Ren'Py Completed Milfy City [v1.0e] [ICSTOR]

3.80 star(s) 445 Votes
Discussion Reviews (445)
QnotU

QnotU

Member
Dec 4, 2019
112
287
MrNewVegas2281 said:
Obviously I can't speak for every complaint levied at him, but I would say the largest criticism is how he's effectively abandoned the project for years at this point. I can only find two instances that he ever gave any notices. The first is this post several months before 0.6 on his own site from 2019 [
You must be registered to see the links
]. I do believe this was shared on Patreon as well so that seems reasonable. The second, an admin on his Discord communicating an indefinite break that lasted about a year [
You must be registered to see the links
]. A post that never made it onto Patreon as far as I can tell, the only site that is guaranteed that 100% of his patrons have access to in order to receive an update that substantial.

Just looking at the update posts on his own Patreon paints a clear picture. After the X-Mas episode in Dec 2018, progress all but halted, with two entire updates in the timeframe of 2019 till now.

View attachment 2832342

Two updates in the span of about four and a half years as of now. Makes this statement from the archived link quite funny in retrospective,

"It’s now been more than FOUR full years that I’ve been developing adult games without taking a vacation."
Click to expand...
He defintely is no where on the level of a Dr.PinkCake in terms of communication. His communication got worse and worse as time went on until he just didnt reply.

I remember how long it was until we got 0.6, and even that launch in an unfinished state (no animations). I cant speak for everyone's experience (clearly as many people didnt agree with my take) but I dont condone his actions, nor do I think it was acceptable for him to take as long as he did releasing the final product.

It is pretty wild to look at this though and see how development came to a screeching halt. Had he continued at the pace he was working at we would have had the game completed in 2019-2020
 
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Seraphym

Newbie
Oct 10, 2018
22
52
QnotU said:
Gonna get flak for this, but Icstor did the right thing by basically not interacting with his audience as much as he use to while he made this update.

Some of you may not remember, may be new here, etc. so let me explain. Icstor was someone who slowly but surely started fucking losing it as time went on. He went from a dev that seemed pretty stable and responsive to feedback, criticism, and listening to what people wanted to a dev who was over worked, unreliable, and extremely tormented by the amount of pressure that was on them.

Icstor has one of the worst AVN fanbases I have ever seen. I get people calling him out for missing deadlines, not communicating, and flat out cutting content out of updates. However, he also got a fair amount of death threats, bullying, and (according to him) people actually showing up to his house asking about when the update was coming. I dont know if this is true, but I cant think of a good reason why anyone would make something like this up.

Thats not to say I am not critical of Icstor. He allowed his mental health to deteriorate farther than it should have. He needed to disconnect from his audience sooner and just focus on making the game. Maybe get one of the people helping him to post updates and answer questions. He was so combative with his audience a few years ago to the point where he got hyper defensive anytime he missed a deadline and no accountability for his actions. Finally, I think it was EXTREMELY fucked up to still keep charging people for membership while he was taking his extended hiatus.

With all of this being said I wonder how this final update will hold up. Milfy City was on top of the AVN food chain years ago with its visuals, animations, and level of detail. Now there are so many games that beats out Milfy City in all of these categories (Being a DIK, Power Vacuum, Heart Problems, In A Scent, etc). I want this update to come out and be what I, and many others were expecting it to be years ago. However, there is no doubt that no matter how good this update is Icstor will always have bruised reputation.
Click to expand...
A couple of things. One, that bit about someone visiting his home doesn't pass the sniff test. ICSTOR's fanbase is so toxic that they send death threats, yet at least one member knows his address? Its 2023, he'd have been doxxed if that were the case. To my knowledge, we know so little about ICSTOR that there is a conspiracy theory from back in COVID that he died and the person who now runs the account has been doing it to collect the money. Yet someone has apparently interacted with him and could feasibly dispel that entire theory by having seen him alive?

Two, it's hard to entertain the idea that ICSTOR just got in over their head when he is just a more egregious example of a problem that is plaguing the AVN genre: development time bloat. A common trend for the last couple of years is that once these developers are able to quit their jobs and work on these games full-time, development time doesn't shorten, but rather just skyrockets. Look at DarkCookie, he is still working on a game that is nearly 10 years old. The last 2.5 years have been dedicated to the Tech Update alone.

IMO, ICSTOR was an inevitable consequence of the Patreon funding model for this genre. Many of his competitors are taking prolonged periods of time to finish their games and many of these games have loyal followings. Because many only donate a $1 and donate to multiple causes, they may not realize they are still donating either. It was a matter of time before someone decided that if this genre was just going to go the direction of extending out development, that they'd eventually think to themselves "you know what? Why even update at all."
 
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sgenter

sgenter

Member
Dec 8, 2021
125
98
MrNewVegas2281 said:
Obviously I can't speak for every complaint levied at him, but I would say the largest criticism is how he's effectively abandoned the project for years at this point. I can only find two instances that he ever gave any notices. The first is this post several months before 0.6 on his own site from 2019 [
You must be registered to see the links
]. I do believe this was shared on Patreon as well so that seems reasonable. The second, an admin on his Discord communicating an indefinite break that lasted about a year [
You must be registered to see the links
]. A post that never made it onto Patreon as far as I can tell, the only site that is guaranteed that 100% of his patrons have access to in order to receive an update that substantial.

Just looking at the update posts on his own Patreon paints a clear picture. After the X-Mas episode in Dec 2018, progress all but halted, with two entire updates in the timeframe of 2019 till now.

View attachment 2832342

Two updates in the span of about four and a half years as of now. Makes this statement from the archived link quite funny in retrospective,

"It’s now been more than FOUR full years that I’ve been developing adult games without taking a vacation."
Click to expand...
Quite informative. Thanks. Great work. I started following ICSTOR late in 2021. Noticed nothing was progressing with Milfy City and now I know why. Actually liked his work and quality. Hope he is healthy and can continue. Thanks for the info.
 
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QnotU

QnotU

Member
Dec 4, 2019
112
287
Seraphym said:
A couple of things. One, that bit about someone visiting his home doesn't pass the sniff test. ICSTOR's fanbase is so toxic that they send death threats, yet at least one member knows his address? Its 2023, he'd have been doxxed if that were the case. To my knowledge, we know so little about ICSTOR that there is a conspiracy theory from back in COVID that he died and the person who now runs the account has been doing it to collect the money. Yet someone has apparently interacted with him and could feasibly dispel that entire theory by having seen him alive?

Two, it's hard to entertain the idea that ICSTOR just got in over their head when he is just a more egregious example of a problem that is plaguing the AVN genre: development time bloat. A common trend for the last couple of years is that once these developers are able to quit their jobs and work on these games full-time, development time doesn't shorten, but rather just skyrockets. Look at DarkCookie, he is still working on a game that is nearly 10 years old. The last 2.5 years have been dedicated to the Tech Update alone.

IMO, ICSTOR was an inevitable consequence of the Patreon funding model for this genre. Many of his competitors are taking prolonged periods of time to finish their games and many of these games have loyal followings. Because many only donate a $1 and donate to multiple causes, they may not realize they are still donating either. It was a matter of time before someone decided that if this genre was just going to go the direction of extending out development, that they'd eventually think to themselves "you know what? Why even update at all."
Click to expand...
Again, I dont know if it is true weather or not someone showed up to his house. It sounds insane, and its possible he lied about it, but there really isnt anything tangeable to prove he isnt lying. Given his track record I would lean more into its probably fabricated. We will never know for certainty.

You are not wrong with the time bloat. However, I think this may be in part due to devs having more money to play with. I dont think DPC or DarkCookie would be able to do what they are doing now if they werent making the thousands of dollars a month they are making of patreon. More money and time usually equals more features being added due to being able to focus on it all of the time. There is also no denying that in the examples you used that the animation quality got better (side note darkcookie is not at all a good dev and this tech update has taken way to damn long).

It wouldnt be shocking if people just forgot. After all it is only a dollar. To be fair though I believe the majority of devs do try to get updates out in a timely manner, and if they dont they are usually good about communicating like DPC, Cheeky Gimp, What Why Games, etc.
 
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3.80 star(s) 445 Votes