I’m glad you enjoyed. As far as I know, lunching on Steam requires a lot of work. I’m not interested in spending my time doing that right now.
I also hope that I’ll afford a top a level render machine before the game is finished, and can add more and better animations to all the sex scenes. This would be for something like a “Deluxe” edition, that I could then release also on Steam. But those are things to think about in the future.
You have already supported the game’s development with more than €20. As explained
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, you’ll soon get an itch.io key that will grant you permanent access to this and all future updates of the game, even if you’re not pledging on patreon anymore. I think that’s the only fair way to treat old patrons like you, which I'm thankful for having supported me, and think deserve to be properly compensated for that.
I just need to fix some bugs on this version (patrons are still playing and giving feedback, one bug has already been found), put it on sale on itch, and figure out an easy way to automatically generate and send the keys to everyone that already pledged a total amount of at least €20. Just give me a few days to process that, I'm sorry that this might take longer than I'd like this first time around. Once the machine is up and running, I’m hoping that everything will work more smoothly in future updates.
Once I have all of this working, anyone with an itch key (could be ex-patrons or people that will soon be able to buy the game on itch with just a one-time payment), will always get access to the newer updates just a couple days after they are released on Patreon.
Some of this is already answered in chapter 4, some is still up in the air. I think part of the fun of the game is learning and exploring kinks with a LI, so I won’t spoil my plans for Emma or Jen in the future.
I don't know much about the AVN world yet, I'm really new, but if I may offer my perspective, the most important thing for a game to rise to the top-tier of patreon number is the number of players that knows about the game.
Once more people knows about the game, I would imagine the number of download reaches some sort of "escape velocity" before it likely plateaued. I don't know whether this game has captured the eyes of the AVN player base yet or not (you have a better view of it from DL number), but once it has captured the eye of the player base, I would like to offer an opinion below from consumers pov.
The second most important thing for patreon number increase is not actually quality. It's the "constant anticipation of what's next". Reasonably short update cycle being one of the ways to achieve that.
I would view AVN as a niche genre with small player base (compared to total number of gamers), and yet there are so many games being developed, and other games being a competitor for players attention.
Many games are either abandoned or have long update cycle. And because of the long period between update, it could make said game loses the attention of the players (because there are so many games out there, and other forms of entertainment).
There is a clash between devs view and players view where players wants a complete game, while devs needs higher patreon numbers so that continuing developing the game becomes sustainable.
The bridge between the 2 views I think is by keeping players hooked through short-ish update cycle.
Of course the game should not be crap and uninteresting. It should be reasonably good, but once it reaches the threshold of being "reasonably good", I think a consistent and short-ish update cycle to then get the game developed into completion would be better for a developer brand than making a near-perfect game (from the dev view) that then might have to be dropped because people just lose interest and patreon number dwindling because of it.
Once a game reached the above "escape velocity" of being known, I really don't think the casual players would wait more than 2-something years for a game to finished, and that in itself is already a stretch (1,5 years being ideal). Over 3 and a half years is just unthinkable to me.
I'm writing this to say that your game has unique hook to it.
First off the artsy direction makes it stand out and then there is also the points system. Just these 2 things makes this game crosses over the "reasonably good" threshold. This game is really good.
However, there is so many games and so many being abandoned that I think, as a player I would rather play a chapter once every 3-4 months with subpar animation and yet being constantly hooked by "what's next". For me, that is the anticipation of reading what else you would write and how you would tie it to pop psychology.
While from devs POV, spending time to polish the game and make the animation better looks like an ideal workflow, I think from my own perspective as a player, a constant and short-esque update cycle would benefit the devs more in terms of Patreon numbers.
Since I'm new to the AVN world, I'm not sure if me being hooked on the story aspect is a minority/outlier view or whether it represents the average players but, for me I play AVN games to go through the story. The quality of the adult animations is probably tertiary, if not lower than that. It's about the script first.
And yet from the development perspective, I read that one of the most time-consuming process is animating scenes. I honestly think the the time spent on animating adult scenes would be better spent on developing better story scenarios, or branches, with the aim of making the game chapters updates in a short-ish timeframe.
Sorry for the long post, I just feel I want to play your game through completion and yet I also do see the reality that the number of patrons is an extremely major factor to developers sustainability of continuing the game.
I don't want to experience the heartbreak of seeing this game gets abandoned, but I'm aware that that really depends on patreon numbers and that is why I wrote this post to you.
