sirviper235

Active Member
Apr 21, 2017
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Persoanlly, the way i see it, people are right to be pretty frustrated with Summer time Saga as a whole. Be they patron or Pirate, the amount of time that is spent in between updates is franky ridicoulous and really does feel like the dev is dragging their feet on purpouse for it. And that is a fair reason to be upset.

Some go a bit overboard, but it's not invalid. Quite frankly, the udpates are always pretty good, but they just take far too long in between them. It's understandable that the updates take time, given how high quality SS is. But it does still feel like outright milking people and relying on cost sunk fallacy, with us having played this for years.

In the end, it shoudl NOT take this long to update this game and honesltly the tech update while a good choice to improve the game, clearly is simply not worth the wait as it has to be padded with more scenes and quite frankly, teh fact is at this rate it will take YEARS before we even see Judith's route which i find to be absurd.
 

Omnikuken

Conversation Conqueror
Feb 22, 2018
7,562
7,324
Persoanlly, the way i see it, people are right to be pretty frustrated with Summer time Saga as a whole. Be they patron or Pirate, the amount of time that is spent in between updates is franky ridicoulous and really does feel like the dev is dragging their feet on purpouse for it. And that is a fair reason to be upset.

Some go a bit overboard, but it's not invalid. Quite frankly, the udpates are always pretty good, but they just take far too long in between them. It's understandable that the updates take time, given how high quality SS is. But it does still feel like outright milking people and relying on cost sunk fallacy, with us having played this for years.

In the end, it shoudl NOT take this long to update this game and honesltly the tech update while a good choice to improve the game, clearly is simply not worth the wait as it has to be padded with more scenes and quite frankly, teh fact is at this rate it will take YEARS before we even see Judith's route which i find to be absurd.
What "update" though ? We got batch 4 in April, which most people would still call an update. We should get batch 5 by the end of the week™ too, supposedly.

"Padded with more scenes" : you do realize we got to batch 5 because it took this long for the re-code, the main purpose of the batches is to give something to Patrons while they wait ? If it took them 5 months to do it, we might have stopped at batch 2 and everything else wouldn't be in the game (maybe later or sprinkled around other builds, but still).

"Sunken cost" and milking : yep, he sure is milking a free game 99% of people in here never gave 1$ to. Patreon doesn't work like every1 and their mom cry about in here. You don't pay for the game, you donate $ to the dev to say thanks and to show you like what he does. Nothing more. "But he makes 80k a month", so what ? He has ~30k people donating 3$ each. Big deal. If those people were actually mad at anything, they just have to stop giving him $ and go on with their lives ......

"Would take years for Judith" : even if the full tech build came out tomorrow, getting everything else done just to get to Judith's build would still take more than a year
 

sirviper235

Active Member
Apr 21, 2017
739
974
What "update" though ? We got batch 4 in April, which most people would still call an update. We should get batch 5 by the end of the week™ too, supposedly.

"Padded with more scenes" : you do realize we got to batch 5 because it took this long for the re-code, the main purpose of the batches is to give something to Patrons while they wait ? If it took them 5 months to do it, we might have stopped at batch 2 and everything else wouldn't be in the game (maybe later or sprinkled around other builds, but still).

"Sunken cost" and milking : yep, he sure is milking a free game 99% of people in here never gave 1$ to. Patreon doesn't work like every1 and their mom cry about in here. You don't pay for the game, you donate $ to the dev to say thanks and to show you like what he does. Nothing more. "But he makes 80k a month", so what ? He has ~30k people donating 3$ each. Big deal. If those people were actually mad at anything, they just have to stop giving him $ and go on with their lives ......

"Would take years for Judith" : even if the full tech build came out tomorrow, getting everything else done just to get to Judith's build would still take more than a year
I feel like your thinking i'm complaining about the game when i'm just being objective and saying people have a right/point to being upset over how slow it's going. These scenes are not true updates. They are padding. The definiton of it to be exact. Is it good? Yes. But it's still padding. Which is the point as these are not true updates. Just more scenes and short moments or mini-quests. Not true story updates.

As said before. Padding by very defintion. What you are describing is Padding.

Do you...Know what Cost Sunk Fallacy even IS? Cause it's not about money. You read 'cost'a nd thought i was referring to money. Cost Sunk, or Sunk Cost Fallacy is not about money most of the time. It's about time spent on/with something in a 'well i've come this far, might as well see it to the end/what's next' even if you don't enjoy it/want it to. That's what i was saying and it seems you don't know what that is. I reccomend looking it up. As Sumemrtime has defiently gone on long enouph for it to of sunk in for many people.

What yyou said abotu Judith in turn kind of just proves my point. It won't take 1 or 2 years to reach her. It will take 3 or 4 at this rate which as said. is absurd to think about it considering how this game once did monthly updates without trouble. Yes we have gotten reasons why it takes so much longer now, but the point stands. It's still a bit crazy it's goign so slow that Judith, one of the FIRST GIRLS in teh whole game that showed honest interest in our player character on her own has still not gotten her own storyline/update. But stand in's for Trumps family were thrown in and given whole storylines.

And same for Kim from north Korea.
 

Omnikuken

Conversation Conqueror
Feb 22, 2018
7,562
7,324
I feel like your thinking i'm complaining about the game when i'm just being objective and saying people have a right/point to being upset over how slow it's going. These scenes are not true updates. They are padding. The definiton of it to be exact. Is it good? Yes. But it's still padding. Which is the point as these are not true updates. Just more scenes and short moments or mini-quests. Not true story updates.

As said before. Padding by very defintion. What you are describing is Padding.

Do you...Know what Cost Sunk Fallacy even IS? Cause it's not about money. You read 'cost'a nd thought i was referring to money. Cost Sunk, or Sunk Cost Fallacy is not about money most of the time. It's about time spent on/with something in a 'well i've come this far, might as well see it to the end/what's next' even if you don't enjoy it/want it to. That's what i was saying and it seems you don't know what that is. I reccomend looking it up. As Sumemrtime has defiently gone on long enouph for it to of sunk in for many people.

What yyou said abotu Judith in turn kind of just proves my point. It won't take 1 or 2 years to reach her. It will take 3 or 4 at this rate which as said. is absurd to think about it considering how this game once did monthly updates without trouble. Yes we have gotten reasons why it takes so much longer now, but the point stands. It's still a bit crazy it's goign so slow that Judith, one of the FIRST GIRLS in teh whole game that showed honest interest in our player character on her own has still not gotten her own storyline/update. But stand in's for Trumps family were thrown in and given whole storylines.

And same for Kim from north Korea.
He's "padding" with batches cause it's taking too long for the code, not the other way around. Read my reply again : if it took the code 5 months, we wouldn't get so many "notupdates" and no scenes.

Also, sunken cost for who ? DC won't stop anytime soon, not cause he's wasted over 6 years in it but because he still cares about the game, otherwise he wouldn't stream daily and reply to almost every1 talking to him. He'd gone silent years ago and only post release stuff/polls on Patreon every once in a while if he was only doing it cause "he has to since he put so much time" already. Unless you're talking about the ~30k willingly donating duders that can just unpledge if they feel shafted. Which not many do, even after ~6 years of "milking"

Judith never got anything cause nobody voted for her, until she won her poll more than 2 years ago. Same for every other girl : Debbie has had the same trash art since day 1 and every1 cries about her not having much scenes. Guess what : nobody votes for her either when the polls come out, but then moan for years she has nothing .......

Trump's and co were part of the main story route. Judith doesn't. Would you have prefered to have 1 of the main plot points about finding who killed MC's notdad be 5 mins of empty dialogues with no1 around and then come out with a mafia boss from nowhere being the culprit with 0 backstory/lead-up ?
 

mattius77

Well-Known Member
May 16, 2017
1,688
1,360
The low dollar value tiers sort of exist for people who sign up and then forget they are a recurring expense. It's like a really cheap gym membership, or a record club. People just lose track of the hit, and before they realize what's what they are several months into the thing before they cancel. Multiply that by several thousand people globally coming to the game with fresh eyes every year, pledging as new contributors. It adds up quick, and it wouldn't surprise me if he's raising over $250k a year on the backs of these types of 'accidental' contributions alone.
 
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mattius77

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May 16, 2017
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And to be clear: I do not say that as a criticism of DC. More power to him, I say. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe he quit his 'day job' some time ago and focuses solely on Summertime Saga, which is not the worst of situations to be in. He logs in every morning and streams for a few hours, has no real external pressure or deadlines, can work or not work as he alone sees fit. Good on ya, dude.
 

Settum

Active Member
Jan 10, 2019
992
900
All fair mattius77 but if someone keeps paying a gym membership without going there all year, it's on them. It's not like the first few months are free, but you must still put in your credit card... you'll have plenty of time to cancel before your free trail membership expires... right?
 
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mattius77

Well-Known Member
May 16, 2017
1,688
1,360
All fair mattius77 but if someone keeps paying a gym membership without going there all year, it's on them. It's not like the first few months are free, but you must still put in your credit card... you'll have plenty of time to cancel before your free trail membership expires... right?
Yeah, sure. It's still the same concept. Subscription services of all stripes make a fair bit of revenue off of forgotten sign ups. Whether it's a streaming TV service that has a negative option they'll hope you forget about (meaning you have to affirmatively take steps to cancel) before getting at least one billing month out of you, or the $1 Patreon tier. The idea is that the business model is set up in part to capitalize on a certain percentage of consumers being idiots.

In the specific example we're talking about here, it is not something that's unique to Dark Cookie and Summertime Saga. It's just how Patreon is set up.
 
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j4yj4m

Forum Fanatic
Jun 19, 2017
4,155
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The low dollar value tiers sort of exist for people who sign up and then forget they are a recurring expense.
That's not really the case though. Even at the lowest tier you get access to the game right away from DC's own servers and you'll be able access the stream archive which basically includes every stream ever recorded by DC. I'd actually argue that everything above the $1 tier is pretty optional.

Next to that it's certainly true that people who pay very little will care less and may even still be happy to support - after all, it's just $12 a year.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe he quit his 'day job' some time ago and focuses solely on Summertime Saga, which is not the worst of situations to be in. He logs in every morning and streams for a few hours, has no real external pressure or deadlines, can work or not work as he alone sees fit. Good on ya, dude.
He actually quit his day job before he started working on SS. Back then he left the animation industry to start freelancing and SS was actually supposed to be his personal coding excercise to teach himself how to work with renpy. As mentioned many times, this game was never supposed to become anything at all, let alone anything big, which is why so much has to be reworked now in the first place.
 
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Omnikuken

Conversation Conqueror
Feb 22, 2018
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That's not really the case though. Even at the lowest tier you get access to the game right away from DC's own servers and you'll be able access the stream archive which basically includes every stream ever recorded by DC. I'd actually argue that everything above the $1 tier is pretty optional.

Next to that it's certainly true that people who pay very little will care less and may even still be happy to support - after all, it's just $12 a year.


He actually quit his day job before he started working on SS. Back then he left the animation industry to start freelancing and SS was actually supposed to be his personal coding excercise to teach himself how to work with renpy. As mentioned many times, this game was never supposed to become anything at all, let alone anything big, which is why so much has to be reworked now in the first place.
Most perks you get in higher tiers is secret Discord channels and more votes in poll
 

j4yj4m

Forum Fanatic
Jun 19, 2017
4,155
6,097
Most perks you get in higher tiers is secret Discord channels and more votes in poll
Sure, and stuff like the detailed tracker, wallpapers, personal lines for Cpt. Sploosh etc. - I'm not saying there are no benefits.

I just wanted to say is, that it's not like with some other games, where you get nothing but the patreon feed on the lowest tier.
 

Omnikuken

Conversation Conqueror
Feb 22, 2018
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Grade 6 math, grade 3 spelling, and grade 4 grammar are difficult for some.
Even better than him not getting up to 100% : according to his ungodly math skills, it took them over 6 years to get to where we are in the tech build. Which means that they were working on the tech update before 0.1 came out. Such power shouldn't be in the hands of mere mortals
 
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