Ren'Py Life as an Innocent Waitress [v0.1.0] [Frisson Studios]

[theraphosa]

I do agree with you, there are a lot of games out there that get a ton of donations from people right after their first release.

If a first release is good, I'll write about it in the thread. If it really impresses me, I'll even write a 5-star review, which is actually wrong.
A while ago, I jumped over to Patreon right after an impressive first release and supported the developer (whenever I had a spot available).
There was once a game here (I forget the title) from two developers who named themselves after my two favorite types of pasta (I forget the exact name).
This first release was incredible; it took me over three hours to complete and I thoroughly enjoyed every single minute.
For me, that was clearly an instant top-level support. Then three months - nothing, so I reduced my support to medium. After another three months, the first update came. And the game was completely destroyed. Suddenly there was an MMC (which had never been mentioned before) and that was it: no new content for the actual game as it was before.
After that, I ended support, and my husband and I introduced rules for the future.
That was also the last update for the game, by the way. After another six months, they started babbling about the Unreal Engine(?), and that was it.

Its honestly the problem with this kind of system. I used to support some games because I really liked them, I might as well have thrown my money in the garbage for all the good it did.

I support three artists simultaneously with a total budget of 150 bucks, and my husband does the same.
With the rules we impose on ourselves we only support new games after six months and at least two (reasonable) updates. Until the game described above, we had a waiting list; nowadays, we rarely fill all six spots.
Either we were simply luckier with our project selection in the past or the "market" has changed dramatically (for the worse) in recent years.

 

[w123t4]

So how is the progress now? Since frisson studio you said you hope there will be having a new update within this month and the last post on patreon was half month ago.

 

[johnyakuza1]

So how is the progress now? Since frisson studio you said you hope there will be having a new update within this month and the last post on patreon was half month ago.

No update this month, but the end of May or early June is most likely.

I'm more concerned about the dev wanting to take yet another vacation after 0.1.1, or whatever this new version will be called. Two weeks is a lot of development time wasted, especially when the game has just released its very first version, and it's not a good look when the dev starts planning to take off literally at the beginning of this game's development.

Those are two weeks wasted, and another two or three months after that for the actual development time, unless they are willing to compromise with less content, which would be a shame... or they can crunch, which I don't think adult game devs are ever known to do.

When so many people are watching how this game will progress, it seems like the dev wants to shoot himself in the foot. I wonder how many such “vacations” there will be in the future. I'm not averse to taking time off, for all I know, they deserve it, but at 0.1?

 

[Frisson_Studios]

So how is the progress now? Since frisson studio you said you hope there will be having a new update within this month and the last post on patreon was half month ago.

 

[Frisson_Studios]

No update this month, but the end of May or early June is most likely.

I'm more concerned about the dev wanting to take yet another vacation after 0.1.1, or whatever this new version will be called. Two weeks is a lot of development time wasted, especially when the game has just released its very first version, and it's not a good look when the dev starts planning to take off literally at the beginning of this game's development.

Those are two weeks wasted, and another two or three months after that for the actual development time, unless they are willing to compromise with less content, which would be a shame... or they can crunch, which I don't think adult game devs are ever known to do.

When so many people are watching how this game will progress, it seems like the dev wants to shoot himself in the foot. I wonder how many such “vacations” there will be in the future. I'm not averse to taking time off, for all I know, they deserve it, but at 0.1?

We want to be straight with you—no lies, no silly excuses.


As we’ve mentioned before, we are two developers (both with real-life jobs and families, one of us with kids and everything that comes with it). We worked really hard on the first release for a few of months, and after that, we scheduled vacations. However, after seeing the incredible reception and support, we decided to skip those two weeks and keep working as much as we could, instead of actually resting (2 weeks of full deving).

After the next update, probably 0.2.0, we will take two weeks of vacation (as we have to continue working our regular jobs) and step away from the project for that time. Once we return, we will resume work and, yes, we will do our best to give you all that was given to us. We want to create a great game for everyone to enjoy. We won’t abandon this project. If for any reason something unexpected happens, you have my word that we will at least finish and close the game properly.

The game started as a small project, and it can be completed relatively soon. However, we want it to last and grow. If possible, we want it to be a game that can offer 20+ hours of play for those interested in a slower-paced corruption route. We also aim to introduce a lot of tags, with the more controversial ones being optional, like a potential NTR scenario or less vanilla kinks.

This is what I can tell you. Of course, we’re new here, and we understand no one has a reason to trust us yet. We’re not asking for blind trust—just to be judged by our actions, not just our words or the work of other developers.

It might be a bit of a self-shoot in the foot, but we’d rather say, 'We’re taking 2 weeks off, feel free to stop supporting us during this time,' than make excuses like, 'These two weeks were slow, we barely made any progress,' or 'My daughter was sick and I couldn’t work,' or any other lie. The sad part is, something like this might eventually happen, but unless real issues arise, we will keep working. (If my daughter is sick, sure, I might lose a few hours, but that’s no reason to actually delay anything...)

Thanks again for the tremendous support and encouragement. We really hope that the next update, and all future updates, will meet your expectations.

 

[amgwtfover]

There is a huge, and I mean a HUGE difference between
1. Posting upfront that this is your Saturday passion project after work, and you are going on a booked holiday later this year
and
2. Dragging development on, pretty much with silence, giving an April release date and then saying "Excuse 1, Excuse 2, Excuse 3, so no update this month" and continuing to do this.

3 is what alot of the leech/patreon devs do and it understandably makes any similiar behaviour trigger alerts for people.

You are not doing 3, you are being upfront and honest. That makes all the difference in choosing to support you.

 

[johnyakuza1]

We want to be straight with you—no lies, no silly excuses.


As we’ve mentioned before, we are two developers (both with real-life jobs and families, one of us with kids and everything that comes with it). We worked really hard on the first release for a few of months, and after that, we scheduled vacations. However, after seeing the incredible reception and support, we decided to skip those two weeks and keep working as much as we could, instead of actually resting (2 weeks of full deving).

After the next update, probably 0.2.0, we will take two weeks of vacation (as we have to continue working our regular jobs) and step away from the project for that time. Once we return, we will resume work and, yes, we will do our best to give you all that was given to us. We want to create a great game for everyone to enjoy. We won’t abandon this project. If for any reason something unexpected happens, you have my word that we will at least finish and close the game properly.

The game started as a small project, and it can be completed relatively soon. However, we want it to last and grow. If possible, we want it to be a game that can offer 20+ hours of play for those interested in a slower-paced corruption route. We also aim to introduce a lot of tags, with the more controversial ones being optional, like a potential NTR scenario or less vanilla kinks.

This is what I can tell you. Of course, we’re new here, and we understand no one has a reason to trust us yet. We’re not asking for blind trust—just to be judged by our actions, not just our words or the work of other developers.

It might be a bit of a self-shoot in the foot, but we’d rather say, 'We’re taking 2 weeks off, feel free to stop supporting us during this time,' than make excuses like, 'These two weeks were slow, we barely made any progress,' or 'My daughter was sick and I couldn’t work,' or any other lie. The sad part is, something like this might eventually happen, but unless real issues arise, we will keep working. (If my daughter is sick, sure, I might lose a few hours, but that’s no reason to actually delay anything...)

Thanks again for the tremendous support and encouragement. We really hope that the next update, and all future updates, will meet your expectations.

That's quite reassuring that you're open and not obfuscating details or information or making up silly excuses (trust me, everyone sees through them, but we choose to ignore them and always give the benefit of the doubt.)

Not a direct comparison, but another example of this happening was with Valheim. The dev released an amazing initial release on Steam; it was bug-free, the Steam concurrent player count was off the charts, and the game was blowing up in the mainstream media... and guess where the dev was? He straight up went away on a 3-4-month-long vacation!

He didn't strike the iron while it was still hot, and even though he likely made millions and would never have to work again, Valheim never really reached its peak popularity ever again. It's not a dead game by any means, but it's certainly facing an inevitable decline.

Guess where the game blew up, and the dev provided the next ‘content’ update? It's literally a case study.

 

[Konquest2]

People are really impatient. I suppose because the game is high quality so early in its development. The people want more.

The game is designed as a slow burn.
As such, I expect updates to also be that.
Honestly, it only seems to be up from here.

Good work to the couple of you.

 

[James8585]

People are really impatient. I suppose because the game is high quality so early in its development. The people want more.

The game is designed as a slow burn.
As such, I expect updates to also be that.
Honestly, it only seems to be up from here.

Good work to the couple of you.

The game isn't designed as a slow burn. I honestly don't know where you've come up with that? It's corruption based. The gamer can string it out on resisting the corruption. Pointlessly. Because most would like to see more porn given that choice. Any game can descend into the depths of hell for years if it chooses, brothels, gloryholes, bdsm clubs, or it can wrap up that story much quicker, escaping the innovation. Who knows how it turns out. Nobody wants to hear excuses., they expect delivery when it is promised. If it's regular, and it keeps adding something playable, it gains numbers.

 

[_DarkDesires_]

The game started as a small project, and it can be completed relatively soon. However, we want it to last and grow. If possible, we want it to be a game that can offer 20+ hours of play for those interested in a slower-paced corruption route. We also aim to introduce a lot of tags, with the more controversial ones being optional, like a potential NTR scenario or less vanilla kinks.

That'd be nice, I think everyone wants to see more expanded non-vanilla content; "brothels, gloryholes & bdsm clubs" as the comment above put so succinctly - especially the bdsm clubs


However I do seriously wonder if devs wouldn't be much better served with a 'release-based' model, instead of the current monthly subscription model. If people only paid for delivered goods, I gather there'd be way less pressure - which would reduce the unnecessary strain for devs, especially on new projects.

This thread is a good example; it went pretty fast from "awesome game that delivered more content in 1st release than anyone in a long time" to various speculation about how the development will continue, including the obligatory "might be milkers/scammers/abandoned". Not exactly the best use for a dev's time & energy, and I fully understand how people with less personal boundaries & stress tolerance can get overwhelmed by the negative aspects and not able to continue w their project

 

[Sireas]

Hi, I've played current version and it looks great. Animations in particular are high quality. I very much agree with approach of corruption game where you are forced by the world, have to try your best to make ends meet and you can actually try to remain pure, but will be broken anyway. There are very few games like that - most give you too much money or ignore statuses of character, feeling like you are doing whatever you like, and not being corrupted.
There are two more points I wanted to make about corruption games, which appeared in other ones and I see potential for this one to not follow their path.
1. Don't focus too much on non-basic mechacics. It's frustrating when you have to grind base minigame while content is added elsewhere. I feel like you want to add college - fine, but not entire city. I guess that good workaround is using current locations to add content you want. You want shop for clothes - add it to college or online shopping. You wants dance club - pub has grown, etc.
2. Corruption is non-linear. People are more curious about next update when they wait for MC's first sex than for her first public bukkake with 12 men. There are games which try to postpone first of those - people are annoyed by the lack od content. Adding it though causes to lose its corruption element and is boring - I hardly see emotional impact for slut character to be pushing outside of comfort zone by gangbang.
Solution to this is adding side storyline which isn't moving forward, but is frequently remainded of, about something that is absolute tabboo for our character, and delivering it with last updates of the game. For example - protagonist can encounter soldier-killer of her mother in the pub and she would never have sex with him. So even when she casually sucks dicks on train - doing anything with this guy is beyond her. Other example, established in lore, would be female to female sex is illegal and immoral, because of how few women survived war. It would be significant emotional impact on her if she would break that social tabboo.
The other option of solving this issue is keeping the game short.
Also, (my own preferences so not an advice) - make some kinks optional please, with some selection in the menu. I am pretty vanilla guy and some of the stuff is revolting for me, making some games non-playable.