I mentioned it a little in the Patreon post...
You also mentioned it on your SubscribeStar post, which I assume is identical to your Patreon post. At least, as someone who supports you on SubscribeStar, I hope that the posts we get there are identical to the Patreon posts.
Eventually Patreon is going to come for your game, and you're going to have to do one of three things:
- You're going to have to move everything over to SubscribeStar and hope that your patrons on Patreon follow you over to the new platform. I think most of them would follow you, but probably not all of them.
- You're going to cave in to Patreon, and censor yourself into oblivion, which will be the end of my interest in the game and in you as a developer of any future games.
- You're going to have a Patreon version of the game and a SubscribeStar version of the game. The positive side of this is that, at least it isn't option 2. The negative side is that, since you have more supporters on Patreon than on SubscribeStar, the censored version of the game would probably drive development more than the uncensored version would.
... and I'm gonna expand on it in the next too but Paul's storyline is the one arc of the game I really dislike. I find it hard to reason with Paul in any way which makes it difficult to write and hard to engage myself in.
I've decided to take it in another direction - the planned scenes throughout the Paul arc remain the same or similar but the way in which they're achieved is wholly different. The problem lies in the scenes to date so depending on the reception of the upcoming Paul content it's likely I'll have to scrap a lot of his early content and re-do it. (If I do remake the older scenes I will leave the current content in the recollection room)
When I first read the post on SubscribeStar, I got the impression that your dissatisfaction was with Paul's motivation for blackmailing Lisa. I confess that I find it hard to sympathize with that perspective, because, to me, a reasonable motivation for Paul to blackmail Lisa has always been crystal clear. But, since you're the writer, I can see why you would want to have something which makes sense to you.
But a couple of the phrases above have me scratching my head. When you say that you "find it hard to reason with Paul" and that "it makes it difficult to write and hard to engage", and then you say that "the planned scenes throughout the Paul arc remain the same or similar, but the way in which they're achieved is wholly different", it makes me wonder if what you dislike isn't Paul's character or Paul's motivation, but rather blackmail as a mechanism. In particular, the statement "the way in which they're achieved is wholly different" makes me wonder if you're planning to back off of the blackmail plot device and use something else instead.
Hopefully, I'm completely misreading what you're saying. That wouldn't be too difficult, because your language has been pretty vague, so far.
I know this will potentially irk some of you guys but I gotta love what I'm doing. I need to be in love with it which I'm not at the moment and I'm pretty sure it shows in the quality of the content.
I'm a strong proponent of artists following their creative vision. And I do think that, on the whole, it's a good thing for an artist to love the art they create, since that serves to motivate them to create more. On the other hand, I think it's foolish nonsense to suggest that an artist needs to love what they're doing all of the time. Sometimes the artistic process is painful, arduous, tedious, or even tortured, and some of the best art in history has resulted from the less pleasant aspects of that process.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not arguing for you to slavishly plod along in something which you aren't enjoying. I'm just saying that no artist loves their art all of the time, with the possible exception of the late Bob Ross, and I think it's a bad development that this has become such a widespread assumption among artists today.
As for some of us being irked, I can only speak for myself. If you need to make some alternations to Paul's motivations in order for you to find it believable, so be it. That alone wouldn't irk me, although I'm not going to assume that his new motivations will necessarily be better than they were before. As I said, in my mind, there has always been a crystal clear and highly believable reason for Paul to blackmail Lisa. Feel free to hit me up and talk about it, if you're so inclined. On the other hand, if you're planning to abandon blackmail for Paul's arc and go some other route, then that will most certainly irk me.
Also, I want to go on record as not having seen any decrease in the quality of your work. So that hasn't been as clear to at least some of us as it seems to be to you.
Just know that I'm not doing it to upset or annoy anyone, the very idea that this might happen is wracking my nerves already because of how popular Paul's content seems to be. I am so grateful to everyone who plays the game, everyone who sends me wonderful messages or drops a comment in the thread.
I am confident that this new concept is a better storyline with a much more believable premise for the little rat
See now, the fact that your nerves are wracked by the changes which you're planning, and that this is in view of how popular Paul's content has been... I'm really getting the feeling here that you want to "abort mission" on the blackmail theme. I really hope that I'm completely misreading you, which is certainly possible.
