You've said quite a bit about finances but you yourself said you walked away from years of studies for the sake of this decision
As backwards as this sounds, I didn't make this decision with the intention of making a lot of money. If I wanted to be rich, I'd stick to the more traditional career pathway. This decision was made because I wanted to go full-time with my AVN development but in order to do that, I needed to make a base salary which I just wasn't able to do with ToS.
you bailed out on ToS while it was still "To be announced" on Steam, the primary storefront where sales come in.
Steam is definitely the big money maker for AVN developers. However, Patreon counts are a good estimator of how much you'd earn on Steam. If I were to sell on Steam, I'm looking at US$40,000 which isn't enough for full-time development considering I'd still have another few years of development before I could sell ToS on Steam. I also find sex appeal is definitely what sells on Steam and I've discussed this point quite a bit -> ToS doesn't have that sex appeal.
The successful creators are trendsetters, not trend chasers
In terms of media, what you'll find is most of the extremely successful media (whether that be books, movies or AVNs), take common tropes and add their own spin on them. I've said this before, but this project isn't just going to be College AVN #378. It's going to have elements which make it stand out from the rest.
verbally trashing the work they were supporting is a path that often leads to one destination.
Never once have I trashed Tides of Succession. I think it's a brilliant story and a brilliant AVN. If another creator had created something like ToS, I'd be their highest paying supporter.
I have said many times that Tides of Succession isn't commercially viable. I don't believe that's trashing it. I think we can all agree that ToS was a relatively niche product. That doesn't mean it's bad, it just means it has a much narrower target audience.
If you take a look at the commercially successful creators, you'll see they have 1-2 completed games to their names. What you won't see in their backlog is an abandoned project in order to chase after a checklist of genre fads that are already on their way out.
I know I've picked apart your message and offered opposing perspectives to most of your points. However, I just want to say for this one is you're 100% correct. It's going to be more difficult for this project with my history of abandoning projects, and there's no denying that.
However, that doesn't mean it can't be done. Underground Studios abandoned Best Days of Our Lives before making Race of Life, which has been one of the best received new AVN in recent times. To further reiterate my above point, RoL is set in college, but has those few key points of difference which sets it out from the crowd.
So yes, this is going to be difficult and I understand why people are doubtful. But like I've said previously, I'm going to be doing everything in my ability to make this new project of mine work
