- Nov 16, 2017
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Summertime Saga, albeit was a more unique version of that form of VN/Game in it's early development, is one of those that milks it's fans... The amount of content that comes out with each update is one of the worst time to content examples out there... And due to the length of time it's been developing, is the only reason it has over inflated numbers... The longer any product continues to exist through highly lengthy production, the more hype it is possible to generate around itself... Negative or Positive hype is still hype...I've gotta chime in for the overrated aspect of Summertime Saga, though not for the content itself but for the delivery of it.
A release every 6 months usually, where the changelog is 200 lines.
"Wow, 200 lines, must be huge."
- Queue in 150 of nitty gritty details about how they changed the underlying mechanics, downright to describing how exactly the functions are coded, along with bugfixes and whatnot.
"Alright, but what about new content?"
"Ah, yeah. There's half a new scene. Enjoy."
I might be exaggerating slightly, but the premise remains the same. It absolutely does not reflect it being the top Patreon earner, having earned about $1.5m so far (ballpark figures ofc, not his accountant).
It's the full force of the avalanche effect where people join merely because tons of people are already supporting it. Or people know just about it and not other games, not sure.
As for underrated games, this is harder because there are games that I like the content but aren't supported as much as I believe they should, and others that are decently supported but don't have enough visibility. Taste is quite subjective.
Or a more objective level, I would say Pale Carnations, even though it's quite the fresh entry.
Mostly in terms of care given to the product.
There's a certain amount of polish in the UI/text/overall presentation that you rarely see in initial releases, if at all.
Just look at Star Citizen... It is still in development, even after making millions of dollars in revenue... Really? It still isn't done after getting all that money and all these years of development time? It is in essence living on it's own hype, perpetually forever, until the day the fans finally get sick of waiting, which may be a while... The same kind of thing is probably happening to Summertime Saga, just not to the same degree... It's been around so long, while still in development, that over time the numbers of peoples looking at it or talking about it have just kept threads at higher and higher numbers over a lengthy amount of time...
It's why I don't use threads as a proper gauge of how a product is doing... Just because people are still keeping a thread alive or talking about it or subjects related to it, does not make it an overall top end product... Or even make it popular... It's just lingering...
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