Ren'Py Summertime Saga [v21.0.0 wip.5091] [Kompas Productions]

[Omnikuken]

It's all fun and games until every1 and their mom calls out to people to mass unpledge, too bad it never happened and will probably never either

 

[j4yj4m]

There's also a reason why it's free, it's not charity it's an intentional lucrative business model. Consumers of a free game don't need to pay for the privilege of feedback and criticism can lead to improvements for everyone. So as much as those zealots think they're rescuing damsel in distress developers by interjecting themselves between them and the consumers of their products, they're not. They're just hurting all parties involved including themselves.

And the sad truth is even in the cases where they did pay, all these people typically end up saying is "if you don't like it just don't buy it." Which is the worst possible thing to do. That halts the spread of awareness of a prospective problem while instead advocating cutting off the "problem people" before they alert other consumers to it. Hence the products never need to evolve and can implement detrimental things unimpeded. It's exactly this type of behavior that has wreaked havoc on the entire game industry, especially free games.

So TLDR if you see someone criticizing a product you like, whether it's Summertime Saga or any other, stop and think before you go and bite off his head. Unless he's proposing something that will actively hurt your play experience if implemented, just let it go. You don't have to agree let alone act as his defender, the dev is a professional and is more than capable of handling criticism. And in the long run, not acting as a barrier can lead to a better product for you and everyone else.

The main problem with your point is that the vast(!) majority of people who complain don't actually complain about the game, but mainly about two totally different points. These being, that DC is making too much money and he's too slow. None of these two are connected in any way to the actual content of the game.

Worse even, that most of these people obviously don't even try to inform themselves before they write their "productive consumer response", but probably just see "$60k income" and "2 to 3 months no update" when they start typing some ad hominem stuff.

So while what you are writing is correct in principle, it's not at all what this here usually is about. It's been ages since somebody actually wrote a constructive criticism about SS here, even though there are indeed quite a few things to discuss.

 

[Tehemai]

The main problem with your point is that the vast(!) majority of people who complain don't actually complain about the game, but mainly about two totally different points. These being, that DC is making too much money and he's too slow. None of these two are connected in any way to the actual content of the game.

Worse even, that most of these people obviously don't even try to inform themselves before they write their "productive consumer response", but probably just see "$60k income" and "2 to 3 months no update" when they start typing some ad hominem stuff.

So while what you are writing is correct in principle, it's not at all what this here usually is about. It's been ages since somebody actually wrote a constructive criticism about SS here, even though there are indeed quite a few things to discuss.

Even if that were true, which imo I don't think it is as much as it is a gross oversimplification, that still wouldn't be a problem with my point as much as it is an irrelevant rationalization of why they deserve the hostility. Let's say your claims were correct and the criticism were indeed somehow illegitimate, he still would not need some fans to attack other fans for giving them. That doesn't help anyone, that just causes needless animosity and alienation. It's not a job for consumers to be the arbiters of legitimacy for other consumer feedback. Unless that feedback can adversely affect their experience, they have no reason to attack their fellow consumers for it.

He is the developer. He is the one running the business. It is obviously his job to make judgments on what is constructive feedback from his consumers, not anyone else. What's happening now is more akin to a customer coming into a store to complain about a product they purchased, then another customer overhearing it and starting a fight with them instead of letting the business owner handle it. It just doesn't make sense and the escalation just causes more problems, not less.

And I mean really, you know what they're saying. Sometimes people don't put it as eloquently as one would hope as everyone has their own manner of speaking. But it's pretty obvious that those two points are one, the common theme being more along the lines of he should be able to do more given his resources. Not simply that he's making too much money. Whether you agree or not doesn't mean it's not a standard consumer complaint. In fact it's probably the most stereotypical complaint there is even outside of this field. Either way there may be a reason you hear it so much so let him just address it instead of trying to cut others off at the legs. At worst he explains why he cannot go faster and at best he looks into ways to optimize his production, getting you a better product faster.

 

[j4yj4m]

@Tehemai:
I think what you are writing is a bit besides the point. If someone seriously wants to complain with the intention to improve the game, he should do it in a place where there's actually a chance that his complaint will be read and met, which would be DC's discord, his streams, etc. but certainly not this board, where it very likely won't be read by a member of the team and where he certainly will not get an answer from DC. Trying to change anything by writing here is futile.

To you second point, by now it's pretty much obvious that doesn't want to grow his team beyond what he has. The last real funding goal was set at $25.000 and beyond that nothing was promised. It's his choice and he seems willing to live with the consequence. Just because people give more money doesn't mean that he has to change his way of working.
So sure, people are free to complain about it, but others are just as free to point out that that complaint is out there for almost 3 years now and that the situation won't change. I'd actually say pointing that out is a service, so people don't give DC money because they hope it would increase the speed.

 

[moi!moi!moi!]

And I mean really, you know what they're saying. Sometimes people don't put it as eloquently as one would hope as everyone has their own manner of speaking. But it's pretty obvious that those two points are one, the common theme being more along the lines of he should be able to do more given his resources. Not simply that he's making too much money. Whether you agree or not doesn't mean it's not a standard consumer complaint. In fact it's probably the most stereotypical complaint there is even outside of this field. Either way there may be a reason you hear it so much so let him just address it instead of trying to cut others off at the legs. At worst he explains why he cannot go faster and at best he looks into ways to optimize his production, getting you a better product faster.

Wow someone who isn't a complete brainlet and doesn't purposefully misrepresents and justify their reasoning to gatekeep a thread to stifle discussion. Your presentation of the issue is perfect, but unfortunately you can't make people understand something that they can't grasp in the first place.

Your reply will fall on deaf ears and they will just repeat this behavior with no sign of self awareness, save yourself the time. Cheers

 

[Tehemai]

@Tehemai:
I think what you are writing is a bit besides the point. If someone seriously wants to complain with the intention to improve the game, he should do it in a place where there's actually a chance that his complaint will be read and met, which would be DC's discord, his streams, etc. but certainly not this board, where it very likely won't be read by a member of the team and where he certainly will not get an answer from DC. Trying to change anything by writing here is futile.

To you second point, by now it's pretty much obvious that doesn't want to grow his team beyond what he has. The last real funding goal was set at $25.000 and beyond that nothing was promised. It's his choice and he seems willing to live with the consequence. Just because people give more money doesn't mean that he has to change his way of working.
So sure, people are free to complain about it, but others are just as free to point out that that complaint is out there for almost 3 years now and that the situation won't change. I'd actually say pointing that out is a service, so people don't give DC money because they hope it would increase the speed.

Anywhere is fine to complain. It's on topic and it spreads the word to other consumers. As I mentioned before, it's more a matter of getting the word out. Just like a single person not donating doesn't help, a single person giving him this criticism won't either. The more people notice the problem, the more they will speak out everywhere. And the more they speak out, the higher the chances the problem gets acknowledged and resolved.

As for him not wanting to increase his team, that's for him to communicate. Not for fans to assume. The conversation needs to be started, not shut down. If he doesn't want to increase, he can explain it to the community. Then they may be satisfied or they may press for more details. They may even recommend alternative solutions. Or maybe he will even change his mind. No matter what way the cycle of communication and feedback plays out, it can lead to a more satisfied playerbase and hopefully a better game. In any case, overzealous fans suppressing dissent causing resentment among others is clearly not the way to go. That doesn't remotely make sense no matter which side of the fence you're on.

 

[Tehemai]

Wow someone who isn't a complete brainlet and doesn't purposefully misrepresents and justify their reasoning to gatekeep a thread to stifle discussion. Your presentation of the issue is perfect, but unfortunately you can't make people understand something that they can't grasp in the first place.

Your reply will fall on deaf ears and they will just repeat this behavior with no sign of self awareness, save yourself the time. Cheers

I know it's an uphill battle, fandom is a powerful emotional thing. It can be tough to accept criticisms to things you've grown attached to. It's a lesson everyone has to learn at some point in their life so there will always be more people that need to learn it. Or at least they should but unfortunately I've noticed that it is dying with technology facilitating echo chambers. Hence why I felt the need to speak up. All I hope is that I changed some minds or at least helped them make the first step towards understanding the importance of letting people give their feedback, even if they don't agree.

 

[j4yj4m]

Anywhere is fine to complain. It's on topic and it spreads the word to other consumers. As I mentioned before, it's more a matter of getting the word out. Just like a single person not donating doesn't help, a single person giving him this criticism won't either. The more people notice the problem, the more they will speak out everywhere. And the more they speak out, the higher the chances the problem gets acknowledged and resolved.

As for him not wanting to increase his team, that's for him to communicate. Not for fans to assume. The conversation needs to be started, not shut down. If he doesn't want to increase, he can explain it to the community. Then they may be satisfied or they may press for more details. They may even recommend alternative solutions. Or maybe he will even change his mind. No matter what way the cycle of communication and feedback plays out, it can lead to a more satisfied playerbase and hopefully a better game. In any case, overzealous fans suppressing dissent causing resentment among others is clearly not the way to go. That doesn't remotely make sense no matter which side of the fence you're on.

I think you are way to idealistic and almost naive about it by assuming that people always have serious, positive motives when they write something. There are people around here who admit that they haven't played the game for more than a year and still complain regularly, there are people who have no clue and just assume things, there are even people who make up promises to then complain they aren't met. It's fine to tell them they are wrong and to explain why. After all, that's what boards are for. By your own argument I'd actually claim it's almost necessary to put it right, so people can see what's actually going on and so that discussions can actually take place.

 

[Tehemai]

I think you are way to idealistic and almost naive about it by assuming that people always have serious, positive motives when they write something. There are people around here who admint that they haven't played the game for more than a year and still complain regularly, there are people who have non clue and just assume things, there even people who make up promises to then complain they aren't met. It' fine to tell them they are wrong and to explain why. After all, that's what boards are for. By your own argument I'd actually claim it's necessary to put it right so people can see what's actually going on.

Assuming people are acting in good faith until shown otherwise is the basics of having a working civilization, not simply idealism. Hence the meaning of the word civility or the expression of giving people the benefit of the doubt. If you are assuming the person is acting in bad faith, discussion is entirely fruitless and all you're left with is pointless tribalism. Given this is a discussion board, that really doesn't seem like a sensible default to take.

You see people that haven't played the game for a year complaining as people that are working in bad faith but the more simple explanation would be that they are fans that haven't played because of their issue with it. Like say there isn't enough new content for them to replay it all again, hence their complaint. That would be a good place to start to try to understand them instead of simply writing them off and going into attack mode. Were they not fans, they would not be here. They would have nothing to gain by complaining.

As for it being necessary for you to "put it right", that would absolutely not be my logic at play. A different consumer's feedback is not a commercial product requiring of your feedback to improve. All they're trying to do is get the word out to other consumers so it eventually falls on developer ears. Unless you have pertinent developer words that directly address the subject at hand, you also don't really have the qualifications to "put it right" as you are neither the developer nor his PR representative. For example when you said he doesn't want to grow his team, that is at best an educated guess. You don't actually know that and even if he did say it some point, he might not stand by that opinion today.

All you end up doing by playing interference with speculation, and worse yet in assumption of bad faith, is create an infinite loop wherein the initial feedback cannot go through and consumers grow increasingly frustrated. Hence why you start seeing more people like what you describe who have lost patience with the game and its overzealous defenders. So unless you have a reason why you want to jam up that feedback up and create a hostile environment then it would be wise to just let the developer do his job. At worse, nothing of importance happens and at best you get a better game. It's a win-win.

Anyways I already said way too much so I'll end things here. Just think about it and try to be a little more open minded when dealing with other fans. Or even just people in general. You'll be surprised how many people you hated turn out to not be so bad.

 

[Majordeathwish]

But every update has a really big amount of content? Also he is completely transparent about how much he has gotten done? Not only that, but he has his own life. Correct me if im wrong, but doesnt he have a kid?

 

[cgasper]

But every update has a really big amount of content? Also he is completely transparent about how much he has gotten done? Not only that, but he has his own life. Correct me if im wrong, but doesnt he have a kid?

I would say it depends on how you look at it. Considering the amount of money they get each month this would be pretty much considered their fulltime job or at least each of them would be paid several times more then I get at my full time IT job.
In my case if I were self-employed and had a kid I would still need and be expected to get the job done otherwise that would mean no pay, unlike Patreon where it's pretty much withdrawn each month no questions asked.
Content-wise I originally played this game a several years ago and realized it was still being developed about a two or three years ago and other than constantly adding new characters and reworking original ones I haven't seen any real content added that would justify over 720 000$ a year. For that much money, a studio could finish a full-on 3D game porn or no porn that had several hours more of content and would actually be complete most likely of something like A title quality AAA if you do their income and maybe 3 - 5 years.
While I do admit I'm not aware of what difficulty game development is in Ren'Py so I might be wrong since I'm only familiar with other engines.
Now that would be just my opinion however I find this game to be more of a cash grab at this point especially considering that people keep throwing money into it than anything else.
Only characters I actually liked were pretty much sidelined for what I'd call cow titted bimbo copy paste girls apart from if I'm not mistaken 4 characters that didn't have cow breasts in the past few years worth of updates the rest felt like bodies were copy-pasted with some scaling and different heads placed somewhat.
As for how much content was added from what I recall version 18 and 19 if counted the whole version not split into .5 it would depend if skipping through it would be over very fast if actually playing as a VN it could last maybe 1-2 hours (I'm a fast reader) majority of which is the same image with a few variations.

 

[j4yj4m]

Correct me if im wrong, but doesnt he have a kid?

He had one on the way when he started and recently got his third. The birth of his second child was certainly a reason why Diane's update back then was delayed and I wouldn't be surprised if getting his 3rd delayed the last 0.20.0 update by a week or two.

@Tehemai:
Thank you for you life-changing advice, what would I have done without it.

As said, this is a forum where it's meant to be controversial, everybody can state his or her opinion and others are free to disagree. If it's very controversial or worse, disagreements will be stronger. That's simply how it goes and that's how it should be. If people can't deal with that, I'm somewhat sorry about it, but I don't think we have to create a safe space here on a porn forum to discuss a porn game. Just keep it simple. If someone asks a question, he'll usually get an answer, if someone wants to discuss something seriously , there'll usually be a reasonable discussion, if somebody throws "one line BS", BS comes back.

As to qualifications, the only way to get informations on this board is via users, as there's nobody here from the team who would be qualified to answer any questions by your standard. So if you want a balanced discussion, someone will have to bring those, our you'll simply create a pointless bubble, as there are so many on the internet.

But well, I guess it's time to not keep you from riding your high horse somewhere else. Farewell.

@cgasper:
That's the privilege of being self-employed and having your own product on a global market. You probably wouldn't complain why your favourite singer, actor, sportstar, etc. makes millions, even though he probably doesn't work much harder than we do. They make money simply because there are enough people who like what they are doing and give them money because of that. The same is true to some degree for DC by now. Officially the game needs $25.000 a months to be developed and everything more is an extra for the team. At least that's how I see it.

 

[Majordeathwish]

I would say it depends on how you look at it. Considering the amount of money they get each month this would be pretty much considered their fulltime job or at least each of them would be paid several times more then I get at my full time IT job.
In my case if I were self-employed and had a kid I would still need and be expected to get the job done otherwise that would mean no pay, unlike Patreon where it's pretty much withdrawn each month no questions asked.
Content-wise I originally played this game a several years ago and realized it was still being developed about a two or three years ago and other than constantly adding new characters and reworking original ones I haven't seen any real content added that would justify over 720 000$ a year. For that much money, a studio could finish a full-on 3D game porn or no porn that had several hours more of content and would actually be complete most likely of something like A title quality AAA if you do their income and maybe 3 - 5 years.
While I do admit I'm not aware of what difficulty game development is in Ren'Py so I might be wrong since I'm only familiar with other engines.
Now that would be just my opinion however I find this game to be more of a cash grab at this point especially considering that people keep throwing money into it than anything else.
Only characters I actually liked were pretty much sidelined for what I'd call cow titted bimbo copy paste girls apart from if I'm not mistaken 4 characters that didn't have cow breasts in the past few years worth of updates the rest felt like bodies were copy-pasted with some scaling and different heads placed somewhat.
As for how much content was added from what I recall version 18 and 19 if counted the whole version not split into .5 it would depend if skipping through it would be over very fast if actually playing as a VN it could last maybe 1-2 hours (I'm a fast reader) majority of which is the same image with a few variations.

That honestly makes sense. At least it isn't a yanderedev situation. Also im pretty sure that darkcookie makes polls asking what should be in the next update. I think it's mostly the patreons making all the characters with big tits have more work put into them. My personal favorite is trap Eve.

 

[j4yj4m]

I think it's mostly the patreons making all the characters with big tits have more work put into them.

Though to be fair, patrons usually can't influence how characters will look. There's a chance to get a small say on picarto at times while he's streaming, but usually it's indeed DC himself who sets the design and the size of the boobs, unless it's of course a character that was chosen via raffle, like Odette.

I mean, it's really not as bad as some poeple make it sound. In the last two years we had Jenny, Odette, Consuela, Maria and Tina with large chests and Eve, Grace and Josephine wiith small ones. Next update we'll get Melonia with larger ones and Iwanka and Nadya with smaller/normal ones. That's a 6 to 5 ratio and thus pretty fair to me, given that it's still a porn game.

Edit: I actually forgot Liu Wang for the next update, which would indeed make it 6:6 large/small.

My personal favorite is trap Eve.

Very good choice.

 

[laddiestlad]

dc not wanting to grow his team/refusing to entertain the thought of hiring an artist is my biggest gripe with him

 

[Badjourasmix]

64% and 1 art task left!

 

[j4yj4m]

Hm, I just asked DC about the update again and it does indeed look like the tracker is just for the first part of 0.20.5, at least that's how I understood his answer. That's actually interesting, given that it never changed after they announced the split. So yeah, that probably means a middle to late august release for the first and late oktober/november for the second. I really hope it's worth it in the end.

 

[McSlut]

time to abandon all my rhonda hopes for this year i guess

 

[Badjourasmix]

Yep seems like this year we only will get the main story and maybe a small update around christmas if we're lucky.

 

[j4yj4m]

Yep seems like this year we only will get the main story and maybe a small update around christmas if we're lucky.

Yeah, though in that case I actually kind of hope he'll skip the surprise update. I mean, by november we'll have had almost 13 months of secondary characters and I really think Ronda can't come soon enough.

But at least now there's hope that he'll never have to touch the main story stuff again afterwards.