Too many patreons, too little and too shitty content

[Deleted member 167032]

If I am right then you saying no dev really thought one day OK how do i make money ? I know ill buy a pc and start a VN game but rather most of us had a pc (shitty midrange gaming spec) and decided to make our own game. For a challenge to ourselves or just because most of the games out there are not telling the story i want to play/tell.

For me, I use to be a graphic designer and played in 5 bands. So arty farty is my passion. Now i work 8-5 as an IT support engineer. It's not a arty type job, i need to create. I love making something and then look at it and start to chop and change it some more until i am fairly happy with it. YES i like it when people enjoy it but only as something that is ejnoyable to them. I'm not great with praise as that is not my focus in whatever i create.

So I believe most of us devs do it cause we love to create and it's fun doing it. The money like most things are always welcome.
Here's a thought have you maybe considered creating a game yourself, something small, see how it is. As long as it's fun to do.

I think we have now in the VN world indy devs (like myself and Dr Pink Cake etc...) and then you have the "companies" such as MrDotts, Dark Silver etc.. who is basically a team or company and for them it's part creating/ part money as it's their jobs now. I use the word company lightly.

So this is the main difference I have with what you guys are saying. I think devs should absolutely be well rewarded for the time and effort they put in, no question about it. However you guys talk about initial investments for the game as if you as game devs sat down on your chairs, contemplated whether to put that money into the stock market or buy a rig to make us degenerates happy and just thinking about potential returns you decided to create porn games.
I'm more than happy supporting newer devs when I like what they're doing, but from my point of view, is appointing money monthly to a project I believe in and think I'll enjoy, with very little expectations whatsoever. From what I've seen, if we look at the goals, say they have 5, in the first one there usually isn't as much content, regardless of updates being weekly or every 3 months, 2 and 3 are the best one, quality gets a lot better, they're pumping out everything you can see they're fucking motivated for this shit, 4 it falls down and 5 it basically becomes something you have to check every 6 months. I could be completely wrong/biased, but that's what I've seen in a bunch of cases and makes me fear that if you're only doing it for the money this is no different than bitcoin mining for some devs.
Overall I think I'm tired of seeing projects i like thrown out / abandoned and not being able to do anything about it

 

[Dr PinkCake]

I have, Jmolle and Dparx reviewing the game. As it stand they are now busy with the final version. I just have to record some music tracks add to the game and we are all set. I myself go over each scene i create multiple times so spelling errors and image errors are low when i ask them to test. I have also asked a friend of mine to review and he's not into these type of games at all.

So far they like it, but you can understand my trepidation seeing as it's not the normal type of incest click fest game.

Be unique! I think that will put you on the map instead of having you drown in the sea of incest games.

 

[megaplayboy10k]

My preference as a player, potential patron and future developer would be for the dev(s) to put in about 3x as much time into the initial release as currently seems to be the average(i.e., just a wild guess, they should prepare to put in 4-12 months for the first release)...then go on patreon and ask for support. A lot more content, better gameplay and fewer bugs should be the net result. There are devs getting 10-30 grand a month on Patreon, which is a comparatively huge sum of money(well, compared to guys doing for free or 500 a month). The more money you get, the more frequent the updates should be, and the higher the quality of content should be. If you're getting 20 grand a month and releasing updates only every 3-4 months, your patrons will get a bit impatient, I suspect. If your subsidy level is relatively low, it's understandable if your day job gets in the way of more frequent updates. Nobody's likely to become rich off the fap game they developed.

 

[SkyRebel]

In my book, I value quality over quantity. Usually, a beginner one person dev cannot do both, unless he/she neglects the RL.

 

[Gomly1980]

That is why I very rarely back a game on patreon unless it's nearly finished or I trust the dev to finish and I won't back for more than i'd spend on an Indie game on Steam.

I don't bother with 0.1's in general unless they get a fuck ton of praise and then it's only to see what all the fuss is about and shelve it for further updates.

If a dev sticks by his/her story and follows through with their own development plans then I will follow that games development. If a dev starts to follow what their patrons want I drop that faster than a shit after a curry at my closest takeaway. For every 100 patrons that has an idea maybe 1 isn't complete dog shit ... maybe.

Seen a lot of devs give up when the game they started out making with a passion stopped being the game they wanted to make and turned into the game a handful of patrons wanted.

 

[megaplayboy10k]

Sturgeon's Law: 95% of everything is crap. We tend to only remember the good stuff in the long term.

 

[F95maniac]

I just think you're finding some people get too big and then decided money was more important than the content when they originally started.

Perfect examples of this for me would be DmD. I used to give $20 a month to DmD, and now the game is getting an update once every 3 months whereas Melody is getting an update every month and a half, despite the fact this guy was earning big money (I think it was like £20k a month?!) off of DmD and it STILL you haven't slept with D. Clearly $$ is the pure motivation here, that's the only way you can justify the 33/66 split of focus.

Yeah those kind of people I agree with you, but if it's a guy getting like £1k a month he's getting paid less than minimum wage for the time he's probably putting in, so if updates are slow don't get too upset.

For anyone earning 10K a month, there really is no excuse to only produce an update every 3 months. Fair enough, quality is probably going to be excellent, but 3 months is way too long considering you are charging your users monthly and considering you are definitely getting paid enough to either do it full-time or (if that's not an option) to get paid help. At the moment, I'm putting in 40-50 hours a week (do approx. 14hrs each on Sat & Sun) and whatever hours I can spare in the evening (I have a full-time job), so I know it takes a lot of work, but for 10K a month, patrons should expect (rightly) to get an update sooner than every 3 months. That is just money-milking!

 

[bas]

For anyone earning 10K a month, there really is no excuse to only produce an update every 3 months. Fair enough, quality is probably going to be excellent, but 3 months is way too long considering you are charging your users monthly and considering you are definitely getting paid enough to either do it full-time or (if that's not an option) to get paid help. At the moment, I'm putting in 40-50 hours a week (do approx. 14hrs each on Sat & Sun) and whatever hours I can spare in the evening (I have a full-time job), so I know it takes a lot of work, but for 10K a month, patrons should expect (rightly) to get an update sooner than every 3 months. That is just money-milking!

As long as you're being honest with your paying Patreons, I don't see an issue with it at all. Update once annually so long as that's what you're clearly communicating to your paying Patreons.

 

[BudaCoca]

if you have passion in what you do, it isnt really work. noone tells you to keep doing that what you do if you dont want to do it. this disscussion here is not about how much work it is, its about that people do it just for money not for passion.

Game development isn't funny overall, it's a path you should walk, sometimes it's entertaining(like when you're planning it), sometimes it's a hell(bugs, mysterious errors)

The developers must do a large number of things in order to release a game, that includes: Planning(before and during), testing & learn to use engines, create or use tools/addons for those engines, program the game(even if it's simplified), write the text, check the text several times, translate the text if the game has more than one language, design UI/scenario/way to play/characters, contact people for help/solving problems/commissions... it's a real work, even if you love it with all your heart

noone forces someone to do it, we are free people. i dont see anything that forces you to keep going if you dont want to do it.

The developer forces himself to work more hours or do things he didn't enjoy because otherwise the other work he did before will be useless, he won't be able to release the game

 

[Savor]

@SNTdev noone force the developer TO START developing a game. we are all free people and decide it on our own. who told mr dots he need to make a adult game as he started with his first version of this game? noone correct, it was his own decision. you just force yourself to do it if you just want to make money with that. pretty weird that i got fun in developing engines and games all my life huh?

btw. learning to use an engine should be the first thing to do before you plan on doing a game, you probably mean expand your knowlege about the engine.