Ren'Py Seeds of Chaos [v0.4.11a Patreon] [Vénus Noire]

[prodigy]

Yes and no?

If something dumb happened with Patreon, would it be bad for us? Yes. For sure.

But, we can scale up or scale down production as nessacery. If we were making 1K on some other platform the game would still be in development.

If we somehow were making 20K a month, we'd only ramp up production more. The nice part about a game like Seeds of Chaos is that there really is few upper limits for what we could do if we had more funding. Every dollar really does improve the game.

So there's some uncertainty, but it's not as bad as you think. Production costs are modulated to income for the game.

Still, It would be worthwhile to secure funding beforehand. Monthly funding is appealing to small teams, but stigma* that patron brings and effect on consumer trust is not worth it in longer run. Anyway I do not want to stretch it out, good luck with your project.
*A lot of abandoned project, alligated milking ect.

 

[T51bwinterized]

Please inform me where is the bank that gives million dollar business loans for boner games? I must go to it immediately.

 

[prodigy]

Please inform me where is the bank that gives million dollar business loans for boner games? I must go to it immediately.

Not long ago there was porn game funded on kicksater they got something over milion.

 

[fanboi]

Not long ago there was porn game funded on kicksater they got something over milion.

Wait, you feel Patreon has a stigma associated with it (I agree), but you point to Kickstarter as a good alternative? Kickstarter has just as bad a stigma associated with it, if not worse since people pay upfront and oftentimes get absolutely nothing when promises aren't kept...

 

[T51bwinterized]

Not long ago there was porn game funded on kicksater they got something over milion.

...You're aware that the team who made the Subverse kickstarter made it partially using money they saved up from their former 10K Patreon page, right? Studio FOW aren't some Anti-Patreon firebrands. They just lost access to the platform.

 

[T51bwinterized]

Holy shit, I am on a porn piracy website defending our choice to receive payment for the fetish porn game I work on. How did this become my life?

 

[TheSexinati]

Well then, It looks like I just narrowly avoided some weird drama.

Holy shit, I am on a porn piracy website defending our choice to receive payment for the fetish porn game I work on. How did this become my life?

And I am trying to sell wooden spoons, boxes, clubs, cudgels, miniature wooden mouses, miniature wooden cheese, miniature birds and miscellaneous historical projectiles to make money so that I can eventually become a SOC patron... So I can't really judge.

 

[T51bwinterized]

...Can I have a wooden mouse?

 

[Kiranta01]

Sorry for asking you this, But I have some difficulty to trigger the Rowan x Liural x Alexia scene.

I know that the correct path is

- Rowan must had sex with Liural before
- Alexia must have Medium or above corruption level
- Rowan musn't lie about Liural to Alexia.

Does the fact that Helayna is the girl in Rowan's room is preventing me from getting this scene ?

No it doesn't because I triggered that very scene.

 

[TheSexinati]

...Can I have a wooden mouse?

Yeah sure, give me some time to heal up my hand and I can make one. I chiseled my hand doing the bowl of an oak spoon a few days ago. To those un-accustomed to woods, Oak is fairly hard.

I'll also probably try my hand at a Wolf. Because it's in the Orciad scene. I remember reading that and going "Fuck yeah, Orcish wood carver."

The good thing is, I can find out exactly what chisel I used on my other spoons by comparing the size of my wound to the chisels.

 

[Tydeusv]

The good thing is, I can find out exactly what chisel I used on my other spoons by comparing the size of my wound to the chisels.

Have you considered a career as a medieval monk slash murder detective?

 

[TheSexinati]

Have you considered a career as a medieval monk slash murder detective?

I'd be a terrible monk... me with a Tonsure? that is something the world does not deserve to see...

I would also be a bad detective. I can't even find the pickles in the fridge, even if they are right in front of me.

 

[prodigy]

...You're aware that the team who made the Subverse kickstarter made it partially using money they saved up from their former 10K Patreon page, right? Studio FOW aren't some Anti-Patreon firebrands. They just lost access to the platform.

And in your opinion it worked for them or not?

Holy shit, I am on a porn piracy website defending our choice to receive payment for the fetish porn game I work on. How did this become my life?

I wonder from where all your followers came from. Probably from well placed advertisement in morning paper

 

[Tydeusv]

I'd be a terrible monk... me with a Tonsure? that is something the world does not deserve to see...

Tonsure is a great word, isn't it? I remember, as a much younger man, reading Meyrink's Walpurgisnacht (or perhaps it was Der Golem, my memory isn't what it was), and wondering what the fuck one was.

 

[05841035411]

And in your opinion it worked for them or not?

I'm not the person you're talking to, but it occurs to me that the funding structures are so different as to be meaningless.

With a patreon, you have a comparatively consistent funding source that gives you immediate feedback as to whether your project's direction is appreciated by your most important supporters - you can make your project vast in scope, and so long as you have the organizational skill to keep it from becoming a muddled mess, you can just keep adding to it in perpetuity, and know that people like what you're doing enough to make it worthwile. Or, alternately, cut back and reassess your priorities when you notice nobody actually wanted the fifty CGs of lesbian catgirls you commissioned for an event chain only two percent of your backers went through, and you're only getting a third as much money per month as you once did. Furthermore, one can start a patreon as a relative unknown, and grow over time through the strength of your work - you don't need much advertising or anything to get started.

With Kickstarter, you have a fixed budget and the only people paying attention to your updates (should you even offer an early-access model as opposed to waiting until its polished) are a small cross-section that may or may not just be a vocal minority. You have to have a rigidly defined scope from the beginning, and possibly be prepared to pare things back if any part of the development process ends up troubled. Complicating things further, for a project in this field, you can expect relatively few sales after the game is finished - you'll be reliant on a kickstarter for your next project as well, with no guarantee of future funding. Especially if you wanted your next project to be fairly different from your last. You're also much more heavily constrained by your reputation at the start of your project - an unknown developer will struggle to get anyone to even notice them, while an established presence is given a lot of trust regardless of what they're promising. The first time, at least.

Going from one funding model to the other isn't that easy, as it usually involves fundamentally restructuring your project - at least, if you were taking proper advantage of both. Both can, and have, seen many creative ventures succeed - but the challenges facing either tend to be quite different.

(Personally, I think Patreon makes more sense for things like games, books, and comics, as it gives the developer more freedom to adjust to demand, and patrons to withdraw support if what they're getting doesn't match what they imagined, but that's a bit beside the point.)

(Uh, just to be clear, though... I've never actually done either, just known people who have.)

 

[tonicase24]

[B]T51bwinterized[/B] how do i change alexia's corruption is the debug menu? or thru console commands?

 

[prodigy]

I'm not the person you're talking to, but it occurs to me that the funding structures are so different as to be meaningless.

With a patreon, you have a comparatively consistent funding source that gives you immediate feedback as to whether your project's direction is appreciated by your most important supporters - you can make your project vast in scope, and so long as you have the organizational skill to keep it from becoming a muddled mess, you can just keep adding to it in perpetuity, and know that people like what you're doing enough to make it worthwile. Or, alternately, cut back and reassess your priorities when you notice nobody actually wanted the fifty CGs of lesbian catgirls you commissioned for an event chain only two percent of your backers went through, and you're only getting a third as much money per month as you once did. Furthermore, one can start a patreon as a relative unknown, and grow over time through the strength of your work - you don't need much advertising or anything to get started.

With Kickstarter, you have a fixed budget and the only people paying attention to your updates (should you even offer an early-access model as opposed to waiting until its polished) are a small cross-section that may or may not just be a vocal minority. You have to have a rigidly defined scope from the beginning, and possibly be prepared to pare things back if any part of the development process ends up troubled. Complicating things further, for a project in this field, you can expect relatively few sales after the game is finished - you'll be reliant on a kickstarter for your next project as well, with no guarantee of future funding. Especially if you wanted your next project to be fairly different from your last. You're also much more heavily constrained by your reputation at the start of your project - an unknown developer will struggle to get anyone to even notice them, while an established presence is given a lot of trust regardless of what they're promising. The first time, at least.

Going from one funding model to the other isn't that easy, as it usually involves fundamentally restructuring your project - at least, if you were taking proper advantage of both. Both can, and have, seen many creative ventures succeed - but the challenges facing either tend to be quite different.

(Personally, I think Patreon makes more sense for things like games, books, and comics, as it gives the developer more freedom to adjust to demand, and patrons to withdraw support if what they're getting doesn't match what they imagined, but that's a bit beside the point.)

(Uh, just to be clear, though... I've never actually done either, just known people who have.)

I do agree that It is more flexable, but in same way you aren't sure what are you producing. All depends on support you get. Second thing is as it could be good for developer it is bad for consumer as it molds a iteam in to a service. You aren't paying for finished product, you are paying for contributing funding it when service is rendered void you are left with nothing. Developer can delete all data and send it to the moon if he wish, and that only if they will be kind enough to actually finish it - they do not have to.

Another thing to ponder is if you are crowd funded (service) how you can claim that someone pirated your thing? You were paid to do work, you are providing service. No one took your workhours and put in in other project, nothing was pirated. Thats another issue with it.

 

[T51bwinterized]

[B]T51bwinterized[/B] how do i change alexia's corruption is the debug menu? or thru console commands?

Step 1: You become a Scion of Chaos tier backer ($25). That's the one that unlocks developer mode.
Step 2: You connect your Patreon to your discord.
Step 3: You ask us the question in the Backer channel of the discord.

Provided step 1 is complete, I can happily help with steps 2 and 3.

I hope this answers your question!

 

[tonicase24]

yes an thank you

 

[05841035411]

I do agree that It is more flexable, but in same way you aren't sure what are you producing. All depends on support you get. Second thing is as it could be good for developer it is bad for consumer as it molds a iteam in to a service. You aren't paying for finished product, you are paying for contributing funding it when service is rendered void you are left with nothing. Developer can delete all data and send it to the moon if he wish, and that only if they will be kind enough to actually finish it - they do not have to.

I mean, if you were supporting a complete tosser, sure, they could do that. But it's generally pretty clear when someone has the kind of issues that would lead them to burn all their work in an act of spite or depression - if you're going to be paying someone for months on end, it's usually a decent idea to read what they're writing.

As for the possibility of the project failing, sure, that happens (I'm still dissappointed that Reclaim Reality won't be finished) - but if a project has been in steady development for months and doesn't sound terribly desperate, it's generally a safe bet that they're going to be in steady development for several months after you start contributing. Perhaps something will derail it at some point in the future, but at that point, you've gotten what you've paid for - several more months of content for something you enjoy. Perhaps you won't have seen the ending like you'd hoped, but just how many incomplete games are there on F95s "latest updates" page at the moment? How many webcomics are out there at the moment? Clearly, finishing a project isn't necessary for people to enjoy it, though it's doubtless preferable.

Now, personally, I'm not usually interested in contributing to patreons - my personal position is that I can buy a good game for sixty dollars, and I'd usually pay well more than that for your average patreon project. But for something that is truly unique and wouldn't otherwise be made, it would be silly of me to begrudge the platform instead of the price - issues of trust are going to exist in every relationship like this, yet they will continue to be necessary until we reach a post-scarcity society that allows them to work for free.

Now, as for the issues on the developer's side, I do admittedly have some concerns - there's always a temptation to bend your creative vision for financial support, one issue that I suspect is behind the recent boom in incest themes; similarly, it encourages developers to design their projects in a way that creates clean break points every month, and cliffhangers to promote patron retention, even if it doesn't quite match how things would have flowed naturally.

But these issues have to be weighed against the prospect of the project not existing at all. The same issues plagued the art scene during the Renaissance, and many famous artists made what their patrons desired rather than what they personally would have preferred. How many have heard of Michelangelo? And how many have heard of the artist who couldn't afford his paints? It's easy to point out that the model has its flaws - it's a lot harder to propose a system without them.

Edit responding to edit:

Another thing to ponder is if you are crowd funded (service) how you can claim that someone pirated your thing? You were paid to do work, you are providing service. No one took your workhours and put in in other project, nothing was pirated. Thats another issue with it.

I considered a few different replies to this, from the scornful to the sarcastic, but they all came across as rather harsh.
Instead, I'll just ask you to please not insult my intelligence just so that you can have another reason to criticize Patreons.