But then again, people have been doing that since the 80's. Just to put things in a bit of perspective, Monkey Island came out in 1990 and had a total budget of $200,000. In today's value that's just shy of $400,000. Assuming ICstor makes around $20,000 a month and has been working on this game for more than two years, the total income is in the same ball park.
Personally, I'm mainly curious about if it was luck or skill that put him in the position he is now. He produced high quality renders when the competition was minimal and has kept the patreons despite others surpassing him in quality. Did he see a market opportunity where he was early, or was it just luck that people wanted to pay big money for the things he was doing?
That's an interesting question! I would argue the reason for his success is a good combination of circumstances such as luck, timing, precedents, contents and specialties.
The timing was perhaps one of the main reason. When Milfy City came out, it was by a fair margin one of the better looking DAZ based games, with very well worked good looking characters and high quality renders. Also, smooth animations which at the time was big novelty.
Precedents. ICSTOR made a handful of lewd games in the past, which mean he has a record and people "know" him. Most would assume that he has more experience and skills that a recent newbie.
Contents. When the game came out, even the 0.1 - 0.2 versions of the game had much more content and scenes than most. So that mean people actually try the game instead of waiting a few weeks/months before playing it. Which is why most launches for lewd games in early access are slow.
Also, he changed the usual RPGM he was using to the more common Renpy. RPGM is often frowned upon by a sizable portion of players (including me).
Finally, specialties. ICSTOR make incest focused content, with a focus on a variety of scenes and some sprinkled pregnancy content. Quite vanilla, but it work and high quality family based stories are actually rare.
