i've been thinking about something related to this for the past several months.
In order for devs to make $ from patreon, they need to attract patrons that are willing to continuously pay month after month during the game development.
While updates are theoretically always a payday for the devs, having loyal patrons that pays month over month i think might be extremely important.
For the past several months I was thinking which games i will drop and which game i want to still pay. It got me thinking what are the considerations for me to drop patreon support. And I reached a personal conclusion that it is based on how much I want to see the game continues.
From there I see that broadly there are 2 types of how renpy AVN games attract patrons.
Those that attract patrons through it's story. Where patron's focus is to see the story continuation. An example of this would be Deluca Family that despite not having that much scenes so far with the main cast.
The second is those that attracts patrons through it's sexiness. One of the major example of this for me is Summer Heat. Despite having 5 releases, there are very little story s of yet. Patrons are not sustaining it to see it's story, it's because it's hot.
I can't comment on Dog Days of Summer specifically because I haven't play it but taking EndlessNights comment about the existence of tonal shift between the ongoing story and then abrupt jump to lewdness is applicable to the average games that I've played.
Take Arson Betrayal. While there are scenes that does make narrative sense and adds to the story, other scenes doesn't have to be there. Almost none of Deluca's scenes with the side characters needs to exist. And not all Projekt Passion's scenes adds to the story either. The scenes exist because sexy scenes are needed to attract patrons of the second category.
These 3 are all games that actually have a story to tell.
On the opposite side of this 3 games, despite Eternum having a story to tell, it decides to lean really heavily towards presenting sexiness first, Even to the point that the narration itself takes a backseat.
There are also games that managed to put both story and sexiness equally upfront where the sexiness adds to the narrative and the story works better because there is sex in it. The 2 element adds to each other and thus manage to attract both patron category.
There are very few games I've played so far that are equally strong on both ends like this.
I think those that are, the settings of the story mainly revolves around sex. Pale Carnations being the single biggest example of this because the story itself is about lewdness, front and center. "College games" genre being another example of this with BaDIK being the most successful.
I would say Our Red String manage to both tell a simple story and the sexiness really adds to the story too.
It's a major improvement compared to Good Girls Gone Bad with regards to it's story development too.
I think there is something to be said here on how developers
might need to construct believable settings of the story where the settings could then manage to put both "a story to tell" and sexiness equally front and center, and thus hopefully cast a wider net of patrons ensuring game development continuations.
There are many games where I think sexiness is not needed within the story.
Unraveling August is still entertaining to read based on how the character's lines are written, and the game would actually be better story-wise if Chapter 1 does not happen the way it did (one of the 2 sister is outwardly lewd towards the MC).
For Unraveling August, it actually feels "jarring". And this jarring feelings or a tonal whiplash is probably what
EndlessNights means for Dog Days of Summer.
There are renpy AVN games where it's narrative would actually be better if it's less sexy.
Chapter 1 is actually a detriment to Unraveling August's narrative, and so does Ch 1 of Arson Betrayal too. Neither does Mad World need almost any of the scenes we got. And for Deluca, it needs no scenes at all.
The story to all these still works even without most of the scenes.
I hope in the future there are more games that manage to make both elements equally essential to the game so it could attract the widest net of patrons. Because so far, there aren't that many from my view.