So what is this community consensus on how long these developers give updates?
- Thread starter Vitez
- Start date
- Jul 10, 2017
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There is no simple answer... One creator might have 3 hours a week to work on his/her project, another one might have 30 hours.
Anyone doing creative work, or.. just work in general know progress depends on time and effort.
Anyone doing creative work, or.. just work in general know progress depends on time and effort.
Depends on the game, and the developer.
Personally I prefer to do a chunk that is substantial enough that it's worth sitting down and playing, rather than encouraging players to skip 2-3 versions. "Enough" to me should ideally be ~45-60 mins additional content for a normal reader (ignoring obvious grind).
Some stuff goes faster; using Honey Select or other Illusion games makes renders a lot quicker to get out (they're meant for realtime). Daz is slower, and for most people 2D hand-illustrations are slowest of all.
Complexity and branching is harder to write than linear, more interactivity in the world and the mechanics is harder to create than a kinetic novel... so there's a lot that goes into "how much work is something". And that's before you start talking about how much time does the devteam have to work on it, how big is it, etc.
Personally I prefer to do a chunk that is substantial enough that it's worth sitting down and playing, rather than encouraging players to skip 2-3 versions. "Enough" to me should ideally be ~45-60 mins additional content for a normal reader (ignoring obvious grind).
Some stuff goes faster; using Honey Select or other Illusion games makes renders a lot quicker to get out (they're meant for realtime). Daz is slower, and for most people 2D hand-illustrations are slowest of all.
Complexity and branching is harder to write than linear, more interactivity in the world and the mechanics is harder to create than a kinetic novel... so there's a lot that goes into "how much work is something". And that's before you start talking about how much time does the devteam have to work on it, how big is it, etc.
- Mar 8, 2018
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I expect more from a 3 month interval than every month updates, whether or not I like them enough to support is entirely up to me. Longer than 3 months between updates has to be something special imo. Not necessarily in quantity but definitely in quality.
- Jul 10, 2017
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One creator can put in just as much work in a week as another do a month. Or just as much in a month than someone does in 3 months. The quality of the update matters more imho than the time it took to make it.
- Mar 8, 2018
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Obviously. I can't do anything about the devs but I can do something about what I choose to do.
- Jul 10, 2017
- 6,158
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- May 8, 2018
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I would say 1-3 months is a good amount of time between updates. As a player, I understand that good things take time and effort to make, and not everybody can dedicate 8-10 hours a day on their game projects (unless they're paid to do it, of course). I don't mind how long an update takes (within reason, of course) as long as it's quality.
So, with that in mind...
As a developer, my team and I can only afford to work on our game for about an average of 10-15 hours per week, sometimes less (real life, work and fatigue can be a real bummer). Still, we try to aim for 20-30 minutes of content per update, and polish up the artwork and writing as best as we can.
That being said, we can probably push out an update every 2-3 weeks if our concern is just quantity, but the artwork would be sketches or scribbles and dialogue would be an absolute mess. and that's obviously what I don't want to do, but naturally this means updates will take longer to push out.
So, with that in mind...
As a developer, my team and I can only afford to work on our game for about an average of 10-15 hours per week, sometimes less (real life, work and fatigue can be a real bummer). Still, we try to aim for 20-30 minutes of content per update, and polish up the artwork and writing as best as we can.
That being said, we can probably push out an update every 2-3 weeks if our concern is just quantity, but the artwork would be sketches or scribbles and dialogue would be an absolute mess. and that's obviously what I don't want to do, but naturally this means updates will take longer to push out.
- Jan 13, 2020
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You guys are forgetting the most important part about making an adult game.. every update should be fap-worthy. Yes.. Fap-worthy. I'd say that average player should get no less than two faps per update out of your game. One fap if the story is really good.
If they meet that condition, then you just need the story to go with the faps and fill in between them and you are golden, you have a solid update. Congratulations.
If they meet that condition, then you just need the story to go with the faps and fill in between them and you are golden, you have a solid update. Congratulations.
- Apr 27, 2017
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Personally i think every month can be too often for a small group or solo dev, they don't have time to put out meaningful updates in that timeframe if they are part-timers like a lot of first time devs, too much pressure and they burn out before they finish.
A lot of the devs who put out real quality, Philly, Motzkeys ect. will go for a more substantial update once per quarter or w/e, i'd sooner wait three months for a few hours of decent gameplay than a month for half an hour with two or three scenes in. Also there is pacing to consider, a dev who's updates are little and often will be forced to drip feed sex content whereas a dev who goes for bigger chunk, while still expected to give us the goods each update, can vary the pace a little better and make the sex content fit the narrative better IMO.
All that said in favour of larger and less frequent updates there are cases, especially with sandboxes, where small frequent updates can work well, look at Faerin and Baal(superpowered), small regular updates work well for them, so perhaps it's more to do with the type of game, i really do think that VN's benefit from larger updates rather than small and regular though.
A lot of the devs who put out real quality, Philly, Motzkeys ect. will go for a more substantial update once per quarter or w/e, i'd sooner wait three months for a few hours of decent gameplay than a month for half an hour with two or three scenes in. Also there is pacing to consider, a dev who's updates are little and often will be forced to drip feed sex content whereas a dev who goes for bigger chunk, while still expected to give us the goods each update, can vary the pace a little better and make the sex content fit the narrative better IMO.
All that said in favour of larger and less frequent updates there are cases, especially with sandboxes, where small frequent updates can work well, look at Faerin and Baal(superpowered), small regular updates work well for them, so perhaps it's more to do with the type of game, i really do think that VN's benefit from larger updates rather than small and regular though.
Most of the devs here are amateurs and are also only doing it part time. So I think there's a pretty wide variation. Personally I wouldn't conform to any set release schedule. I would target a reasonable chunk of content and release whenever that is finished. Devs that stick to a release schedule tend to end up with things like placeholders and other unfinished content that just shouldn't be there IMO. If it's not done yet, don't put it in there. But if they stick to a release schedule they have no choice. That big event you're doing might not be possible in a month. Maybe it takes 6-8 weeks. So either you never do it at all, you skip a month, or release something that's buggy and unfinished.