- Thread starter PixelsLab
- Start date
- Oct 21, 2020
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100% Agree
You don't bring your personal life into your job. You talk to your boss about it, but when you are the boss never talk to your clients/customers.
I find developers that who space out their updates to push more content, locking down quality have the most success.
The ones who try to rush pushing an update every month, with typos that will only build their experience with the programming, and rendering. You won't burn out, be more productive at a 3-6 month time frame, and even shoot for once a year update. Map out the steps you wanna take for your game development, so you have it set in stone. The most successful VNSs are run as a business, they will outsource work eventually, and take on extra help when they can. In the time being work with what you have coming up with a game plan. Keep at it, Like seaoflove said Good luck
Go back a few pages there is a post from the devs patreon there. He can't financially keep the game development going.
He had to travel to another country to even get the money out of Patreon because Russia.
The 3 Q's like the other guy said is what you need to balance, Quality Quickness and Quantity.
3-6 months up to a year is still going to cost you money. People won't stick around for that.
I really want to see the statistics for that claim.
If you only charge your patreons when you post an update that's fine, then people are going to probably stick around. But you will make 0 dollars while you are not putting out updates. If you charge monthly while releasing yearly I doubt people will keep that sub going, sure there are alot of people that just forget.
- Jul 12, 2020
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Ahhh...all these VN creating experts....coming out of the woodwork...
None of you gave a damn 2 months ago when it actually did get abandoned.
None of you gave a damn 2 months ago when it actually did get abandoned.
Damn, imagine working on a game for almost 6 years just to abandon it lmao. Imagine all the money patrons wasted for an unfinished product. Will this guy reimburse them or?.... I'm not a patron so I'm not asking for anything I'm just curious how this gets handled.
- Jun 29, 2018
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- Oct 23, 2016
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Yeah, sure. Choices are fine. Choices are great. But here I never missed having more choices, because I was actually interested in the story. So many games here telling the exact same story, even for games with similar topics like mysterious powers and gods and demons Intoxicating Flavour did basically everything different.
I don't think there was any other game where there were obvious weaknesses in English and yet the story still managed to convey its quality just fine.
In other words, there are a lot of games with many choices that I just skip from choice to choice, because in the end it's just which of the two dozen harem girls does the MC fuck now, which clothes will she be wearing, do I punch the guy or smooth talk him. This one actually pondered moral questions which were interesting.
If someone skipped through this, it says more about the person skipping than about the game.
No shit? You know that how exactly? Do you work for patreon? Do you conduct monthly questionnaires with patrons/players of all games here and on patreon?
I don't even get what you are saying, that patrons are all uncaring bastards who don't give a shit about the devs health or circumstances outside the game? Not what I see and read, more like the other way around, patrons are more often than not more understanding and appreciative than players who don't support a game financially. I mean, on patreon you never just support the project, you always support the artist just as much.
And honestly, to claim that just because people show sympathy and understanding they aren't patrons is complete and utter BS.
IDK if you honestly believe people are just virtue signalling, maybe you are just one of the people who don't understand what virtue signalling actually means, because if people just virtue signalled here, they wouldn't really care about the dev or his problems and would just claim so, to feel important.
The audacity otherwise, to just declare that everyone not being an asshole is just simping or virtue-signaling. Just screw you, mate, seriously. Really, this is nothing more than an attempt to dismiss anyone who doesn't see things the way you do. A bad faith argumentation to devalue any other pov.
No, people stop playing "Being a Dik" because of bullshit like having to play for hours at a stupid party finding the one thing they missed to continue and then possibly having to do it again and again for each different route.
It's also funny, because the DiK updates sure take a fucking long time as well. Until his problems, Pixelslab usually had several updates between a single "Being a Dik" update, even if they are smaller. There are many games with smaller updates where people will either play the update or wait until 3-4 have accumulated, because they like a meatier chunk to play through, that alone doesn't say much about a game, more about the individual players preferences.
What a choice for a game to compare, I'm guessing just because Being A Dik rakes in the money, because apart from that these two games have absolutely nothing in common.
Being a DiK is just a dating sim with allusions. Think about the quality of writing what you will, but that is so obviously not what "The Intoxicating Flavor" was about. It's not a dating sim, it's not a harem fuckfeast, it's not a "being an alpha male power trip," not a "how do I get girls to fuck me." It didn't have to be, because that wasn't the game Pixelslab wanted to do.
Don't you think someone who writes an intriguing story like that, knows he might have fared better financially, if he did a simple porn game and gave people like you the sex and worthless choices they demand?
Don't you think he knew that telling people to stop supporting him, because he wasn't able to work on the game properly for a while, would damage him financially?
Jay-zuz Karist, your whole post is so arrogant and annoying.
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- Oct 23, 2016
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Yeah, and ignore all these other assholes who only realized the game wasn't going to be finished two months after the fact and just waltz in here to make the usual stupid claims about knowing everything better and how all devs are just milkers and how you have to finish your game whether you die or not.
Most people and I'm sure that includes the majority of patrons might be frustrated and sad to see this game being unfinished, but still understand why it happened and that you of all people wouldn't have made that decision if you saw any other option.
- Sep 30, 2017
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It's one of my bad habits, to make save of all the sex scenes with the MC in a game (And a separate section for BJs)
I do it for every game I play.
I just quickly counted all the saves and viola, these are the figures.
From memory I remember having sex with Maria on the first day already....
Kate takes a while to get to her, but once you starts, she can not keep her hands of you.
Liv is Liv.. Mostly flashbacks and dreamworld Liv
Teagan Flashback
- Jun 23, 2017
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I played it at the very beginning but it was clear pretty early that this was not going to end well. I wrote a review on this in 2019 came back twice to see if anything changed and finally just ignored all updates.
I mean even the people who liked the game if you read the comments claim it's unique, nothing else like it, well there is a reason for that. If his goal was to make money then creating something like this so far removed from what most people want
- Sep 23, 2019
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man this is just personal preference no matter what or how you make something some people will like it some don't me for example don't really like choices especially when you have to choose between LIs and because most of devs don't really implant choices well I rather don't have any than have meaningless ones
and to be honest at the beginning when I just have found this site I was just skipping through VNs to get to the sex scenes but now story is more important to me than sex scenes I still want them to be frequent but it's just not as important as story
so I don't skip anything anymore unless I downloaded a game just for the sex scenes and this game wasn't one of them this was one of my favorits I'm sad it got abandoned I hope one day I open latest updates page and see there is a new update for it, loved the story and characters I would love to see it gets a well deserved conclusion
p.s. lot of people complain about long texts lore dumps and stuff like that in lot of VNs and I highly recommend to use ren'py's self-voicing, once I started using it I can't do without, it makes reading less taxing on brain and it gets easier to comprehend when someone else is reading out loud what you are reading in your head and I also recommend devs use it for proofreading it will do half the work for them
and also you don't have to play all the game in one setting, pace your self so that you don't get burned out
Don't set a deadline that you can not hit 100% barring your death or some apocalyptic scenario or like a major injury or something huge. That's where some devs get them self in trouble. "I will release monthly." Oh shit... I'm not ready to release this month... There goes the rep and here comes the excuse. Nobody wants an excuse.
Much better is some sort of progress chart on the Patreon. Every 5 or 10% you work on the update then update the chart.
That way they keep going back to the Patreon and checking. They see the bar moving. They don't need you to tell them your life story.
They don't care that your aunt cat died and you had to fly out of town for the feline funeral and they lost your bags, and you didn't have internet for a few days, and you stubbed your toe real bad and you gotta go to the doctors when you get home.
It may sound harsh, but "Nobody Cares".
Patreon is not Gofundme.
They want the product not the sob story.
- Dec 5, 2020
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Are you one of those people who think donations will buy them developers' asses?
No, dude, donations are the way to help a talented creator in their work. Donations made by people who appreciate creator's work and can support them financially. If you're looking for a finished product on Patreon, that's your problem, you've wasted your money without understanding what you're paying for.
Although I was supporting TIF on Patreon several years ago and unfortunately was unable to continue later, I in no way believe that this money were wasted. It was my very small modest contribution to the creation of this game. That's how this gets handled.
Do you want a finished product? Wait for the official release on Steam or other platforms for selling digital products (and in the case of TIF there is no such product, so your money is safe)
If you want to help a developer create their game and receve the work-in-progress content as soon as it's created, step by step, welcome to Patreon or similar services, but remember you're not paying for the finished product, you're helping create it.
And yes, I can perfectly imagine how games are abandoned after a years of the development. Even very good games. Even made by very skilled developers. Because these developers are just people, and they also have lives beyond development logs, and sometimes in order to survive, you have to give up your favorite creation for a stable boring job to feed yourself and your family.
If you want games like TIF to develop and continue to live, help to finance their development whenever possible. If you take for free the fruits of the labor of the dev, created with the help of the "wasted" money of his supporters, do not be surprised that at some point the freebie will end and the game will be abandoned.
I've been following a bunch of games and developers long enough to say with confidence that Pixel has always been very open and honest with his subscribers. Maybe even too open, which some people in this thread even noted as a mistake of the dev. Since the truth about his health condition and the difficulties he had to face most likely pushed away a certain part of his subscribers. In the periods when he couldn't work on a project, he put payments on hold. And when he no longer had the opportunity to continue the project, he told this honestly and in detail, and did not simply disappear into the sunset without saying a word, like certain devs.
So I'm really upset about how things turned out, but I believe that Pixel can make it through these difficult times and one day get back to creating visual novels, because despite all the flaws, TIF is an amazing game made by a talented developer.
- Jan 28, 2018
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Wait, are you putting all the sex in rapid succession as different scene scenes?
- Sep 30, 2017
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As saves
Like this
(I do this for every game I play: I then do stupid stats. Like whom did I sleep with first, who did I sleep with the most. Compare the girls etc. etc.)
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- Jan 10, 2020
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Well updates were small antI would skip the game for 5-6 months and play it again. There wasn't much content added. Eventually I stopped playing. I wish the dev a speedy recovery.
You are of the minority opinion. You need to understand that attention spans have been dropping for years with access to things like Tik Tok, and 30 second videos have been making that problem much worse. When you get that sex scene, or good teasing, or a choice then you get a little dopamine rush. It doesn't really matter if the writing is on par with Shakespeare if the choices are spaced out to oblivion.
You make a ton of sense if the year is 1984 and not 2024. People could actually sit down and read a book in those days.
The more clicks that a player does before reaching a choice the greater the odds that they will be skipping dialogue.
Skipping Dialogue = No longer fully invested in the characters = Less likely to support
It's important to understand that the target audience for an adult game is a coomer.
I don't need to conduct a scientific survey that is peer reviewed to understand these simple things.
Patreon is a platform designed to connect content creators with crowd funding. If your business model includes personal stories about how things aren't going right in your life then that is more of a go fund me plan. Is there some degree of cross over between the two? I'm sure there is, but the bulk of Patreon supporters primarily support the creators for the content and that is it. That is just common sense!
It doesn't matter how beloved a creator is the supporters are there to support content.
When you go to McDonalds, do you want to hear a story from the cashier about their boyfriend broke up with them, and their dad is being a real jerk, and feet hurt?
No... I don't think you do even if she is cute. I think that you want your nuggets and fries!
The only time that a customer wants that sort of thing is in the event of it's like a bar, and it is a regular customer, and they have really gotten to know the bartender over an extended period of time, and even in that case if the bartender says, "Sorry no beer today." That money is going elsewhere! That regular is out the door. Because there 100 other little bars out there just like that bar and they are all looking for a a new customer.
You have a point that Dik has gotten to the opposite extreme. I don't like the sandbox and minigame elements of that game either. The release schedule extending beyond a year can also pose problems as well. I was saying 3 to 6 months is the "Sweet Spot".
As for comparison to Being a Dik. They are both on renpy, they both have a male protagonist, they both have multiple love interests. There are some similarities. I'm sure there are other games that would be a more similar comparison to intoxicating flavor. Why don't you think some better comparisons up for everyone?
I don't think you understand what the word arrogant means, and anything could be considered annoying.