Games like Big Brother came around when H games weren't as abundant as they are now. They were in high demand and short supply so a few lucky ones managed to bring in the support despite the games not being amazing.
Now we've gone the exact opposite direction. There are too many games for the amount of people supporting them.
Also marketing. You can't exactly advertise H games like AAA companies can so a lot get overlooked unless they manage to get a following of people willing to spread the word.
Piracy in the regard is a double edged sword. On the one hand the developers aren't getting anything for their work from pirates but on the other they get that ever so important word of mouth and hopefully some of those pirates enjoy it enough to throw some money at it.
Simply making a good game isn't enough anymore. Now you need to make it and hope word gets out about it.
Then you have absolute wankers like me that usually wait until a game is finished or as good as before throwing money at it. Reason for that being i've seen far too many games I enjoyed get abandoned that I can't justify handing over money on promises and dreams alone. I know patreon isn't for buying finished products but i've also got a wife, kids and an actual gaming hobby to fund and the fact I had to work damn hard to get where I am financially that i'm very particular about what my money goes on.
We are pretty appreciative of both the support and the words of encouragement. The sake of being OCD about correctness makes me point out that this game actually pre-dates Big Brother, but that's not really that important. At the end of the day, we think that having a big community is good. Would we like to pull in as much money per month to put into development as Big Brother? Sure. Absolutely. But, we wish Dark Silver and Co. the best, same as any other dev who is putting their heart and soul into a medium that we love.
True plus I have also noticed that many people care about visuals more than game depth. SoC has many things going on, its more complex than BB or DreamofDesire etc. While they have more cool looking visuals faster development.
So even in H-games Visuals and simplicity seems to matter more to majority.
Nah no need to be hard on yourself, Its perfectly understandable. While I fear games getting abandoned , another issue is I cant really play a game in increments. It spoils the fun, the spark for that game vanishes. I have played SoC for months now. Other games I only try/check after .5 version increments atleast or if its near the end then final version.
It's good to hear such kind comments! We appreciate the fact that you continue to check out the latest update month after month.
Are we supposed to start a new game? Getting a ton of errors trying to load my old save files.
Yes. Lotta changes to the game since the last release, especially with the UI. If we could update the game without voiding save files, we would, but the needs of development trump the need to keep saves. We've had a discussion recently about the option of soliciting files from the different routes of the game up to the point of the previous updates. However, it's still just in the idea phase.
man this game has a LOT of great reviews, even at the almighty vndb. now i want know: how much content is there ingame? two years of development and it's "only" version 0.2.26. are they particularly slow or is this just a fucking huuuuuge game?
Well, we have a great community! Our current estimate is that there is about 2-3 hours of story content in the game, though that might not account for reading speed. There is, however, numerous optional events that players can try and that will add to the gameplay time. Furthermore, the game's content is designed to change dramatically based on player choice. As such, there can be multiple playwrights without getting too many scenes that are identical. This isn't an official number, but my best estimate is that with multiple playthroughs the play time is easily in the ten hour range.
The thing is, the intended scope of the game is very large. We currently have hundreds of thousands of words in the game script. Before the game is done there will be many millions of words, and hundreds of sex scenes implemented.
