Ren'Py The Headmaster [Mykock's Manor Ch.3] [Altos and Herdone]

[Clover7313]

Everyone can help me fix this error

 

[Kylo99]

Does it matter who I choose out of Dixie and Anna for the experiments gone wild quest?

 

[ccxvidonaferens]

Does it matter who I choose out of Dixie and Anna for the experiments gone wild quest?

If I'm remembering correctly if you select Anna there is a little more content from Trixie at the MC's house one evening.

 

[raven54]

If I'm remembering correctly if you select Anna there is a little more content from Trixie at the MC's house one evening.

That's how I remember it too. Also I don't find the scene in question spectacular so probably not worth reloading an old savegame for this. To be completely honest I found it to be downright boring, but I suppose it depends on how interesting you find Trixie in general.

 

[I'm Not Thea Lundgren!]

You are probably pissing into the wind. Haters gonna hate hate hate.

Let me join you, just don't cross the streams.

No clear source of the $14,000 claim, might be a misunderstanding of patreon, View attachment 5290660 , but lets run with it. Clearly misses that Altos and Herdone are two devs, doesn't factor Patreon's cut, or currency conversion fee, so already only £4,400 each. Then there are the expenses you mentioned, paid help. Lastly, can any patreon advise if they collect monthly or only per update?

As to ending? Good game, could not care less if it goes longer than The Simpsons if the content remains good. What about 'closure'? 'Closure' can take a horse dildo sideways up the arse.

I was wondering about that, but didn't mention it as I didn't dig into it. It takes time to find all the needed info if that is even possible, so I was leaning on it being a made up number. If I won't bother investigating, why would I assume a random person did it. Show us where the number comes from or we will assume it to be made up.


Let's not forget taxes takes a cut too. Generally speaking once you get more than a certain (small) amount from online activities, for tax purposes it starts to count as salary. However paid work (like say paying somebody for custom clothes) can be paid before calculating taxable income, so pay attention to your local tax laws. Then we start to say something like a new GPU can be tax deductible and excluded from sales tax if it is an investment for increasing productivity, through if that is done, using it for playing non-work games becomes tax fraud.

In short even if we can figure out the income, there are so many unknown factors to determine what profit/salary Altos and Herdone ends up with that I will say anybody claiming a number for that probably made it up.


It's my understanding that payments aren't linked to releases. Some people set up patreons without ever releasing through Patreon, so apparently that can be a thing. There is probably a delay in payments like on youtube, twitch etc. The reason being that if a stolen credit card is used and the owner objects, the money will be pulled back. If that happens after Patreon has already given the money to a user, then it's their loss unless they file a civil lawsuit. However if they delay the payment for a month or two, the money being paid back will be in the poll of money not paid yet. While not a concern if the monthly income is stable, it does mean making a good release, which creates a spike in patreons will probably have a delay before that spike reaches the bank account. The place it hurts the most is if some youtuber or something starts collecting because "I need more money. Can't pay rent at the end of the month". That probably won't work due to the delay.


At some point the story is used up and starts repeating itself. You see that in TV series where they start to reuse jokes because making new ones, which doesn't look like something already used becomes impossible. I don't think we have reached that point and it's probably not within the near future either. There are unexplored characters, new characters and a setup, which allows for adding future characters without it feeling out of place for the story. There are a lot of material to work with for making new content, which truly is new. Sure at some point the core is used up and then adding new characters or something like that won't help, but that's not something, which will happen in the foreseeable future.

You can always look here too -

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[grey_shadow]

You can always look here too -

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Estimated income anywhere between 7k and 20k doesn't exactly put a lot of confidence on the 14k figure...

 

[telgalad]

New dev diary was posted. Anyone got a copy?

 

[YYYgamesYYY]

I was wondering about that, but didn't mention it as I didn't dig into it. It takes time to find all the needed info if that is even possible, so I was leaning on it being a made up number. If I won't bother investigating, why would I assume a random person did it. Show us where the number comes from or we will assume it to be made up.

Minimum subscription is $1/mo. So they make a minimum of ~$3000/month. It costs $5/mo to get early access to play, and there are also $10 and $20/mo tiers. It's probably safe to assume that most people that support do so with a $5/mo.

If you assumed they have 500 people pay $1, 2000 @ $5, 400 @ $10, and 100 @ $20/mo (there's almost 100 people in the special thanks credits) that would be $16,500/mo. Even paying 50% taxes that's $8,250/mo.

Expenses for developing this game should be in the $100s, not $1000s of dollars/month.

 

[Mak5025]

Is this an internal chat group for HM Revenue & Customs inspectors now? FFS focus on the wonderful game instead of giving free rein to your envy...

 

[capt_obviously]

Expenses for developing this game should be in the $100s, not $1000s of dollars/month.

Citation needed.

Altos and Herdone have added an employee to help with development. Costs vary globally, but any employee is going to cost multiple thousands of dollars per month at a minimum.

 

[Hyunseo]

Minimum subscription is $1/mo. So they make a minimum of ~$3000/month. It costs $5/mo to get early access to play, and there are also $10 and $20/mo tiers. It's probably safe to assume that most people that support do so with a $5/mo.

If you assumed they have 500 people pay $1, 2000 @ $5, 400 @ $10, and 100 @ $20/mo (there's almost 100 people in the special thanks credits) that would be $16,500/mo. Even paying 50% taxes that's $8,250/mo.

Expenses for developing this game should be in the $100s, not $1000s of dollars/month.

Why won't you start making a game then? and see how "easy" it is.

 

[telgalad]

The game is worth whatever people are willing to pay for it. I think i am at $30 over the years with them. I don't give them 5 every month, but I do every other update. Having looked into renpy modeling and game design, this game has some of the cleanest scenes i have ever seen.

Do I wish the dev would reduce the quality to speed up production? Only on bad days.

Reposting: anyone got the latest dev post?

 

[Perniciousducks]

Minimum subscription is $1/mo. So they make a minimum of ~$3000/month. It costs $5/mo to get early access to play, and there are also $10 and $20/mo tiers. It's probably safe to assume that most people that support do so with a $5/mo.

If you assumed they have 500 people pay $1, 2000 @ $5, 400 @ $10, and 100 @ $20/mo (there's almost 100 people in the special thanks credits) that would be $16,500/mo. Even paying 50% taxes that's $8,250/mo.

Expenses for developing this game should be in the $100s, not $1000s of dollars/month.

Why am I not surprised that the person making very bad points also makes very bad assumption? Even when early access is involved, people rarely pay more than the minimum, and early access is basically only useful one month out of the year, maybe two. When it comes to the name in the credits, that's over the life of the project, not how many currently.

If you make assumptions based on this flimsy of logic, I question why anyone would take anything you say seriously in any part of life. This is what anyone familiar with the Dunning Kruger graph would call "top left behavior".

 

[reasonablehatter]

Expenses for developing this game should be in the $100s, not $1000s of dollars/month.

Only if one's time is worth nothing.

 

[ccxvidonaferens]

Why am I not surprised that the person making very bad points also makes very bad assumption? Even when early access is involved, people rarely pay more than the minimum, and early access is basically only useful one month out of the year, maybe two. When it comes to the name in the credits, that's over the life of the project, not how many currently.

If you make assumptions based on this flimsy of logic, I question why anyone would take anything you say seriously in any part of life. This is what anyone familiar with the Dunning Kruger graph would call "top left behavior".

Thing is this argument just reminds me of what can be perennial complaints within the industry I work. We usually have a mix of permanent staff and contractors. The permanent staff complain about the higher rate that contractors are getting but conveniently ignore the fact that contractors don't get paid holiday days or sick pay or that they often have to pay not just personal income taxes but also business taxes too as well as other sundry expenses.

 

[hoshimota]

Just my 2 cents...oh wait this is a pirate site...here is my free opinion

Could have done without the Mykocks manor stuff...would rather have seen the dev put that effort into the headmaster main game.

But hey beggars can't be demanding

The Mykock's manor crap is just following the common trend of successful AVNs adding in bullshit side content. This serves two main purposes:

#1 - Most of these devs have crippling ADHD and they always want to work on some new shiny thing, rather than the difficult and monotonous task of continuing to build on the main product. If you ever deal with software devs, you will quickly notice many of them keep starting new things/projects/initiatives and doing the first 20% or so rapidly, then stalling like all fuck and looking for a new thing to dick around with, rather than getting any one of them to 100%.

#2, It stretches out the milking phase. I hate to say it, I used to love this game back in the day, but let's face the facts - the fanboys are going to defend the dev to the bitter end, but this one has been solidly in milking mode for a while now. That is not likely to end any time soon, as thousand of cu- errrr I mean fans, are more than willing to keep supporting despite the increasingly slow and disorganized 'progress.'

This is one of the biggest problems with Patreon and similar models; it works great in the early stages, but once a game is successful, there is NOOOOO incentive to ever get close to finishing it, and EVERY incentive to just drag it the fuck out for years.

 

[ThtsMyScrtCapImAlwysHorny]

This is one of the biggest problems with Patreon and similar models; it works great in the early stages, but once a game is successful, there is NOOOOO incentive to ever get close to finishing it, and EVERY incentive to just drag it the fuck out for years.

This sentiment always baffles me. It would be correct IF devs had to start over their Patreon following from scratch when finishing one project and moving onto the next, but... they don't (because that would be stupid). Which means, if anything, the incentive runs in the opposite direction. You get one project done, and, assuming people are happy with the finished product, you get them hyping the new thing coming up all over this board and other places like it, which results in not just retaining the existing following, but bringing in an influx of new people. Repeat every few years for steady growth. Contrast that with the inevitable slow decline from an (admittedly sometimes quite high) initial peak the "milking" model results in, and it's pretty clear which is sustainable as a long-term career plan.

 

[MaviusJones]

This sentiment always baffles me. It would be correct IF devs had to start over their Patreon following from scratch when finishing one project and moving onto the next, but... they don't (because that would be stupid). Which means, if anything, the incentive runs in the opposite direction. You get one project done, and, assuming people are happy with the finished product, you get them hyping the new thing coming up all over this board and other places like it, which results in not just retaining the existing following, but bringing in an influx of new people. Repeat every few years for steady growth. Contrast that with the inevitable slow decline from an (admittedly sometimes quite high) initial peak the "milking" model results in, and it's pretty clear which is sustainable as a long-term career plan.

In theory yes, in practice... not so much.

Fact is, that fan base is built up off a set of criteria that doesn't always follow into a new project. You'd have a good chunk that were only supporting for 'X' or 'Y' character and find none of the new characters attractive enough or interesting. You have a chunk that were specifically supporting because of a certain kink, like spanking, and if it isn't the focus of the new project, they leave. You have another chunk that don't support new games with little to no content, and will decide to move on until enough content exists to justify support 'in their opinion'. You have another chunk that were just really interested in the setting/story and find that the new project just doesn't do it for them, another chunk that were supporting because they prefer honey select, and if the new project is in another art style they're gone too and on and on.

It is a gamble, which re-emphasizes Hoshimota's point, the safer option is to just milk as long as possible, since that specific fanbase is here for this specific game. I personally don't think Alto Herdone are milking specifically, but they certainly aren't being incentivized to wrap it up anytime soon either. This is why we see endless rewrites/reworks from other devs rather than just moving on to a new project, because moving on risks losing years of built up support. Sure, a few diehard fans would remain, but it would impact monthly revenue in a negative fashion no matter how you slice it, and when your life is dependent on that income, doing anything to jeopardize it is counter intuitive.

 

[Halsy]

This game is something else

 

[Uwukz]

In theory yes, in practice... not so much.

Fact is, that fan base is built up off a set of criteria that doesn't always follow into a new project. You'd have a good chunk that were only supporting for 'X' or 'Y' character and find none of the new characters attractive enough or interesting. You have a chunk that were specifically supporting because of a certain kink, like spanking, and if it isn't the focus of the new project, they leave. You have another chunk that don't support new games with little to no content, and will decide to move on until enough content exists to justify support 'in their opinion'. You have another chunk that were just really interested in the setting/story and find that the new project just doesn't do it for them, another chunk that were supporting because they prefer honey select, and if the new project is in another art style they're gone too and on and on.

It is a gamble, which re-emphasizes Hoshimota's point, the safer option is to just milk as long as possible, since that specific fanbase is here for this specific game. I personally don't think Alto Herdone are milking specifically, but they certainly aren't being incentivized to wrap it up anytime soon either. This is why we see endless rewrites/reworks from other devs rather than just moving on to a new project, because moving on risks losing years of built up support. Sure, a few diehard fans would remain, but it would impact monthly revenue in a negative fashion no matter how you slice it, and when your life is dependent on that income, doing anything to jeopardize it is counter intuitive.

That's right, that's why the developers are good at squeezing out as much money as possible without doing anything. That's why we need to keep throwing money at them, and don't care about the game, well, there will be an update once a year for 20-30 minutes and that's fine. If the update doesn't come out - it's no big deal, the developer is just milking the money. You are damn right, idiots with money should be milked to the end. The developers are good for doing this.

And anyway, why do some people think that if someone says a developer is a lazy greedy arsehole, that means the developer should finish the game as soon as possible? Personally, when I talk about the terribly slow pace of development, I mean that it would be good and right if the developer started working normally and honestly, instead of milking money.