Unreal Engine Monolith Bay [v0.44.0] [Team Monolith]

[ParadigmShift]

Thanks for the nice feedback

Here my thought on your ideas:
1) 'total amount pledged is over X' stuff... I tried asking but it is hard to reach them. But I am sure they have a person dedicated to the development of their webpage and their webpage handels the stuff.

2) we already have in-game credits and a name in the credits tier.

3) "Voting power" Isn't money = power in a vote way more unethical than some cheat codes? Besides that this is also not something nativ Patreon supports and needs to be done via your own website.

4) "early alpha" What you get for 10 already the very lates build we have. Making a build requires setup/time and things being completed so we can't do it all the time, once a month is often already for a small team game dev. So would you suggest that for 10 you get an older version and only for more you get the newest?

5) "Limit amount of patreons and abuse FOMO" well yes I can see this working, but than again I am trying to be mr. nice dev (even if you get another expression because of the cheats) and abusing FOMO sound unethical to me.

Hope I didn't miss anything

I just looked at your itch.io, I hadn't before, and saw you're selling your game for $20 total, but *not* updating it regularly (its already 2 months behind).

But the fact that you're asking for $20 as a single one-time payment on a different platform (with irregular update schedules, seemingly updated when you remember/feel like it), and still asking for 10€ / 13$ a month for the game through patreon is even more unacceptable. Do you honestly expect people to sub for more than 1-2 months? Because they'd be re-purchasing half of the game every month, and even considering that they are getting the current build, the added content each month is not $13 worth. Just one more thing driving people to sub for a single month and then cancel.

I'd give you $20 right now, one-time payment, on itch.io IF the game was updated monthly and not potentially months behind, ie current and all future builds including bugfixes, simultaneously released on Patreon and itch.io. BUT you could get potentially more money from me subbing monthly at $2-3 to get the same product, after a time you'd end up making more from Patreon than you would from me outright purchasing from itch.io. This is the same angle Andrealphus is using. $20 one time, or $2-3 monthly.

Also, after reading on your itch.io, I too am very confused as to why St*am would reject your game from their platform. Seems like there is an ample number of other games with similar adult content, including Andrealphus' game, which I feel includes many of the same kinks, including the 'step-sibling' angle. Even Ill*sion's games on are the St*am platform. I'm skeptical that St*am rejected your game because of its sexual nature, there must be more to it. Getting the game onto St*am, even though they do take a larger % of the revenue, would get you a LOT of exposure. Sales of digital content are a volumes game, not a margins game; you have little to no costs to recoup from the sale of each product.

 

[Team Monolith]

I just looked at your itch.io, I hadn't before, and saw you're selling your game for $20 total, but *not* updating it regularly (its already 2 months behind).

But the fact that you're asking for $20 as a single one-time payment on a different platform (with irregular update schedules, seemingly updated when you remember/feel like it), and still asking for 10€ / 13$ a month for the game through patreon is even more unacceptable. Do you honestly expect people to sub for more than 1-2 months? Because they'd be re-purchasing half of the game every month, and even considering that they are getting the current build, the added content each month is not $13 worth. Just one more thing driving people to sub for a single month and then cancel.

I'd give you $20 right now, one-time payment, on itch.io IF the game was updated monthly and not potentially months behind, ie current and all future builds including bugfixes, simultaneously released on Patreon and itch.io. BUT you could get potentially more money from me subbing monthly at $2-3 to get the same product, after a time you'd end up making more from Patreon than you would from me outright purchasing from itch.io. This is the same angle Andrealphus is using. $20 one time, or $2-3 monthly.

Also, after reading on your itch.io, I too am very confused as to why St*am would reject your game from their platform. Seems like there is an ample number of other games with similar adult content, including Andrealphus' game, which I feel includes many of the same kinks, including the 'step-sibling' angle. Even Ill*sion's games on are the St*am platform. I'm skeptical that St*am rejected your game because of its sexual nature, there must be more to it. Getting the game onto St*am, even though they do take a larger % of the revenue, would get you a LOT of exposure. Sales of digital content are a volumes game, not a margins game; you have little to no costs to recoup from the sale of each product.

Info about the itch version (it does get regular updates but every 3 month)

You must be registered to see the links

About Steam I agree with you, there is no reason they shouldn't allow our game. But also there is nothing we can do about it. Besides taking it to court, but I rather not do that againts multi-billion dollar company... (trust me the fact the game is not steam makes me very sad, I had multiple nightmares because of it... but I am powerless.)

 

[ParadigmShift]

Info about the itch version (it does get regular updates but every 3 month)

You must be registered to see the links

About St*am I agree with you, there is no reason they shouldn't allow our game. But also there is nothing we can do about it. Besides taking it to court, but I rather not do that againts multi-billion dollar company... (trust me the fact the game is not steam makes me very sad, I had multiple nightmares because of it... but I am powerless.)

It's not about fighting them; it's about pressing them for more information on the basis of trying to work with them rather than against, and asking what needs to happen for them to allow it to be published on St*am. There's must be specific addressable concerns. In the end, if they allow it to be published, they'll get their % of the profits either way. Odds are there's some deeper issue like copyright infringement concerns, which I'm surprised they wouldn't disclose in their rejection.

St*am will allow absolute garbage to be published on their platform, and I mean absolute dumpster fire, flaming dog shit, trash. That fact makes me cry as a consumer, as they have zero curation anymore and you have to sift through mountains of the absolute worst indie cash grab garbage to find anything even half decent, and much of it is exactly what it looks like: shameless attempts at suckering people out of a couple bucks. Even if you only sell 100 copies to people that are curious, at $5 a sale, I'm still ~$350 richer than I was before.

Don't get me wrong, everyone has to start somewhere, but some dev's fail to be objective and recognize how much people value their work and want big name game prices for, well just plain bad games that arent worth the few cents of bandwidth they consume. Second lesson of sales is it doesn't matter what you think your product is worth, it matters what the consumer thinks it's worth, and convincing them it's worth as much as you think it's worth. Even if I poured my heart and soul into something, and think it's worth $50 cuz I worked so hard on it, if someone will only give me $20...hate to say it, it's worth $20 to the market. Sentimentality has no marketable value. This is not a hill you want to choose to die on, because you'll lose and still be broke; $20 is better than $0, don't be afraid to haggle though, push for $30.

I mean...they allow a game like Genital Jousting on the platform...and countless others like it. Obviously, the bar is pretty low for what they'll accept. In fact, that you got rejected is almost impressive, but its far more likely due to something logistical or clerical in your submission, rather than the content of the game itself. I can't find anything so far that I would find particularly offensive or violates any laws, other than the obvious parody of a handful of other IPs (R*ck & M*rty, V*caloid, F*nal F*ntasy 7) but that in itself isn't illegal. Basically, as long as it isn't illegal and it's marked for the correct age group, St*am don't give a f-; they get their money either way.

 

[Team Monolith]

It's not about fighting them; it's about pressing them for more information on the basis of trying to work with them rather than against, and asking what needs to happen for them to allow it to be published on St*am. There's must be specific addressable concerns. In the end, if they allow it to be published, they'll get their % of the profits either way. Odds are there's some deeper issue like copyright infringement concerns, which I'm surprised they wouldn't disclose in their rejection.

St*am will allow absolute garbage to be published on their platform, and I mean absolute dumpster fire, flaming dog shit, trash. That fact makes me cry as a consumer, as they have zero curation anymore and you have to sift through mountains of the absolute worst indie cash grab garbage to find anything even half decent, and much of it is exactly what it looks like: shameless attempts at suckering people out of a couple bucks. Even if you only sell 100 copies to people that are curious, at $5 a sale, I'm still ~$350 richer than I was before.

Don't get me wrong, everyone has to start somewhere, but some dev's fail to be objective and recognize how much people value their work and want big name game prices for, well just plain bad games that arent worth the few cents of bandwidth they consume. Second lesson of sales is it doesn't matter what you think your product is worth, it matters what the consumer thinks it's worth, and convincing them it's worth as much as you think it's worth. Even if I poured my heart and soul into something, and think it's worth $50 cuz I worked so hard on it, if someone will only give me $20...hate to say it, it's worth $20 to the market. Sentimentality has no marketable value. This is not a hill you want to choose to die on, because you'll lose and still be broke; $20 is better than $0, don't be afraid to haggle though, push for $30.

I mean...they allow a game like Genital Jousting on the platform...and countless others like it. Obviously, the bar is pretty low for what they'll accept. In fact, that you got rejected is almost impressive, but its far more likely due to something logistical or clerical in your submission, rather than the content of the game itself. I can't find anything so far that I would find particularly offensive or violates any laws, other than the obvious parody of a handful of other IPs (R*ck & M*rty, V*caloid, F*nal F*ntasy 7) but that in itself isn't illegal. Basically, as long as it isn't illegal and it's marked for the correct age group, St*am don't give a f-; they get their money either way.

We tried talking. But their procedure is they reply once and ignore what you said in your message, give you some standard reply that does not answer what you wrote and end it with "we said everything we want to say", any messages after that just gets ignored...

 

[Savio]

Selling cheat access to your own game sets up a bad incentive structure. It doesn't matter what you intend to do in the final release just what you are doing currently in development. Here are a couple of scenarios that might illustrate the bad incentive structure you create here, which is very similar to those mobile games that sell premium currencies to skip boring/annoying gameplay:

Let's say John is a normal player, that has limited technical knowledge, and finds the game on Patreon and 'buys' it by pledging a minimal amount in order to test it out. You as the developer are now incentivized to get keep John paying monthly by delivering good updates, which is fine. But you are also incentivized to get John to become a higher tier Patreon, so by selling access to cheats you need to set the game up to be easy and fun at first to get John to start playing, but then make it more and more grindy and annoying. Hopefully, if you got John invested enough with the first part and annoyed enough later, they upgrade their Patreon level to get some cheats to skip some grindy gameplay. If they stop playing before that, well there are always bigger fish. You try to exploit your player base.

Let's say you are Alex with technical knowledge and encounter some grindy or annoying gameplay and are unwilling to pay for cheats. Then Alex discovers a cheat menu inside the game and is curious about it. They try to find the cheats by looking at the string table the game uses. Now you as a developer might fear that you might have made it too easy for them to find those cheat codes and try to hide them better. You and Alex start playing a cat and mouse game until either Alex is no longer interested in your game or you give up. In the process of this game, however, instead of befriending Alex, by getting their input and suggestion for improvement ideas from them, and possibly allowing them to create their own content on top in the form of mods or cheat tables (that might be similar to what you try to offer for money), you tried to discourage Alex from messing with it. You tried to prevent other people from being creative on top of your work.

I am not saying that you are doing this now, or that this sequence of events is inevitable, but that selling access to cheats for your own game is creating such an incentive structure, where this could happen. And the potential that this might happen will likely keep people start getting invested in your game.

So my suggestion: Just try to give your Patreons positive options to improve or contribute to your game (votes, credits, ideas, etc.), instead of giving them negative options where you allow them to skip gameplay or by giving them customization options that you took away from other players.

 

[asdfafsfa]

I find it funny a MB dev is here of all things

 

[asdfafsfa]

Pizza minigame is a nightmare in these labyrinthian streets with no map available during delivery

its the same route everytime, its pretty easy

 

[TheVegnar]

Selling cheat access to your own game sets up a bad incentive structure. It doesn't matter what you intend to do in the final release just what you are doing currently in development. Here are a couple of scenarios that might illustrate the bad incentive structure you create here, which is very similar to those mobile games that sell premium currencies to skip boring/annoying gameplay:

Let's say John is a normal player, that has limited technical knowledge, and finds the game on Patreon and 'buys' it by pledging a minimal amount in order to test it out. You as the developer are now incentivized to get keep John paying monthly by delivering good updates, which is fine. But you are also incentivized to get John to become a higher tier Patreon, so by selling access to cheats you need to set the game up to be easy and fun at first to get John to start playing, but then make it more and more grindy and annoying. Hopefully, if you got John invested enough with the first part and annoyed enough later, they upgrade their Patreon level to get some cheats to skip some grindy gameplay. If they stop playing before that, well there are always bigger fish. You try to exploit your player base.

Let's say you are Alex with technical knowledge and encounter some grindy or annoying gameplay and are unwilling to pay for cheats. Then Alex discovers a cheat menu inside the game and is curious about it. They try to find the cheats by looking at the string table the game uses. Now you as a developer might fear that you might have made it too easy for them to find those cheat codes and try to hide them better. You and Alex start playing a cat and mouse game until either Alex is no longer interested in your game or you give up. In the process of this game, however, instead of befriending Alex, by getting their input and suggestion for improvement ideas from them, and possibly allowing them to create their own content on top in the form of mods or cheat tables (that might be similar to what you try to offer for money), you tried to discourage Alex from messing with it. You tried to prevent other people from being creative on top of your work.

I am not saying that you are doing this now, or that this sequence of events is inevitable, but that selling access to cheats for your own game is creating such an incentive structure, where this could happen. And the potential that this might happen will likely keep people start getting invested in your game.

So my suggestion: Just try to give your Patreons positive options to improve or contribute to your game (votes, credits, ideas, etc.), instead of giving them negative options where you allow them to skip gameplay or by giving them customization options that you took away from other players.

I know the developer needs a source of income, but I definitely feel this way.

 

[asdfafsfa]

Oh wow, something must have broken this version. If you like you can also share your save here or in DM and I can look into it.

Mine says thats the end of the dating options for her atm and ive done up to her squat workout scene

 

[Team Monolith]

Selling cheat access to your own game sets up a bad incentive structure. It doesn't matter what you intend to do in the final release just what you are doing currently in development. Here are a couple of scenarios that might illustrate the bad incentive structure you create here, which is very similar to those mobile games that sell premium currencies to skip boring/annoying gameplay:

Let's say John is a normal player, that has limited technical knowledge, and finds the game on Patreon and 'buys' it by pledging a minimal amount in order to test it out. You as the developer are now incentivized to get keep John paying monthly by delivering good updates, which is fine. But you are also incentivized to get John to become a higher tier Patreon, so by selling access to cheats you need to set the game up to be easy and fun at first to get John to start playing, but then make it more and more grindy and annoying. Hopefully, if you got John invested enough with the first part and annoyed enough later, they upgrade their Patreon level to get some cheats to skip some grindy gameplay. If they stop playing before that, well there are always bigger fish. You try to exploit your player base.

Let's say you are Alex with technical knowledge and encounter some grindy or annoying gameplay and are unwilling to pay for cheats. Then Alex discovers a cheat menu inside the game and is curious about it. They try to find the cheats by looking at the string table the game uses. Now you as a developer might fear that you might have made it too easy for them to find those cheat codes and try to hide them better. You and Alex start playing a cat and mouse game until either Alex is no longer interested in your game or you give up. In the process of this game, however, instead of befriending Alex, by getting their input and suggestion for improvement ideas from them, and possibly allowing them to create their own content on top in the form of mods or cheat tables (that might be similar to what you try to offer for money), you tried to discourage Alex from messing with it. You tried to prevent other people from being creative on top of your work.

I am not saying that you are doing this now, or that this sequence of events is inevitable, but that selling access to cheats for your own game is creating such an incentive structure, where this could happen. And the potential that this might happen will likely keep people start getting invested in your game.

So my suggestion: Just try to give your Patreons positive options to improve or contribute to your game (votes, credits, ideas, etc.), instead of giving them negative options where you allow them to skip gameplay or by giving them customization options that you took away from other players.

That's a really good point. The reason I never saw it as this is that I don't consider the game grindy at all, and we made it not grindy for the very reason. You can max out a girls relationship state with money form 5-10min depending on your skill.

But even if the "get around the grind part" is not the intention of the cheats, I see how they convey that message, and that's problematic.
We will consider removing every "advantage" cheats and keep it to "messing around cheat" like for example making your character 2x as big, which does not help in the game in any way.

We always considered voting power having bad taste (Like the more you pay the more your opinion is worth / money deciding the outcome of votes) and that's why we went with cheats. In our eyes, it seemed like the smaller bad incentive. But if the community thinks else wise we are willing to try it out.

So what you can expect to happen in the near future:
-Voting power linked to tiers
-Removal or price reduction of cheats that are not just for fun.

 

[Gamesman01]

That's a really good point. The reason I never saw it as this is that I don't consider the game grindy at all, and we made it not grindy for the very reason. You can max out a girls relationship state with money form 5-10min depending on your skill.

But even if the "get around the grind part" is not the intention of the cheats, I see how they convey that message, and that's problematic.
We will consider removing every "advantage" cheats and keep it to "messing around cheat" like for example making your character 2x as big, which does not help in the game in any way.

We always considered voting power having bad taste (Like the more you pay the more your opinion is worth / money deciding the outcome of votes) and that's why we went with cheats. In our eyes, it seemed like the smaller bad incentive. But if the community thinks else wise we are willing to try it out.

So what you can expect to happen in the near future:
-Removal of cheats that are not just for fun.
-Voting power linked to tiers

Well I would hope you leave the money cheat because the Pizza delivery mini game kinda sucks. The customers say here's a tip but you never get one and $10 is just to little. Hell even min wage in the US is better. And the actual driving also kinda bites. Maybe a better job like either store or a handyman job. Anything that earns more.

 

[Team Monolith]

Well I would hope you leave the money cheat because the Pizza delivery mini game kinda sucks. The customers say here's a tip but you never get one and $10 is just to little. Hell even min wage in the US is better. And the actual driving also kinda bites. Maybe a better job like either store or a handyman job. Anything that earns more.

Hmm yea that's the problem you can't always make everyone happy... Some say money for cheats is scumy, some say they still want them. And enabling them by default is dumb we might as well not even have money in the game and just give you endlessly from the start... Well we have to consider what we gonna do.
Your reward depends on how fast you are and how often you crash. should be relatively easy to make 30. But if that is too hard for you to reach you can fly for Drox, it always brings 50.

 

[blablubiblub]

its the same route everytime, its pretty easy

When you realize you can go through the tunnel unlike the other tunnel and not search like an idiot like I did

 

[nightsight]

is there pregnancy game ending ? or is that a mecanic?

 

[°Vergil°]

is there pregnancy game ending ? or is that a mecanic?

It's a mechanic. There are no game endings with pregnancy.

 

[ChillyDabs]

still waiting on said hot fix >.>

 

[ParadigmShift]

still waiting on said hot fix >.>

Nobody cares enough or is willing to pay $13USD / 10€ to share the hotfix, and the next version is supposed to be released at the beginning of Sept, so probably have to wait for that.

 

[GranberiaKnight]

I see the devs are still holding 'bugfixes' as premium patron builds.

 

[Team Monolith]

I see the devs are still holding 'bugfixes' as premium patron builds.

I said this twice before but in case you missed it. The version shared here has nothing to do with us, the uploads are from the f95 moderation team and community. (see the main post for that information)
You can't actually expect me to upload my own game to a pirate website, that would be an insult towards my Patreons. But as I said if anyone does it you have my ok, since it is just a fix.

 

[kitsunedawn]

That's a really good point. The reason I never saw it as this is that I don't consider the game grindy at all, and we made it not grindy for the very reason. You can max out a girls relationship state with money form 5-10min depending on your skill.

But even if the "get around the grind part" is not the intention of the cheats, I see how they convey that message, and that's problematic.
We will consider removing every "advantage" cheats and keep it to "messing around cheat" like for example making your character 2x as big, which does not help in the game in any way.

We always considered voting power having bad taste (Like the more you pay the more your opinion is worth / money deciding the outcome of votes) and that's why we went with cheats. In our eyes, it seemed like the smaller bad incentive. But if the community thinks else wise we are willing to try it out.

So what you can expect to happen in the near future:
-Voting power linked to tiers
-Removal or price reduction of cheats that are not just for fun.

Based on my own past experience with testing, it might not be a bad idea to include a 'fly' cheat to allow testers to get around the map faster without having to do the "ghost girl" summoning thing. Honestly, I wanted to keep looking around at the world to see where models could be updated or better meshed with the overall game world, but being stuck to just walking and not really able to zip around or use my usual testing tools, made it difficult to the point I gave up looking for map mesh errors.