VN Ren'Py Radiant [v0.6.3] [RK Studios]

[Smarmint]

The root cause of "such behaviour" is that the Patreon system is a scam. A subscriber-based payment system that, using legal sleight-of-hand, pretends to be a patronage system. So, content creators are incentivized to give some content monthly even in itty-bitty amounts.
The Devs of AVNs can pretend that non-canon wallpapers are somehow worthy of what a "patron" pays monthly.

You aren't wrong. Patreon rewards the dev model of good first couple of updates, and then for the dev to drag it out as long as possible. The absolute worst thing to happen for a dev is to finish their game. Then all the income stops. So devs have little incentive to ever finish. I applaud the few like DanielsK, Caribdis, and Mr. Dots, who release consistently, finish their games, and then immediately start the next one.

If you were a dev that were trying to maximize your revenue and minimize labor, you basically finish your work at your own pace, and then hold on to each release, writing fake status updates every 2 weeks or so and releasing the occasional screen shot or wallpaper to keep interest up, until you lose a certain percentage of subscribers, say 30%, whether that takes 6 months or 1 and a half years, and then release and repeat.

I consider Radiant the penultimate case of this dev style. Lots of build up at first, a reasonable time frame for first update, then very small yearly updates to keep the Patreon cash flowing with very little monthly effort by the dev team. Lots of popular games here, too many to count, do this exact same thing. Releasing regularly, respecting your fans, is really the exception rather than the rule.

But, we all have to remember that without the Patreon model, there would be almost no adult games. How many adult games were there before Patron became popular? Very, very, few. There were some Japanese imports of mostly anime style, a small handful of Steam games like House Party once Steam allowed adult games around 4 or 5 years ago, lots of low quality flash games not worth playing, a few expensive low quality monthly subscription games or those where the base game is free and you buy assets for an exorbitant price, and that is it.

Nothing with any type of interesting story, nothing with high quality realistic renders at all, because it isn't worth a devs time to spend many months of labor and rendering time, buying assets and electricity for your power hungry rendering PC, writing and working for free, just to release something a year or two later once everything is complete for $10 or $20 per download, just to get eclipsed by the next big thing and forgotten a few months later. It is a lose-lose proposition, which is why practically no devs charge only after their games are completed.

Patreon, as much as some devs abuse their fans goodwill (and forgetfulness to unsubscribe, people are still subscribed to Milfy City for example), the ability to slowly develop your adult game in your spare time, and get a few hundred or more a month to make it worth your while, keep the games coming.

Whatever your favorite game is here, it wouldn't exist without Patron or a similar fan-based monthly paying model. Radiant certainly wouldn't exist.

 

[Nemo56]

When people are still paying you even though you haven't released anything in 8 months, you don't really have much of an incentive to work. I defend a lot of devs on this forum because shit happens in life and I have had periods of my life where it seemed like everything was going wrong at the same time. The issue with this game is that it has been like this pretty much since the beginning. There was a period of 14 months where they didn't release anything. At this point it's really really hard to believe that he isn't doing this on purpose.

But if you do a LITTLE work, you can make these 8 months into 16 months or 24. He must know that.

 

[faramata]

You aren't wrong. Patreon rewards the dev model of good first couple of updates, and then for the dev to drag it out as long as possible. The absolute worst thing to happen for a dev is to finish their game. Then all the income stops. So devs have little incentive to ever finish. I applaud the few like DanielsK, Caribdis, and Mr. Dots, who release consistently, finish their games, and then immediately start the next one.

If you were a dev that were trying to maximize your revenue and minimize labor, you basically finish your work at your own pace, and then hold on to each release, writing fake status updates every 2 weeks or so and releasing the occasional screen shot or wallpaper to keep interest up, until you lose a certain percentage of subscribers, say 30%, whether that takes 6 months or 1 and a half years, and then release and repeat.

I consider Radiant the penultimate case of this dev style. Lots of build up at first, a reasonable time frame for first update, then very small yearly updates to keep the Patreon cash flowing with very little monthly effort by the dev team. Lots of popular games here, too many to count, do this exact same thing. Releasing regularly, respecting your fans, is really the exception rather than the rule.

But, we all have to remember that without the Patreon model, there would be almost no adult games. How many adult games were there before Patron became popular? Very, very, few. There were some Japanese imports of mostly anime style, a small handful of Steam games like House Party once Steam allowed adult games around 4 or 5 years ago, lots of low quality flash games not worth playing, a few expensive low quality monthly subscription games or those where the base game is free and you buy assets for an exorbitant price, and that is it.

Nothing with any type of interesting story, nothing with high quality realistic renders at all, because it isn't worth a devs time to spend many months of labor and rendering time, buying assets and electricity for your power hungry rendering PC, writing and working for free, just to release something a year or two later once everything is complete for $10 or $20 per download, just to get eclipsed by the next big thing and forgotten a few months later. It is a lose-lose proposition, which is why practically no devs charge only after their games are completed.

Patreon, as much as some devs abuse their fans goodwill (and forgetfulness to unsubscribe, people are still subscribed to Milfy City for example), the ability to slowly develop your adult game in your spare time, and get a few hundred or more a month to make it worth your while, keep the games coming.

Whatever your favorite game is here, it wouldn't exist without Patron or a similar fan-based monthly paying model. Radiant certainly wouldn't exist.

Can't argue with what you're saying. Well, it's the same with welfare or charities. They both get abused. But still when you back the wrong horse, like with Radiant, it stings. And it stings even worse since it is a really cool game. If anything, this and Lost at Birth are some of the best games I've encountered so far. But it feels too much like "you pays your money, you takes you chances".

 

[adanu]

The root cause of "such behaviour" is that the Patreon system is a scam.

Normally, I would agree with this, but Patreon itself tells it's users that patronage is not a guarantee that they will get a product out of it. Kickstarter is the same way. It's a matter of doing your research and seeing what they've done. If you are paying a creator on Patreon and they haven't done anything for close to a year, that's a bad judgment call on your end. Patreon does not regulate stupidity, neither does Kickstarter.

For the record, I'm one of those people who took a chance on the Mandate on kickstarter years ago when they talked up a big game about making a space warfare centric RPG. I was robbed, basically, but I was the one that took the chance. Kickstarter is not to blame for my judgment call.

 

[Smarmint]

Can't argue with what you're saying. Well, it's the same with welfare or charities. They both get abused. But still when you back the wrong horse, like with Radiant, it stings. And it stings even worse since it is a really cool game. If anything, this and Lost at Birth are some of the best games I've encountered so far. But it feels too much like "you pays your money, you takes you chances".

True. I've backed dozens of AVNs on Patreon from time to time, but if the dev doesn't keep updating, I stop and move to another game. There are many deserving devs that don't make much per month worth supporting.

Normally, I would agree with this, but Patreon itself tells it's users that patronage is not a guarantee that they will get a product out of it. Kickstarter is the same way. It's a matter of doing your research and seeing what they've done. If you are paying a creator on Patreon and they haven't done anything for close to a year, that's a bad judgment call on your end. Patreon does not regulate stupidity, neither does Kickstarter.

Exactly. If anything, Patreon benefits from lack of releases. More time to collect. They make money per donation, regardless if anything is released. It is a business like any other, and getting very rich off of all the content. What are their expenses? A website? Probably hosted on AWS for a few thousands a month. They probably make that in less than a minute.

I have no problem with Patreon. It is like Valve with Steam. If you can create a popular distribution system where others make all the content and you can skim off the top, you are golden.

It's the slacking devs that are the problem, but nothing can be done about that. It is just human nature. If we all got paid whether we showed up at work or not, as long as we worked at least 1 day every 3 months, how many of us would go to work every day?

Anyway, I would say the chances of Radiant actually getting completed are vanishingly small. Even smaller now that Alorth has put his money and reputation on the line to try to get Sir Damned to actually do something. It is ironic that it is the script and dialog that is holding it up, which is a lot quicker than rendering. It's not like the game is fine literature. Knowing the story, it practically writes itself.

 

[Pope Alexander VI]

So is this actually abandoned or is it another Milf City situation?

 

[adanu]

So is this actually abandoned or is it another Milf City situation?

It just got the tag, so we'll see what's going on soon enough.

 

[virtuvoid]

Normally, I would agree with this, but Patreon itself tells it's users that patronage is not a guarantee that they will get a product out of it. Kickstarter is the same way. It's a matter of doing your research and seeing what they've done. If you are paying a creator on Patreon and they haven't done anything for close to a year, that's a bad judgment call on your end. Patreon does not regulate stupidity, neither does Kickstarter.

For the record, I'm one of those people who took a chance on the Mandate on kickstarter years ago when they talked up a big game about making a space warfare centric RPG. I was robbed, basically, but I was the one that took the chance. Kickstarter is not to blame for my judgment call.

Watch the words, listen to the actions.
There are many different types of content-creators on Patreon. Setting AVN Devs aside, ALL other creators provide content each and every month (sometimes mini-sized). So, patronage shields Patreon from angry calls from patrons about not getting anything in a given month (no refunds but still supporters may unpatron). Also note that there are many podcasts on YouTube where a Patreon-affiliated creator will never refer to patrons but rather as supporters/subscribers.
AVN Devs seem to inhabit a separate Patreon space. Only they dare to go months on end giving no direct content to their supporters (mainly Discord and the rare progress report). If ALL content-creators should try this "neat" trick, it would be the end of Patreon.

An AVN Dev, such as SirD, puts Patreon in a difficult spot business-wise. The patronage system can be seen as a type of honour-system. When someone such as SirD is full of alibis about the shortage of game updates, but totally fails to do the honourable thing by pausing supporters' recurring charges, he obviously comes across to anyone paying attention as an unworthy content-creator.
The obvious fix is for Patreon to rein in these unworthy Devs. I like the idea of mini monthly game updates. The positions of both Patreon and supporters would remain unchanged. Monthly CANON content, not wallpapers, would align Devs with all other content-creators.
But something has to give because too many Devs have presently gone rogue.

 

[Badjourasmix]

New post on discord:

Spoiler

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

 

[Smarmint]

The obvious fix is for Patreon to rein in these unworthy Devs. I like the idea of mini monthly game updates. The positions of both Patreon and supporters would remain unchanged. Monthly CANON content, not wallpapers, would align Devs with all other content-creators.
But something has to give because too many Devs have presently gone rogue.

You keep saying the same thing, but why would Patreon do that? The longer the games take, the more money they get. It goes against their financial motive to kick out devs or penalize them for not producing monthly content.

You are not being honest when you say that Patreon is not a patronage system. Did you notice the name of the company? That is exactly what it is. Like it or not. Any supporter is free to unsubscribe at any time if they don't think they are getting their money's worth. You can have your own wishes about what another company does, but when it goes against their financial interest, it will never happen. If they tried it, the stockholders would fire the board and hire a new one that puts company profits first.

Patreon doesn't care about adult games, their development, or whether releases happen monthly or not at all. They would probably prefer if it there were no adult content at all, just artists, musicians, yoga practitioners, and podcasters. Notice nothing on their homepage or advertising materials mentions adult games. But the money is too good, for now, for them to leave it on the table.

Bashing on Patreon is counter-productive. As I mentioned, without Patreon or similar sites as a patronage system for AVN developers, most quality adult games, including Radiant, would not exist.

 

[Dogorti]

New post on discord:

Spoiler

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

 

[jamdan]

Watch the words, listen to the actions.
There are many different types of content-creators on Patreon. Setting AVN Devs aside, ALL other creators provide content each and every month (sometimes mini-sized). So, patronage shields Patreon from angry calls from patrons about not getting anything in a given month (no refunds but still supporters may unpatron). Also note that there are many podcasts on YouTube where a Patreon-affiliated creator will never refer to patrons but rather as supporters/subscribers.
AVN Devs seem to inhabit a separate Patreon space. Only they dare to go months on end giving no direct content to their supporters (mainly Discord and the rare progress report). If ALL content-creators should try this "neat" trick, it would be the end of Patreon.

An AVN Dev, such as SirD, puts Patreon in a difficult spot business-wise. The patronage system can be seen as a type of honour-system. When someone such as SirD is full of alibis about the shortage of game updates, but totally fails to do the honourable thing by pausing supporters' recurring charges, he obviously comes across to anyone paying attention as an unworthy content-creator.
The obvious fix is for Patreon to rein in these unworthy Devs. I like the idea of mini monthly game updates. The positions of both Patreon and supporters would remain unchanged. Monthly CANON content, not wallpapers, would align Devs with all other content-creators.
But something has to give because too many Devs have presently gone rogue.

That doesn't have anything to do with Patreon themselves. They have no way to verify whether or not people work on their content or not. They'd ban adult content before they'd try to verify whether or not AC creators actually work or not.


Others who make adult content (besides AVN devs) are on Patreon too, like Rushzilla (a twitch streamer who makes pinups/models) and a bunch of other 2D/pinup creators. As well as many of people who make SFW VN's. But they tend to not have the same issues as AVN devs.

The issues AVN devs tend to have, I think, boils down to 2 main things.

1 - They aren't organized, professional, and generally don't know what they're doing. They decide to make a game (likely to satisfy their own fetishes), start a patreon to share their work and then make it up as they go along.


2 - Related to that, they don't plan their games out, much if at all. This alone would solve 90% of their issues. It was mentioned previously that "Patreon rewards the dev model of good first couple of updates, and then for the dev to drag it out as long as possible".

That isn't why 90% of games begin to drag. They begin to drag because the scope/scale of the games becomes too large to update in a reasonable timeframe. This even happens with the big developers, like Philly and Pinkcake.

Adding too many LI's. Adding too many routes. Both of which have little to no purpose. Not being efficient. Not knowing where the story is going. They end up in a hole or getting writers block or burning out. Or maybe all the above.

If they planned and organized their stuff from the start. Many would avoid those traps before they wondered into them, and some wouldn't decide to make a game in the first place. As the old saying goes "Easier said than done".

-----------
Are there bad "scammers"? Dammed may well be one of them. Sure, but most developers simply don't know what they're doing. If you want to make real money, get your game complete and put in on Steam. You'll make more money than milking a couple thousand dollars from Patreon each month. A total that the large majority of devs will never get to.

It's on the supporters/fans to not go "Ooohhh boobies" and throw their money at developers until they've shown themselves to be serious about their work and have clear plans and ideas on how they're going to complete their games.

 

[Bombmaster]

New post on discord:

Spoiler

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

Thx for the context, in the end he never paused billings as many devs do when having problems to work.
He clearly wanted to be fed by his supporters.

 

[White Lamp]

View attachment 3098245

Short version: someone I know died and I took a break. Don’t blame alorth, blame me instead because I have thick skin.

the end.

 

[Badjourasmix]

Thx for the context, in the end he never paused billings as many devs do when having problems to work.
He clearly wanted to be fed by his supporters.

Maybe it's because someone in my family has passed away recently, but I can understand getting depressed when someone close to you dies, and I can understand him not wanting to talk about it. But when people are giving you money every month for you to work on the game you kind of have to give them an explanation on why there is no content coming out. While people had no idea about what was going on with the game he was tweeting constantly about FFXVI.
They seem like they want to release final update for 0.5 before the end of the year so let's see if they are able to do that and if they are able to release 0.6 in march.

 

[Bombmaster]

Badjourasmix
I guess most of us are depressed in some form or another,
Rocky balboa pronunciation:
But suck it up and go to work, pay bills and keep moving foward.


NGL would be lit having a bunch of fairies sending me money to sit on my ass playing vydia and eat tendies.

 

[Dogorti]

Maybe it's because someone in my family has passed away recently, but I can understand getting depressed when someone close to you dies, and I can understand him not wanting to talk about it. But when people are giving you money every month for you to work on the game you kind of have to give them an explanation on why there is no content coming out. While people had no idea about what was going on with the game he was tweeting constantly about FFXVI.
They seem like they want to release final update for 0.5 before the end of the year so let's see if they are able to do that and if they are able to release 0.6 in march.

This. I don't have a problem with him being depressed but you can be transparent about it, people aren't going to make fun of you for it (not everyone at least) the fact that you don't say anything and only post stupid things on your Twitter makes people get suspicious or angrier, and I understand that he uses his Twitter to post silly stuff, to keep his head busy. But his way of handling things has not been the best. Everything could be very different if he was a guy who knew how to communicate with his audience. But I guess that's how things are

 

[virtuvoid]

Maybe it's because someone in my family has passed away recently, but I can understand getting depressed when someone close to you dies, and I can understand him not wanting to talk about it. But when people are giving you money every month for you to work on the game you kind of have to give them an explanation on why there is no content coming out. While people had no idea about what was going on with the game he was tweeting constantly about FFXVI.
They seem like they want to release final update for 0.5 before the end of the year so let's see if they are able to do that and if they are able to release 0.6 in march.

Ain't buying yet more alibis.
The key is : follow the money. If SirD had ever paused supporter charges, then OK. Explain that IRL has been giving him a shit-kicking, and he needs some time to get his balance back. No need to go into details.
Has he ever done that ? For Polarity ? For Radiant ? Nope, never.

 

[Badjourasmix]

At this point I have very low expectations so if they end up not meeting the deadline I won't really care too much. It has been 3 years already since the first release if they don't get their shit together now they never will.

 

[Tatsuya2022]

New post on discord:

Spoiler

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

yeah that pile of bull@&%$ always always is like that ... with those piece of xxxxxx developers


number 1 he wait till the last minute they can to say even a lie or * reason * to their fans ... if at all


number 2 hey smart ass dev no got the memo? irl stuff always going to happen one way or other , tmr will rain tmr will gf break out, tmr somebody will pass out , tmr something will happen ... but he goes on that song for like 4 years?

but YEAAH SUCH NICE EXCUSES for another whole year to have a 2 bit update ? or if even so.

number 3 at this point people still believing this piece of xxx ? lier ? milker ?

FAIR thing should be he pause all patreon support till he pull a update out of his bonny xxx

nope he could be honest and stay playing his ffxxxx , HE ONLY writing that long long is because of respect to his fans? nope is because money ....

and as somebody said is a pitiful thing , because a completed game on steam can earn more money than as it is now ...but 2 bit devs dont realize of that ...