Would you rather see a game released complete or continually updated?

[exer]

It's always been a bit of an issue in the adult games community of games getting abandoned. However, games are able to get support through patreon in order to get funding to make games much faster. So, I'm curious if people like the way games like Milfy City and Summertime Saga have been getting slowly released, or if they'd rather just wait and play the full game once it's done.

I'm working on a game now, and I've been debating which way to go about releasing.

 

[LewdCatgirl]

I'd wait until there was enough content for it to be actually playable and then release and update it from there.

 

[thepussydestroyer69]

depends really both has their cost, you release too frequent specially close to ending with the same phase cost the game to be lack luster, while releasing up to the finish product well it means you have to fund the project alone until it finishes and there would be needed bugs to be ironed along the way. i think milfy and saga is doing the near end drag that they are making enough space that the product doesn't end to close to the finished product that people wont want the end product when they feel like they already did months prior ,but hopefully doesn't drag too long that it never ends and would just end up into abandoned project

 

[thepussydestroyer69]

just release a semi playable demo let say about 12% of the story you want to write and not just hey it's a me Mario and this is my fuck crew demo sorry there is no content here cause it just a demo, let it be let say 30 to an hour gameplay

 

[redknight00]

That's the wrong place to look at, the preference of the players doesn't matter much as the viability of such projects, making a Patreon as you said mean the developer can earn money from the start (even though realistically it will take a minimum 6-12 months to form a viable income base) while a finished product needs to either be pre-funded or a second job to pay the bills. In the second case, the initial investment might grown from a modest 4-5 digit number to a solid 6 figures, and that's a lot of money for a starting developer.

 

[exer]

That's the wrong place to look at, the preference of the players doesn't matter much as the viability of such projects, making a Patreon as you said mean the developer can earn money from the start (even though realistically it will take a minimum 6-12 months to form a viable income base) while a finished product needs to either be pre-funded or a second job to pay the bills. In the second case, the initial investment might grown from a modest 4-5 digit number to a solid 6 figures, and that's a lot of money for a starting developer.

I'm not making a game to make money. That's not really even a consideration for me. If I wanted to make money by making games, I'd make normal ones to release on steam. Sure, it'd be great to be able to make adult games full time and not have to work a normal job, but I'm not about to expect anyone to give me money. I have a patreon, and I'll share it once I release the game in one way or another, but I'm making the game no matter what. Monetary cost isn't a factor in how it's being made or released, because I'm making it because it's a game I want to see made, and I already own the game engine and all the assets I'm going to use thanks to past projects. I'm just curious what people would rather see.

 

[wurg]

While a full release of a game is nice, it doesn't leave you wanting more. You can play through the whole thing and then put it aside and forget about it. There are a lot of games I play that I can't wait for the next update to arrive, it kinda makes me feel more vested in the project I guess.

On the other hand too frequent updates tend to disappoint me. I like the game The Intoxicating Flavor, and it seems to have an update about every two weeks, which is good. The problem is the updates aren't that big because of the time frame and I can get a little frustrated because of the lack of content. It seems like you open the game up to play the new content and 10 mins later your done.

To me the best balance would be regular updates that provide enough content for about 20 to 40 mins of game play. Where The Heart Is update showed up today and I think this game does a good job on the content/update cycle. It's long enough to where I can get vested in the story again not so long that I can't do it all in one setting. It leaves me wanting more.

 

[DarthSeduction]

It's always been a bit of an issue in the adult games community of games getting abandoned. However, games are able to get support through patreon in order to get funding to make games much faster. So, I'm curious if people like the way games like Milfy City and Summertime Saga have been getting slowly released, or if they'd rather just wait and play the full game once it's done.

I'm working on a game now, and I've been debating which way to go about releasing.

The length of your release has nothing to do with what the audience wants. If you have the resources to spend the time and energy to complete the game before putting it out, then fine, do that, and put it on steam rather than Patreon, but if not, your releases should be exactly as long as necessary to complete that particular part of the story.

A release should be like a chapter in a book or an episode of a television show, or a comic book issue. You pick up from where the last one left off, expand on that giving us a slight resolution and end giving us some semblance of the next step. Maybe the slight resolution is a failure, maybe it's gaining an ally, but regardless, you make progress and establish a new goal. Once you've done these things your release is finished. However long that takes is how long your release should be. Never compromise quality to release on a schedule because you're worried about patrons, and don't try to force yourself to complete more or stretch out the story the release needs to tell in order to complete some arbitrary length requirement. Your goal is to leave your players wanting more, but satiated.

 

[DarkenDragon]

there is ups and downs to each.

for releasing in batches
this allows for the community to see and have a sense of what you are trying to create and to build interest in it. getting more people to see it and talking about it, thus giving more publicity and interest. it also allows you to test the waters so to speak, see what fans reactions are. this way you are able to make changes where you can in order to make a better product.

things to avoid with releasing in batches
make each release feel substantial in my opinion. it should feel like watching an episode on tv, or reading a whole chapter. adding just a small amount of content could feel really underwhelming and could make people lose interest and fall off their radar and forget about the game entirely. you want them to keep wanting more and feel like they have accomplish something. for example I just got into playing "long live the princess" and as good as it is, I found out that the newest release vs the last release only added in just 1 event and 2 extra scenes. there probably was a lot of bug fixes and such which would have taken a lot of time, but honestly this amount for a release felt really small. if I had started from where the last release ended, it'd probably would have taken me about 20 mins or so to see all the new content. I think an acceptable goal is to add in about at least 2-3 hours worth of content just so the user feels like there is a large chunk to look at. if it takes you a long time to make it, I'd think that'd be much more worth it than to keep to a 2 week or 1 month schedule and only giving the user a 20-30 min amount of content.

as for just releasing a fully finished game right from the beginning,
well of course it'd be nice since the player doesnt have to worry about being interrupted with waiting for new releases. the player would have a large amount of content to play to keep them busy. it would be a finished product that the player would expect to be bug free and feel complete. you just miss out on all the benefits the batch release method would provide. like the constant feed back or the slow build of fans. you also would have sunk in a lot of time for a gamble as well.

so each has their ups and downs, it all depends on which benefits or risks you value most.

 

[Deleted member 229118]

From my experiance i prefere games to be fineshed(and not just porn games).
I have grown to hate clifhangers and early access games because it always leaves me unsatified.
When i start something i want to be able to fineshed it.
Not having to wait for 6 years just to finesh something.

That said: 95% of all games are crap fineshed or otherwise.
Early release can help correct certian issu's.

So the question is this: Do you want to release a game early to get feedback on it?
If yes then open beta's are good.
If no then simply focus on getting it compleet.

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

From experience, I'd say big updates. I have time and patience to replay a game to see the new content. I may not have the interest for every incremental update.

 

[gunderson]

There are different benefits to each model.

Full game developed and released, completed: this is, I find, the most satisfying way for a game to be released. I know I can start the game and (assuming I do well enough at it or find it fun enough to keep going) actually complete the fucking thing in one playthrough, the story is more likely to have a satisfying conclusion, and I generally know much better exactly what I'm getting than the other development types where things can change drastically through development. The danger in this sort of thing, I find, is too much hype. Start advertising early and people just demand that the game be finished before it's ready, so I'd recommend going dark until you're near release. But really, this is what I most would want to see. Hell, if it turns out that Steam isn't too restrictive on the content of the games it allows on its platform (incest?), I'd much rather Patreon close up shop and people move their shit over to Valve's store and start releasing full porn games again.

Big updates: this style tends to work for games with big modular bits. As you mentioned, Summertime Saga comes to mind: each girl/set of girls can have their own story, come with minigames, and is sort of a small self-contained game in and of itself within the larger game. I imagine (not being a game dev myself) that this can be pretty hard to manage logistically speaking, but some devs can definitely pull it off. However, this does have the disadvantage again of the continual hype train: most months there won't be any releases, and that can frustrate players, but burnout on the part of the players shouldn't be a big issue. The larger updates should allow players to replay the game infrequently enough that things still feel fresh if it's their sort of game.

Lots of small updates: the Patreon way. This is the method for people who know, in advance, that they have the businesslike midset of getting through a lump of work every month, no matter what. More often than not, developers start to give excuses and slow down and just generally get tired of working a few updates in, sometimes even if they're being paid a buttload of money to get content out, though this usually happens because they didn't get the traction they were looking for with their audience. I don't know how many games you've developed before, but personal excitement about a project only seems to get most devs through the first 2-3 updates. After that, it turns into a job where the dev sets their own hours, and that tends to work about as well as you'd expect. From the player perspective, this also tends to start out exciting, but as the updates inevitably become incremental, the players tend to get really burned out on replaying the same thing over and over with relatively little change in content. Occasionally you find your niche with players who obsess over your work and are cool with replaying every release no matter how small or simply bug-fix-specific, but I wouldn't depend on it. On a personal note, I don't think there's any game that does monthly releases that I bother replaying every update for anymore. I generally check in on the games I like about every 3 months.

A side note on replayability: some devs confuse replayability with having lots of options. Lots of options means that players can choose to play different ways, but doesn't always imply that every choice is viable or even that every player wants to see the results of every choice. For example, a VN might give me the choice between banging the hot busty milf or the flat skinny jailbait girl. I'm always (ALWAYS) going to pick the hot milf, and somebody else is always going to pick the flat skinny jailbait girl. So that means that while you've doubled your development time on that section and perhaps appealed to a wider audience, you haven't really improved replayability for either player. This isn't a big deal in complete games, but seems like it has to potential to really frustrate devs who allow for a lot of choice in frequently updated games like SuperPowered where most players just won't bother doing what it takes to see all the new scenes every month when each new choice requires an entire (increasingly long) playthrough to get to. On the other hand, a well-written linear story can be worth reading/playing again just because it's that good. See: Akabur's best games, most specifically Princess Trainer Gold. While there's a lot of variation in scenes, you pretty much see everything there is to see in one playthrough, yet I've gone back to play that one several times over, and that game was released as basically two big updates (after beginning life as a longer side story in an earlier game).

 

[exer]

Thank you everyone for your responses! They're already a big help. Seems like most people prefer getting the full game all at once, but are also okay with updates, as long as they're substantial. Right now, I'm leaning towards just doing a few big updates. Likely doing about 20% of the game at a time, released every couple of months or so. Depending on how fast I'm working. I'm going to wait for the poll to end to decide for sure though.

 

[Avaron1974]

There aren't many games I play monthly, there isn't enough content to justify it. Waiting a month for something that takes between 10 minutes to an hour. Unless i'm really hooked on the story I wait.

I generally wait until they are completed which is why I end up playing a lot of Japanese VN's and RPG's, they tend to be the ones launched when completed or at the very least not translated until they are complete.

 

[j4yj4m]

It really depends on the game to be honest. The more important the story is, the less I like small "monthly" releases but there are some games where I really enjoy them. A good example for the latter category would be "The Twist" where there's no deep story but easy gameplay and a lot of sex scenes. You can load your old save, play 15 minutes and you'll be happy. I can think of a few other games which broadly fall into that same category but I don't think there are that many of them.

But then again, as mentioned by others it's not like there's a choice in most cases. Either games get financed via patreon on regular schedules or they don't get made at all.

 

[Volta]

as people have said there are pro's and con's to each method but personally i like an intermediate size update at less frequent intervals, once a month is rarely enough time to put in enough content for me to warrant a replay, certainly for a one man operation. I'd prefer wait three months for a decent size update and then release, it gives you more time for a more polished product, not to mention if you're MIA for a week for RL reasons it's not going to screw you over too much, give yourself the wiggle room of longer update gaps.

As for selling only a finished product, this would be ideal however that simply isn't the way the industry is geared right now, perhaps when steam's adult game thing is in full swing it'll be different.

 

[Avaron1974]

I will add that I will always play updates for games like Offcuts. While it isn't completed it does have full complete routes for 1 girl each update. There are currently 2 full routes with endings for 2 of the girls with another coming next month or so.

Something like that i'd gladly throw monthly support behind.

I think Fates of Irnia would have been suited for something like that. It has so many paths if the dev just did 1 full path then another I think he'd get a lot more support as people would at least see tangible progress.

The problem with monthly updates is you rarely see decent progress because a month isn't a lot of time and any longer puts people off.

 

[215303j]

In the second case, the initial investment might grown from a modest 4-5 digit number to a solid 6 figures, and that's a lot of money for a starting developer.

How do you arrive at such numbers?

While a full release of a game is nice, it doesn't leave you wanting more.

On the other hand too frequent updates tend to disappoint me.

What he said.

There is a definite advantage to monthly releases. Also the interaction with the dev and other fans is interesting. There are some games where the thread on this forum is more interesting than the game itself (e.g. DMD). This says something, but it's not that the game is bad, it just sparks discussion. This combination can be fantastic.

 

[redknight00]

How do you arrive at such numbers?

Educated guess, I talk to developers, initial investment for patreon games usually range from zero for people who don't mid pirating what they use to 20~30k USD while a full time investment for a game to be released should be able to cover the living cost and investment of however many people are working on it and I don't see anyone starting this kind of endeavor with less than 100k in their bank account.

 

[ThisIsMe88]

I no longer do Patreon (with a couple of exceptions) because I noticed that either some authors took their sweet donation-sponsored time granted for life, or they kept delivering (mostly small) updates to ever-unfinished products, which left me highly frustrated.

Some kind of closure is important in games, or I can't appreciate them. This doesn't prevent sequels or other, better games from being created (and bought) in the future if the author is really talented.

Nowadays I prefer to buy final releases on Itch.io/HumbleBundle/Steam/whatever (or a "one-time" donation on Patreon), with an extra tip and a "follow" if I enjoyed the game.