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

[exer]

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.

lol wut. Seriously? No one should try to make a game unless they have at least $100,000? How much do you think these games actually cost to make? I've spent about $800 on a ton of assets and multiple game engines, and I can very easily make many many games with what I have. I've also spent far more than what many people do. Especially 2D games that use free engines like Renpy, since that doesn't cost anything. Even games made in Unity are made for free. People who use DAZ can drop a decent amount of money on assets, but even then, you don't need to buy thousands and thousands of dollars worth to make a single game with static images.

Also, be real, no one is just quitting their job from the start to make these games, and are just hoping they end up making enough to pay rent. Things like "cost of living" isn't a factor when it comes to starting development. People aren't quitting their jobs to work on their games full time unless their game has become successful enough that they're able to. No one just jumps in head first like that. It would be a one way ticket to homelessness.

I'm definitely not saying that people shouldn't get paid for the work, and I'm definitely not saying that it's impossible to make money by making adult games. I'm just saying that making adult games is not a business decision, and it never should be. There's way safer options that make way more money out there, and I like to think that most people know this. People start making adult games because they enjoy doing it.

 

[Nottravis]

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.

I think this is probably the biggest question a dev can face to be honest. As others have said, releasing in one go with the current funding models available to us, although nice for the players, doesn't really work for developers. Small increments to an existing game are all well and good, but can leave a sour taste in the mouth for players/supporters if that month was a bit lacking for them (this could be for many reasons of course, such as the dev focusing on girl A that month whereas the player was more interested in a totally different path).

However, there is a third path open to you.

When I was pondering this one, I decided to release my game in monthly chapters instead. So each update will be a complete game, albeit of a continuing story. This to me, seemed to be the best way to balance delivery and meeting expectations. The players never have any loose ends and can be assured of having something complete every time they play. Just a thought for you to consider.

 

[j4yj4m]

lol wut. Seriously? No one should try to make a game unless they have at least $100,000? How much do you think these games actually cost to make? I've spent about $800 on a ton of assets and multiple game engines, and I can very easily make many many games with what I have. I've also spent far more than what many people do. Especially 2D games that use free engines like Renpy, since that doesn't cost anything. Even games made in Unity are made for free. People who use DAZ can drop a decent amount of money on assets, but even then, you don't need to buy thousands and thousands of dollars worth to make a single game with static images.

I think you have to differenciate which games we are talking about. There are professional artists around here (like DC from Summertime Saga, who quit his job in the animation industry to make games) who clearly need to earn money or they'll stop producing games on that scale. And I'm sure there are quite a few others who actually develope their game full time by now. In return people do actually get a lot of content and quality.

Sure most devs are working part/free time but it obivously shows in the content they release. It's just a difference if you invest like 20 to 25 hours a week and maybe share the work with some friends or if you can invest your full time and freetime and make the money to hire people.

And that's actually where patreon comes in any why the "monthly schedule" is popular. It enables projects to grow slowy and it enables devs to invest more time into their game, go fulltime, maybe hire people and actually get the game done and produce more content. Nowaways few people would spend a year or more or their complete free time to produce a full game and not release anything in the mean time.

Edit:

All in all I'd say you can broadly devide devs in three categories:
- Those who are professionals, see it as a business and want to make money (which of course doesn't exclude that they love their job.)
- Those who start small and as a hobby but hope to grow and make it their job in the future.
- Those who do it as a hobby and don't intent to change that.

The 3rd category will include the vast, vast majority of games/devs but there are certainly some who manage to get from the 2nd to the 1st and even more who hope to achieve that.

 

[Avaron1974]

People start making adult games because they enjoy doing it.

Some do, yeah, not all.

How many abandoned games have we seen with the devs excuse of "not making enough money". Some may enjoy making them but some expect to make quick cash.

That's not just H game devs, Steam early access is full of asset flips and cheaply made games designed to make quick money. Gaming in general is huge business and over the years H gaming has grown quite substantially. With that growth you see more people trying to cash in on it.

 

[Retro]

I think it depends on the type of game. In visual novels I hate lots of tiny updates and would rather they be large updates regardless of how infrequent they are. More sandboxy games (just one extremely random example being Research into Affection) then smaller (and presumably more frequent) updates are fine.

 

[redknight00]

Maybe I didn't express myself clearly, I was talking about making a decent sized commercial game, in your case, if it's just a game for fun there's no need for all that.

Otherwise, you have to think of costs with assets and rig, hiring people from other areas such as artists, programmers, writers, composers, marketing, web developers, server and energy costs and still have some extra buck in case of emergency.

 

[anne O'nymous]

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.

While I tend to do the opposite because you found more easily the time to play a (relatively speaking) small update.

One thing that seem to haven't been addressed is that it also depend of the game itself. If it's a visual novel or an interactive story, you can easily go for multiple update, they'll follow the flow of the story. But if you go for more opened games, the player face the possibility to have to replay it, because an update will add content before the point where the said player already is ; or content that don't make sense now that he goes "this far".

 

[exer]

Okay. This has gotten way too off topic, and being insulting

I think you have to differenciate which games we are talking about. There are professional artists around here (like DC from Summertime Saga, who quit his job in the animation industry to make games) who clearly need to earn money or they'll stop producing games on that scale. And I'm sure there are quite a few others who actually develope their game full time by now. In return people do actually get a lot of content and quality.

Sure most devs are working part/free time but it obivously shows in the content they release. It's just a difference if you invest like 20 to 25 hours a week and maybe share the work with some friends or if you can invest your full time and freetime and make the money to hire people.

And that's actually where patreon comes in any why the "monthly schedule" is popular. It enables projects to grow slowy and it enables devs to invest more time into their game, go fulltime, maybe hire people and actually get the game done and produce more content. Nowaways few people would spend a year or more or their complete free time to produce a full game and not release anything in the mean time.

Edit:

All in all I'd say you can broadly devide devs in three categories:
- Those who are professionals, see it as a business and want to make money (which of course doesn't exclude that they love their job.)
- Those who start small and as a hobby but hope to grow and make it their job in the future.
- Those who do it as a hobby and don't intent to change that.

The 3rd category will include the vast, vast majority of games/devs but there are certainly some who manage to get from the 2nd to the 1st and even more who hope to achieve that.

I'm not saying that professional adult game makers don't exist. I'm just saying that people don't START as professional adult game makers. The person who made Summertime Saga didn't get funding to make the game and then quit their job day 1 to work on it full time. They didn't hire a bunch of staff day 1 either. They started working on it in their free time until they were able to start putting out rough builds of the game, and them quitting their job and hiring staff came later once they got support. And yes, their game has come a long way from where it started, but that doesn't mean games made by individuals or unfunded teams are bad or even inferior. Some of my favorite games were made by individuals with no funding. Games like Super Deep Throat, A Spell For All, Sim Girl and numerous other flash games come to mind. Even disregarding that, I'm sure a lot of developers would be pretty offended and disheartened by a statements like that. I'm not, because I know that kind of thinking is hilariously wrong, and that everyone starts in the same place. Also, amount of time per week doesn't affect the end result. It simply takes longer to get there.

Anyway, everyone starts making adult games as a hobbyist. Whether they hope it becomes financially successful or not. Either way, they're doing just that, "hoping" it gets financially successful. Because no one is getting funding for adult games, except through patreon. Which you can't get until you have something out there. Which requires practice and having something rough put out.

I mean, if anyone actually has a list of possible investors willing to finance adult games, by all means, point me in that direction. I would be more than happy to be proven wrong in that regard and be able to quit my job today and work on adult games full time. As far as I know, they don't exist though.

Honestly though, that's all I'm going to say about that. I made this thread because I wanted to see what kind of release people would prefer. Money has absolutely nothing to do with that.

 

[Ataios]

For me it's definitely regular updates. After all, many good porn games never get completed at all. Among my personal top 10 there is no game that ever got finished.

 

[Epadder]

Honestly if you can release it when it's done or as close to complete as possible, I would have preferred to do that with my own project in a lot of ways.
I mean the downside is the more complete the game the less room to listen to feedback for features you overlooked/aren't important for the way you play games.
Although if this is completely a hobby/side project, then do whatever is best for you... :winkytongue::biggrin:

 

[j4yj4m]

Anyway, everyone starts making adult games as a hobbyist. Whether they hope it becomes financially successful or not. Either way, they're doing just that, "hoping" it gets financially successful. Because no one is getting funding for adult games, except through patreon. Which you can't get until you have something out there. Which requires practice and having something rough put out.

The point I was making is that the funding model correlates with the release schedule. If you basically complete your game and release it half way or shortly before it's done, you will obviously take in less money than someone who puts it on patreon on day one and plays by the rules of that model. So in the end the question for most devs won't be which update schedule users prefer but which one is the most economically viable and from my experience the most important thing at the start of any game are frequent releases with good content. That's how you grow your patreon base, create trust, earn the means to invest more time etc.

So the question is what one as a dev wants. If you want to create your game and see the money as a bonus in the first place, then you may do it as ever you want, of course. There are many devs on patreon who do that and some are doing pretty well but there seems to be a clear limit to what patreons are willing to fund. On the other hand there are many devs who have "going fulltime" as a funding goal on patreon and they certainly aim for more than just a hobby.

Honestly though, that's all I'm going to say about that. I made this thread because I wanted to see what kind of release people would prefer. Money has absolutely nothing to do with that.

Well, in that case you've got your answer but I think it was fair for people to point out that the one thing users would prefer most (getting a full game right away) is the least best option if you want your game to grow and make money.

I'd agree that there are certain games which are done great by single persons but they are usually made in a way that they can be done by a single person. What I meant with "it shows" is that a single person who works in his/her freetime will obviously release less content than someone who is doing it full time and that will affect the game and the money that can be earned over time. I don't think that's an unfair statement.

 

[exer]

Thanks for your input everyone!

After some consideration, I think the best thing to do is release in large updates. For a few reasons.

1. I can get feedback between versions, to help improve the game and cater it more towards what people like, and move away from what people don't like.
2. I can get feedback on any bugs I've overlooked.
3. Judging from the poll and a lot of the responses, it seems to be what a lot of people want, as well as a good compromise for those that would rather have a full game.

So, I'll be starting development on an initial version soon. The game currently has 12 main characters and numerous side characters planned. I'll be doing 3 full main character storylines and adding in at least 2 side characters for the initial release (kind of depends on how long they take to put in). I don't want to be like one of those games where you have to wait for updates for specific characters. It's just the worst. So I'll always be including full stories for any character I put in. For now, I'm off to experiment with engines to find which one would be best.