Why do 3DCG fantasy/medieval games under perform on patreon?

[MrBree]

Are you looking just on Patreon? cuz there are over 300 websites of fantasy 3D out there with all kinds of creatures.
even Daz has Dragon models

Fantasy 3D images or 3D games? Vast difference. 3d game means making hundreds of these pictures.

To clarify, I hope to eventually create my own game in this same category. I have been looking at the existing model assets. There are rather massive gaps in the range of fantasy creature assets. Sometimes non-existent or with only singular examples. Other times, the creatures are designed to be monstrous and wouldn't work as a 'nice' character.

Here's a sample of the creatures I still need assets for:

• Sphinx
• Dryad (will most likely custom her)
• Forest spirit
• Sylph
• Naiad

No, I'm not asking for help right now, I'm just listing them to make a point.. While there are solutions to everything here, it is not at all 'off the shelf'. I have to plan hard to make such creatures exist at all and kitbash my heart out. Have you looked at most of the 3d games here? The same 3d art assets are used all over the place. Most devs aren't at all going to go to that effort.

 

[polywog]

3d game means making hundreds of these pictures.

3D Game means making zero of these pictures. You're thinking 3DCG VN a picture storybook.
A 3D Game is "rendered to screen" on the player's computer. You don't do the rendering.

 

[MrBree]

3D Game means making zero of these pictures. You're thinking 3DCG VN a picture storybook.
A 3D Game is "rendered to screen" on the player's computer. You don't do the rendering.

That is both correct, and off the point. You know what I meant.

 

[Belle]

Fantasy is a curious topic, not only when it comes to adult games. It's probably the easiest genre to write for because the author is not beholden to any rules or nature, physics, society, or technology. You can handwave away any problem with magic, or introduce precisely the problem your story needs through the same method. It's ideal to an aspiring author who feels unprepared for the research that goes into writing a story set in historical settings, modern times, or the future. Fantasy is easy.

Or so one might believe.

Because fantasy is so easy, it attracts the worst authors out there. The fantasy genre is filled with 90% crap, 9% passable, and 1% gems in the rough. Much of it is because fantasy authors think "easy" means they don't have to apply any logical thought to their settings or stories. Why are there orcs in my setting? Why not? What impact does magic have on this nation's economy? Who the fuck cares? Should dwarves have any non-tropey character traits? Of course not, they're dwarves!

Most fantasy authors grew up reading Tolkien and want to make something like The Lord of the Rings, but most fantasy authors have no idea why LOTR is a classic. Exceptional authors like George R.R. Martin succeed because they understand the genre, but even they are fighting an uphill battle. With so much fantasy drivel out there, it's hard for the audience to recognize what's good or not. Unless we're willing to read a lot of trash to find the gems, we have to rely on others to weed out the garbage for us. I believe this is why fantasy has a hard time getting noticed. The snowball needs to start rolling before it can pick up mass and speed.

But yeah, as others have mentioned, there's also the problem of fantasy being a little hard to make content for since there's far less to work with than if you make a game in a modern or sci-fi setting. When I started out with Long Live the Princess, fantasy resources were rare and often used outdated technology. You can see that in some of the less than stellar backgrounds from earlier versions of my game. Things have gotten much, much better since then, but it takes time for that kind of thing to end up in games, and even longer for their games to experience growth as a result (if they're even that lucky).

Now, on to the other topic at hand:

The very idea that videos like "make a castle in Blender in one hour" exist is insulting. It's like coming across a website that promises to teach you Chinese in one month. It just can't be done and gives you highly unrealistic expectations, especially if you lack experience. It's basically clickbait. Think of it like this: Cooking is easy! You can make an omelet in just a few minutes, no problem! If you made a video like that, you wouldn't be technically wrong, but you'd be skipping a whole lot of important information. You need to buy the ingredients for that omelet. You need several important kitchen tools. You're most likely making that omelet after you get home from work and are tired and just want to sit down. And when you've made that omelet and eaten it, you realize that you still have 30 more days this month where you need to cook, and you don't want to eat omelets every day.

Creating an update for Long Live the Princess requires:

1) Design. This can be a soul-draining experience with problems you struggle to see the end of. Many, maybe even most, ideas die at this stage.
2) Assembling resources to render the scene. Maybe I already have the graphical assets I need. I probably tried to make that happen in the design phase, but sometimes I'm going to have to go out there and search for something that fits what I need so I can buy it. I most likely won't find something that fits perfectly, so now I have to jump back to the design stage to modify my designs to fit with the newly discovered limitations. I have no time to build assets from scratch when I produce monthly updates.
3) Posing the scenes. This is very, very time-consuming. Posing a simple sex animation with 5 frames can easily take an entire day of work. It may look simple. It isn't.
4) Rendering the scenes. Each image can take anywhere from 5 minutes to 2 hours to render. I try to set this up while I sleep, but there's almost always something that needs tweaking in post, or errors that require me to go back to the posing stage before rendering all over again. This happens all the time.
5) Writing the story. Each update contains dialogue and story equal to roughly one long chapter in a novel. This step drains me more than any other and typically takes up several days of the month.
6) Writing the code. This is a huge obstacle at the beginning of a project, but with the mature stage LLtP is currently at, code is not something I have to spend a lot of time with anymore.

These six steps, even if some of them might be relatively short compared to the others, really add up. Keep in mind that an update will typically contain more than a hundred images that all have to be designed, posed, rendered, written for, and implemented in code. It's a lot of work!

 

[freedom.call]

For me it's easy, I see 'combat' tag and the game is not for me. No fan of spells, magicians, sorcerers, witches either.

 

[SeventhVixen]

In lack of a extensive market research, I doubt that specially fantasy or medieval games under perform (economically) in patreon, as a fast random selection of "view the patreon page of a bunch of lastest releases" show that Most games of any kind "underperform economically" in patreon. Same way 99% of Steam games underperform economically.

In fact, well performing projects are the jewells of the crown, rare as they can be. But in the end all goes to what is good performance, it depends on the time spent and goals of the creator.

Patreon and pseudo-paid/free nsfw are not quite easy to look to research; it's not looking at a sell chart. Maybe there are lot of games out there that are more successfull played for free, than the more paid ones. (I think i'd not made a point with this phrase.. I'll explain). Theres lots of Fantasy/medieval SFW games. For a casual player, playing some NSFW fantasy/medieval game is like a given. But Incest and Kinks? well, that's maybe something they like to pay for in order to ensure the content is made.

So maybe I just said that incest and kinks are Economically more performant in a player/payer ratio, but well, that's not a surprise for anyone. What I meant is that in terms of player engagement world-wide, vainilla-wise, they have the same chances of success (in getting a player base).

I personally went for making a Early Medieval non fantasy game just because I'd like to make one, a Crusader Kings with tits (and I like to make non-common things), I could not care less about perfomance; I just want it to be good and sell whatever it deserves to sell, and sadly all it goes to marketing, so I'm screwed. xD

 

[Zippity]

In lack of a extensive market research, I doubt that specially fantasy or medieval games under perform (economically) in patreon, as a fast random selection of "view the patreon page of a bunch of lastest releases" show that Most games of any kind "underperform economically" in patreon. Same way 99% of Steam games underperform economically.

In fact, well performing projects are the jewells of the crown, rare as they can be. But in the end all goes to what is good performance, it depends on the time spent and goals of the creator.

Patreon and pseudo-paid/free nsfw are not quite easy to look to research; it's not looking at a sell chart. Maybe there are lot of games out there that are more successfull played for free, than the more paid ones. (I think i'd not made a point with this phrase.. I'll explain). Theres lots of Fantasy/medieval SFW games. For a casual player, playing some NSFW fantasy/medieval game is like a given. But Incest and Kinks? well, that's maybe something they like to pay for in order to ensure the content is made.

So maybe I just said that incest and kinks are Economically more performant in a player/payer ratio, but well, that's not a surprise for anyone. What I meant is that in terms of player engagement world-wide, vainilla-wise, they have the same chances of success (in getting a player base).

I personally went for making a Early Medieval non fantasy game just because I'd like to make one, a Crusader Kings with tits (and I like to make non-common things), I could not care less about perfomance; I just want it to be good and sell whatever it deserves to sell, and sadly all it goes to marketing, so I'm screwed. xD

From a financial and business point of view, in most cases, creating anything for a given market, as someone new to the business end of things, it can be tough... It will most likely take a heavy investment of time, money, and other resources to get the job done from a Technical standpoint... You also have lots of other factors, that will have to come into play, that can have direct effects on how it is received by the general public... Things like the skill of the development team, their actual overall talent, how well it is marketed, who the intended target audience is/was, how well it was received by those who actually read/played it, how original was the idea/concept, and so on, will all have a direct effect, in varying ways, on the success of the product... If money is a concern with regards to production/marketing costs, then of course there will be an impact on both the over all production time and available content itself... If all a development team can afford, initially, is a 2D artist, that charges far less then a 3D artist, then there will be a direct impact on the content because most likely it will now be done with 2D characters and scenes, instead of 3D... And perhaps it may even be better for it... Again, so many varying factors come into play, to even include general luck... Nothing is simple in any market... It may appear simple sometimes, but in the end it is always highly complex... It just may be easier to mentally compartmentalize it as simple, to reduce ones own stress levels...

Fantasy, regardless of media, will most likely always lag behind in overall popular use, when compared to story based more on modern reality... And I really do think, that it is because modern stories, which are closer to known reality, tend to encompass a more grounded feeling, of peoples day to day lives and what they wish they could actually do/say/feel... Where as Fantasy and Sci-Fi offer more of an escape from the mundane restrictions of modern life and rules of reality...

Sci-Fi kind of falls into some of the same general pitfalls that Fantasy does, sometimes... Even though there is this perception that Sci-Fi tends to do better than Fantasy, that's not something I really agree with... But I'm a nerd who's into both, so...

Zip

 

[viewfinderlife]

creator of Waifu Academy plans to make one called Waifu Hunter. Monster girl <3 ahead.

 

[RogueKnightUK]

I mostly avoid Fantasy/Medieval games, despite the fact that I absolutely love well-written Sci-fi and Fantasy literature. However, just in that statement I mention the elephant in the room. Sci-fi and Fantasy are very, very difficult to write well.

Anyone can come up with some weird and fantastical shit. They can throw in exotic races, or stereotypical ones such as Orcs and Trolls and Goblins. They can have magic be real. And because it is their fantasy world, one they are making up in their own heads, it needs no explanations or rationales. Everything obviously works just as they expect, everything translates as they intend. So they think it is a good story...

... While to everyone else it sounds like when 6 year old children make up stories that make no sense.

What any story, of any genre, needs to do pretty fast is let the reader imagine the same thing they did in writing it. That means they do need to understand magic the way you mean magic, that they understand how races fit into your vision, and how that might not be how they would imagine it for themselves in their own version. Because without that, without building that shared vision, a story that can feel solid and where they can understand the rules, the story is guaranteed to just fall apart.

The 'suspension of disbelief' is a real and vital thing, and the further divorced your fiction is from a shared reality, the harder you need to work to attain that suspension of disbelief. If you create a world where even the laws of physics work differently, then you need strong reference points people can connect with and sort of use as a virtual 'landmark' to navigate the alternate reality from. That, in turn, usually means you have to be able to write characters that people can instantly completely identify with, and therefore use their reactions to the world to guage things by.

It takes damn good writing, and a writer with superb insight into people and characterization.

In writing, the way to make it easier is just to make it humorous and/or aim it at kids. Obviously, with adult VNs, aiming it at kids is out, and so the comedic ones have the best chance- e.g. Long Live the Princess. However, comedy requires its own understanding and observation skills.

If 90% of fantasy based VNs are largely ignored and unsuccessful, that roughly matches the world of professional book publishing, where 90% of books in that genre actually professionally edited and published, selected from a huge number of submissions and proposals that don't get published, actually get any audience or fans.

I could write a list of ten of my absolute favourite science-fantasy books, just from massively successful, critically acclaimed works that were considered must-read masterpieces of the genre, so just from the absolute best of the best, and I severely doubt that anyone but me would have read all ten, and I'd be pretty confident that more than 80% of all the people registered at this forum would have read less than any 2 of the ten.