VN Ren'Py Abandoned Unraveling August [v0.3.04] [AugustEsoterica]

[Tiur]

I don't think it's anywhere close to being abandoned as his patreon is active and his update reports aren't behind paywall either. I'm really surprised how few paid members he has though. With that in mind, I can't really blame him for being slow, it's not like he can quit his day job to do dev work full time or anything.

I mean, it's not really a question what happened. The 0.3 update was pretty disastrous, and it had an effect on the game's reputation. It also seems to have stopped the game's rapid growth dead in its tracks. I'm fairly sure I am not the only supporter who canceled over it, and what I see on Graphtreon seems to agree.

 

[TigerWolfe]

I mean, it's not really a question what happened. The 0.3 update was pretty disastrous, and it had an effect on the game's reputation. It also seems to have stopped the game's rapid growth dead in its tracks. I'm fairly sure I am not the only supporter who canceled over it, and what I see on Graphtreon seems to agree.

What was disastrous about it?

 

[Wolfram99]

What was disastrous about it?

The MC becoming a simp to the boss bitch and her minion, and childhood friend abusing the MC.

 

[BlasKyau]

I mean, it's not really a question what happened. The 0.3 update was pretty disastrous, and it had an effect on the game's reputation. It also seems to have stopped the game's rapid growth dead in its tracks. I'm fairly sure I am not the only supporter who canceled over it, and what I see on Graphtreon seems to agree.

Since the blackmail part happened, I see no reason to want to financially support the game.

 

[Wolfram99]

Blackmail would have been fine if it was not treated as a gag. But the Dev chose to make the MC behave miserably instead of being level-headed and sort of respecting the players choice of telling boss bitch to BTFO.

 

[Dessolos]

What was disastrous about it?

the blackmail it's a mixed opinion some hate it or view the MC as some weaker than he should. Then there are those like myself that don't agree with that at all and can understand how they got the upperhand on him. Only thing I do dislike about is he did act like it was no big deal later and texted and talked to the blackmailer and her partner like they were friends or something. As to me it felt weird to do so but at the same time it showed me another side of them. Now I don't hate them for the blackmail anymore as I felt like it's more than meets the eye and makes them seem like an interesting pair of characters. So now I want to learn as much as I can find out about them as I feel like there is another reason for the blackmail as now I dont get the feeling there is any Malice behind it or they would follow through with it.

 

[BlasKyau]

Blackmail would have been fine if it was not treated as a gag. But the Dev chose to make the MC behave miserably instead of being level-headed and sort of respecting the players choice of telling boss bitch to BTFO.

The truth is that being able to tell to Akira to fuck off would be the right thing to do. But the developer hasn't let us do that.

the blackmail it's a mixed opinion some hate it or view the MC as some weaker than he should. Then there are those like myself that don't agree with that at all and can understand how they got the upperhand on him. Only thing I do dislike about is he did act like it was no big deal later and texted and talked to the blackmailer and her partner like they were friends or something. As to me it felt weird to do so but at the same time it showed me another side of them. Now I don't hate them for the blackmail anymore as I felt like it's more than meets the eye and makes them seem like an interesting pair of characters. So now I want to learn as much as I can find out about them as I feel like there is another reason for the blackmail as now I dont get the feeling there is any Malice behind it or they would follow through with it.

For me, from the moment she did the blackmail she stopped being a LI. There is no redemption possible. And my interest in knowing more about her is zero.

 

[Dessolos]

The truth is that being able to tell to Akira to fuck off would be the right thing to do. But the developer hasn't let us do that.

I don't agree with this 100% as a LI yes sure. but as a character part of the game and story hard disagree unless the dev gives the player consequences for telling her to fuck off. As I do not like getting rid of characters from stories / games no matter the reason or how bad the character is. Unless the dev makes it so they can die or some other valid story reason then im fine with it. But just to make them disappear I hate that shit

For me, from the moment she did the blackmail she stopped being a LI. There is no redemption possible. And my interest in knowing more about her is zero.

haha knew you were gonna say that yup I know your stance on that by now we will never see eye to eye on that. Since for me the context and reasons behind doing something like that matters more than doing something that is bad like blackmail. Also helps if I end up liking a character and can see another side them than their negative side which this dev has done a good job at.

 

[BlasKyau]

I don't agree with this 100% as a LI yes sure. but as a character part of the game and story hard disagree unless the dev gives the player consequences for telling her to fuck off. As I do not like getting rid of characters from stories / games no matter the reason or how bad the character is. Unless the dev makes it so they can die or some other valid story reason then im fine with it. But just to make them disappear I hate that shit

I don't see anything wrong with Akira dying if the MC prevents the blackmail. I actually see it as a good outcome to the blackmail.

haha knew you were gonna say that yup I know your stance on that by now we will never see eye to eye on that. Since for me the context and reasons behind doing something like that matters more than doing something that is bad like blackmail. Also helps if I end up liking a character and can see another side them than their negative side which this dev has done a good job at.

I just don't care about her positive side, or the justification she might give for blackmailing the MC, because nothing she does or says will change my mind. There is no redemption for her.

 

[Wolfram99]

I dont mind the MC getting shit coming his way, it shows us his character and how he deals with it.
In this case i think the Dev sort of missed the mark of having the MC just roll with it, instead the MC is coming off as a simp.

Regarding the blackmail for his war crimes:
It would probably mean mutually assured destruction, since the boss bitch has knowledge of these shenanigans, she would be executed\marginalized alongside the MC if the generals wanted to cover up their tracks.

 

[TigerWolfe]

the blackmail it's a mixed opinion some hate it or view the MC as some weaker than he should. Then there are those like myself that don't agree with that at all and can understand how they got the upperhand on him. Only thing I do dislike about is he did act like it was no big deal later and texted and talked to the blackmailer and her partner like they were friends or something. As to me it felt weird to do so but at the same time it showed me another side of them. Now I don't hate them for the blackmail anymore as I felt like it's more than meets the eye and makes them seem like an interesting pair of characters. So now I want to learn as much as I can find out about them as I feel like there is another reason for the blackmail as now I dont get the feeling there is any Malice behind it or they would follow through with it.

Oh I probably just rolled right past it with no issues. I didn't remember being bothered by anything when I played through.

 

[Dessolos]

I don't see anything wrong with Akira dying if the MC prevents the blackmail. I actually see it as a good outcome to the blackmail.

Yeah I wouldn't mind it as long as it's a choice and there is a actual story reason / consequence behind it

I just don't care about her positive side, or the justification she might give for blackmailing the MC, because nothing she does or says will change my mind. There is no redemption for her.

yup I know you have a hard stance on it which I don't agree with and we will never see eye to eye. I just figure id tell you my thoughts on it for the 100th time since you did the same

 

[Alandir]

I mean, it's not really a question what happened. The 0.3 update was pretty disastrous, and it had an effect on the game's reputation. It also seems to have stopped the game's rapid growth dead in its tracks. I'm fairly sure I am not the only supporter who canceled over it, and what I see on Graphtreon seems to agree.

That's not what happened. What stopped his growth was that the game stopped updating. Simple as that. It went up in the month of the update as people subscribe to get the update and then they immediatly cancel and it was less people in the next month, but still more people than were there before the update. That's par for the course with avn patreons. Then the game stopped updating and the patreon numbers didn't go up and went down a bit from around 100 to around 90.

 

[BlasKyau]

That's not what happened. What stopped his growth was that the game stopped updating. Simple as that. It went up in the month of the update as people subscribe to get the update and then they immediatly cancel and it was less people in the next month, but still more people than were there before the update. That's par for the course with avn patreons. Then the game stopped updating and the patreon numbers didn't go up and went down a bit from around 100 to around 90.

Well, after reading this I think my opinion of the game remains the same as before.

 

[EETPMC]

I mean, it's not really a question what happened. The 0.3 update was pretty disastrous, and it had an effect on the game's reputation. It also seems to have stopped the game's rapid growth dead in its tracks. I'm fairly sure I am not the only supporter who canceled over it, and what I see on Graphtreon seems to agree.

I don't think the game's growth was ever "rapid", although the dev pace is acceptable to me given most solo dev games here take like 5 years to complete. The max donors he ever had was like $500 per month which is not that much at all. You would make a lot more money working at a fast food joint, it's not like he's able to dev full time like other projects as old as this game.

As an individual donor I can understand being upset releases aren't faster since by the end of the year, you spent more money than it would cost to buy a AAA game even with DLC milking, but I mean even if its a free game, the dev does have to put time into making it. $500 a month is like 40 hours of dev time a month. Anything more and he's basically cutting into time he could be working a real job to make the game.

Like in comparison Eternum is probably the most popular AVN I can think of aside from maybe Harem Hotel, but for the amount of money they're getting, their dev progress is actually pretty slow. The only dev I have seen who hasn't let success slow down his production is probably Cosy Cafe guy, although that's arguably because he uses pretty low effort renders (no face expression for example, same poses). His speed is actually worth what he is being paid though.

 

[Mmushy]

That's not what happened. What stopped his growth was that the game stopped updating. Simple as that. It went up in the month of the update as people subscribe to get the update and then they immediatly cancel and it was less people in the next month, but still more people than were there before the update. That's par for the course with avn patreons. Then the game stopped updating and the patreon numbers didn't go up and went down a bit from around 100 to around 90.

Totally agree with this.
It's like a downward spiral. You lose the subs you have because of the lack of updates and you also lose any potential subs when they see the time frame in between updates. The numbers will simply keep dropping.

 

[Tiur]

I don't think the game's growth was ever "rapid"

I mean, Graphtreon is out there for anyone to look at. Expand the time frame to max, and you can see a very sharp upward line to the 0.3 bump (much sharper growth than most AVNs, which makes sense given just how good this game looks), then a drastic dropoff for such an early update, and the expected "no-update" slow decline over time.

August:


Here's a couple devs with similarly infrequent updates that are still generally well-received:



And then a few devs with more normal-looking growth:

This one has very regular updates, and you can clearly see the usual "spike on update, dropoff, repeat but gradual growth" flow.

Another one known for regular and well-received updates showing the same pattern.

And a third.

So this is why I call August's initial growth "very rapid". The rate of August's initial growth was much faster than almost any other AVN I know of. It's possible that caused some hype and pressure, of course, but it was unquestionably very rapid growth for an AVN.

 

[EETPMC]

...

Yeah, but look at the magnitude over time on those graphs. I'd rather have a low growth rate with 1000 subscribers, than a fast growth rate of 5 dudes as an example. Those guys have consistent schedules because they are making way more money and are treating it more like a job (as they should). You are acting like this guy has been rolling in the dough when he hasn't. This dev has been working on this for a while and really hasn't gotten that much money given I assume he has dumped a couple hundred hours working on this so far (I'm not really sure how difficult the rendering process is). As a result, I don't really expect consistency in progress since he clearly would have to support himself working a real job and working on the game on the side during his free time. I would hope he isn't a kid living with his parents, because a minor making porn games is kinda fucked up.

I definitely can see why a donor would be impatient though. However, unfortunately the free to play "business model" is entirely dependent on the amount of donors than the amount of money each individual donor spends. If there aren't enough people chipping in, even if you're a high level donor, you simply aren't providing enough money to the dev for it to be reasonable to expect monthly updates and such. I mean yeah, everyone promises regular updates on their ebegging page, but they promise that expecting a good following to make the time investment worth it. It would be cool if devs worked on their game primarily as a labor of love, but most dudes who aren't motivated by money just tend to post screenshots on pixiv instead (which aren't nearly as enjoyable for us the consumer), and save themselves a lot of hassle of writing a script and programming the game.

 

[Wolfeszorn]

One major difference might also be that those devs are communicating with their audience, unlike August who mostly hides in his private discord channels instead. Communication is the key difference here imho

 

[Tiur]

Yeah, but look at the magnitude over time on those graphs. I'd rather have a low growth rate with 1000 subscribers, than a fast growth rate of 5 dudes as an example. Those guys have consistent schedules because they are making way more money and are treating it more like a job (as they should).

They're really not. All of those graphs are max zoom, so from their oldest recorded Patreon data onwards. Every single one of those graphs starts MUCH shallower than August's.

Beyond that, there are only two creators there making remotely enough to treat it as a job. I left the scales on the screenshots specifically to avoid people making the incorrect assumptions you're making here.

You are acting like this guy has been rolling in the dough when he hasn't.

I am not. I honestly don't know what you're reading into my intentions, but I posted these as part of an explanation specifically answering someone saying they thought it was odd that August had so few subscribers. I have no investment in August anymore, since I cancelled my sub after 0.3 and my post about it in this thread, nor do I have any investment in faster updates from August. There was so much potential in 0.1 and 0.2, and August has so much writing talent, that I'd love to see the game return in a more constructive fashion... But I don't have particularly high hopes given the dev's lack of any response to 0.3's reception (his last post here was the exact same day as Patreon release of 0.3 to his then-largest tier, the same one I was on; I sent my criticism of 0.3 to him privately on Patreon first to give him a chance to digest and respond if he wanted to, but he did not, so I also posted it here upon public release).

The point of my posts were: three events all occurred at roughly the same time, shortly after 0.3's release: (1) a sharp uptick in criticism of the game's story (not just from me), (2) a sharp dropoff of subscriber numbers on Patreon (this is fact, as shown in the graph I posted), and (3) August retreating to his Discord 10 days prior to the release (oddly enough, coinciding with Patreon release), and never posting here again afterwards. I know that correlation isn't causation, but IMO this points pretty strongly to "the poor reception to 0.3" being the cause of all three.