. That still determined the setting of the game, but at least the girls weren’t weirdly-proportioned and I could have male characters, too.
Models could be ported and updated to HS, so once that came out, I moved in order to have access to better tools, and…well, here we are.
That might be the case, but Usagi had REAL and serious health problems in the past and they impact to this day. Interns actually started out as a thing to keep his mind from dwelling too much on his health. He was quite open about it elsewhere. Anybody who was in that post exchange knows why updates come in the intervalls they do. And what is more important, Usagi keeps to the pace, unlike some devs here, who will use any excuse to string out the development.
I wasn't aware of this dev's health issues. And yeah, lots of devs love to milk it for every drop. That's why I stay skeptical, though....of any game, for that matter. It just isn't easy to trust, these days.
I tend not to want to give out too many details, lest people I know in IRL figure out who I am (and it's happened before). Friends and family wouldn't react too well to the kind of content I make.
Like 99% of creators, I fight with major depression, though I’ve got a pretty good handle on it these days. Major health concerns started a few years ago as one hell of a fluke (I’m in good shape, decent diet and regular exercise…). A week in a CCU and a couple surgeries ate up a good chunk of my life savings, but things are fairly manageable these days.
Patreon has been a huge help, as it about covers my yearly medical expenses.
At some point, I’m planning on updating the “about” info on my blog—and I’ve got a few drafts already in progress—so that there’s a clear disclaimer for those who want to support me. (I think the current Patreon intro advises people: “Don’t”
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General idea is this: I liked a lot of the HTML and RAGS games I played on TFGS and had a ton of ideas of things I thought might be neat to see in a game. I started Interns as an experiment to see how many of those ideas I might be able to pull off.
It was really just a project to satisfy my own curiosity, but I ended up sharing it and people liked it enough to want me to continue. And, truthfully, without the support I’ve gotten form it, I probably would have abandoned the project for something more manageable by now.
I do work a full-time job, and Interns is a project I work at on those nights and weekends where I still have enough energy and drive to do so. And I tend to suck at a lot of the aspects of it (writing functional code, or not completely-embarrassing smut scenes).
So, if people want to support me knowing all that, I appreciate it. If they don’t, that’s cool too. There are lots of people out there making their own games, and a lot of them have way more skill and talent.
I would like to try moving to part-time status with game-making, and I’m still working on my plans for how to get there. (Too scary to abandon the financial security of the day job just yet.) I’d like to offer some additional rewards to backers, but need to do so in a way that won’t detract from actually making content. So far, I’ve been thinking along the lines higher-res images and maybe snippets of unrelated stories (I’m always fleshing out ideas for new concepts). And maybe if a concept seems to catch on with people, I can do a secondary, faster-to-produce project.
Patreon seems to develop into the direction of a poison over time, I decided against donating some projects when only patreon is available, most projects I donated to were on Kickstarter, where donators are better protected against scammers. You can still come onto a milker there, but the tolerance for them is much lower on Kickstarter.
Oh, I've seen plenty of creators pull down six-figures on Kickstarter and then disappear from the platform, only to start new projects elsewhere. But it is good for creators who have solid plan for a complete project that they can do start-to-finish on a proposed budget.
As far as Patreon itself being icky... Sadly, the Internet is really winner-takes-all when it comes to things like Google, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, etc. One company gets on top and ends up owning 95% of the market.
So, creators are mostly stuck with Patreon these days, as the alternatives tend get shut down by big tech.
I set up a SubscribeStar account for the people who don’t want to use Patreon, but my supporters there are in single digits, so it’s not terribly popular. I have to admit, I really like most everything about the Patreon platform itself (much easier to update and see what’s going on with backers). SubscribeStar works, and all, but it could use a lot of improvement.
I’m very concerned about Patreon's desire to have editorial control of everything their users make anywhere on the Internet, though. Aside from a temporary suspension for “implied nudity,” they haven’t come down on me yet, but it does feel like a Sword of Damocles hanging over my head.
