Akabur Games

[Sierra Lee]

Re: Akabur Games

Yes, it is a risk, but the funders do have some control if they choose to use it.

First, you can wait until you see an actual demo or until the developer has released a game before funding. I'd say that once a developer releases an actual game, they probably understand what it takes to continue to release products down the line.

Second, you can push the developer to maintain communication (as HentaiWriter stated). If a month or two goes by, and you do not hear anything, pull your funding.

Third, as above, you can always pull your funding. That is the best way to promote responsible behaviors on Patreon. When a developer releases a subpar product or pulls some other form of shenanigans, pull or drastically reduce your funding.

To you comment on Akabur and the "master" stuff. I 100% concur that his Patreon is an unhealthy environment. He has been worshiped to the point that he seems to believe he is above rebuke. All criticism, whether constructive or not is disregard or even attacked. Unfortunately, his funders don't seem to realize that does not help him or them in the end. It's too bad...

I agree that Patreon would be a healthier environment this way, but like you said, funders only have that control if they choose to use it. Though Patreon is still a very young platform, I find myself wondering how likely we are to see any large scale shift in funding patterns. I certainly hope we see a lot more creators being responsible and holding themselves to high standards, but my tendency is to be pessimistic.

While I don't have a lot of evidence, I feel like Patreon might be a situation where competition doesn't actually provide much accountability. Compare Kickstarter, which seems to have become even more prone to these problems as it has scaled up.

So far, it seems that we're seeing a rising tide lifting all ships, and I suspect that will include many that are violating their backers' trust. Every time I check on great projects like yours or HentaiWriter's, you've gotten more support... but projects that are stalled, unproductive, or possibly actually fraudulent have gone up as well. I think the sunk cost fallacy (plus simple human inertia) will make change less likely.

Of course those are just my impressions, so I could be completely wrong. XD If anyone has actual evidence, I'd love to see it, because I'm very curious about the long term impact of these platforms on game creation.

 

[Manamana]

Re: Akabur Games

...because I'm very curious about the long term impact of these platforms on game creation.

One thing I'm sure of: we will have more games available, and statistically more good games with this system.
See with kickstarter for the non adult market: it has its flaws, but it has stimulated the market with a lot of good and original games

 

[loopy]

Re: Akabur Games

That's what time solves for the most part: if you have a solid history in delivering actual work, then you will be more prone to be trusted.
Also, I believe that in the future we'll see more projects to be funded: this will stimulate some competition, and most people will not give money to every project.

I'm talking about Patreon as a whole there. Naturally individual abuses will be removed or their funding pulled as they're discovered. Also, part of what I'm saying is that even established people with decent histories outside of Patreon seem to become dodgy once they have a goodly amount of money coming in every month. Right now I just see the platform as too easily abused, and it doesn't have to be long term to be a problem.

The example I used before, the Opala woman, she's fairly established with a couple of released games behind her. She's been riding the excuse of "drillings" since January. It turns out her date was February for release, not March, and in the meanwhile her contribution totals have gone up, rather than down. Judging by the release notes from betas that have been leaked, there's maybe two weeks worth of work from the January version to the May, and during that time she's brought in between $12,000 and $20,000.

At her level's or Akabur's, a month or two is a ridiculous sum of money. All they have to do is keep up enough of an illusion for a while, and they can keep it going for much longer. I'm sat here bitching about the way they do things, and I'm not even totally certain that they are only trying to milk it. People with a little more faith than me could keep them well-funded for a long time. A lot of people seem to think of themselves as Renaissance bankers or something, and they just want to coddle the artists as long as it takes to produce a masterpiece.

And I know how to decide when to pull my funding. The biggest issue is it seems almost impossible to make an actually informed decision on whether or not to fund. In the end, what you have to go on are the artist's promises, past performance, and the attitude and feedback of fans. Their promises don't mean much. Past performance without Patreon seems a poor indicator, and with Patreon it's hard to tell if they're going to cross some psychological line at $500/month, $2000/month or whatever, where coasting seems feasible and looks really appealing. In general, feedback from fans is worthless. I'm sure I just sound like a malcontent to a lot of people, and the "Oh, Honorable Master" types are useless.

I think the best, imperfect remedy is to watch their page for a while, possibly months, before deciding if what you see is worth your money. That's kind of sad. And annoyingly, you may have to keep throwing in a few bucks and reneging before you get billed to see the most important updates.

 

[Manamana]

Re: Akabur Games

I think the best, imperfect remedy is to watch their page for a while, possibly months, before deciding if what you see is worth your money.

Like I said, it depends on the way you want to fund people. I kind of agree with the way you do it, not burning money for nothing, but I know people that are much more enthusiastic than you or me, and who are able to give money even for the tiniest update. It's their money to burn after all...
And even doing that can't really suppress the risk that the author does nothing or doesn't impress in the end. That's life.

As for the money that opala or akabur make while they (seem to) do nothing, as long as it's not my money or yours, why caring that much? It sure is sad to see wasted potential, but well, there are honest and hard working people who try to do good games, I prefer to fund them...

 

[loopy]

Re: Akabur Games

As for the money that opala or akabur make while they (seem to) do nothing, as long as it's not my money or yours, why caring that much? It sure is sad to see wasted potential, but well, there are honest and hard working people who try to do good games, I prefer to fund them...

I kicked in a few bucks early on, and severely reduced it over time, as I started to think my contributions were wasted. That's why I've taken a bit of an interest. I can afford to throw away a bit of money like that, but I don't want to be doing it constantly, and I think the situation needs to be discussed. You can't really do it on Patreon to any effect, there's no "Patreon Sucks" website that I know of, so I guess I'm venting here where it seems semi-relevant.

 

[Manamana]

Re: Akabur Games

I kicked in a few bucks early on, and severely reduced it over time, as I started to think my contributions were wasted. That's why I've taken a bit of an interest. I can afford to throw away a bit of money like that, but I don't want to be doing it constantly, and I think the situation needs to be discussed. You can't really do it on Patreon to any effect, there's no "Patreon Sucks" website that I know of, so I guess I'm venting here where it seems semi-relevant.

I understand better now.
Patreon doesn't suck IMO: it's only a tool, and yeah we will see more wasted investments over time, but I don't doubt that we will see awesome games out of it too.
These are 2 sides of the same coin.

 

[loopy]

Re: Akabur Games

Yeah, Patreon is hit-or-miss. I was just thinking of the aughties when there was very often a "Sucks" website registered for companies, e.g., "VerizonSucks.com".

 

[Tastelesswhiskey]

Re: Akabur Games

I like how we are going so deep about the rules and ethics for patreon, but I wish we had its own forum for it (I'm only saying that because there are people on this forum that are patreon creators and it feels like a good way to discuss things)

 

[Ragtime]

Re: Akabur Games

Just wanted to keep some of the more disillusioned of you up to date as to the progress of the modding community (current discussion can be found

You must be registered to see the links

)

The mod seems to be progressing quite well, and from what little the creators are actually sharing with the public, it seems to be pretty huge in terms of scope. I've seen a couple of the CG's for proposed events and I have to say that they are exceptional, they mimic Akabur's style extremely well.

There are going to be

You must be registered to see the links

(obviously NSFW) to chose from and supposedly fully fleshed out stories for each of them, it is kinda hard to keep track of stuff on 4chan because of all the garbage posts in between the actual relevant posts and the fact that pages only last for a few days before they expire and an entire new thread has to be started. I know some of you only want to see posts about Akaburs work here, but short of starting a new topic this thread is really the only other place where people that care about this type of game will actually look to find relevant info.

 

[Manamana]

Re: Akabur Games

Just wanted to keep some of the more disillusioned of you up to date as to the progress of the modding community (current discussion can be found

You must be registered to see the links

)

The mod seems to be progressing quite well, and from what little the creators are actually sharing with the public, it seems to be pretty huge in terms of scope. I've seen a couple of the CG's for proposed events and I have to say that they are exceptional, they mimic Akabur's style extremely well.

There are going to be

You must be registered to see the links

(obviously NSFW) to chose from and supposedly fully fleshed out stories for each of them, it is kinda hard to keep track of stuff on 4chan because of all the garbage posts in between the actual relevant posts and the fact that pages only last for a few days before they expire and an entire new thread has to be started. I know some of you only want to see posts about Akaburs work here, but short of starting a new topic this thread is really the only other place where people that care about this type of game will actually look to find relevant info.

Wow, design is really good, but will it be some sort of "witch trainer extended edition" (yay!) or something else entirely ?

 

[Ragtime]

Re: Akabur Games

Wow, design is really good, but will it be some sort of "witch trainer extended edition" (yay!) or something else entirely ?

It looks to be an extension of Witch Trainer, but expanded to be the game that Witch Trainer had the potential to be (and a whole lot more) rather than being the watered down game that we got.

I wish I could post all the preview stuff I've seen, some of it is really, really impressive, but I hadn't bothered to save any of it and stuff does not stick around for very long on 4chan.

The fact that all these people are collaborating to essentially 'finish' the job that Akabur started, and are doing it for no compensation at all is pretty exceptional.

 

[Manamana]

Re: Akabur Games

The fact that all these people are collaborating to essentially 'finish' the job that Akabur started, and are doing it for no compensation at all is pretty exceptional.

So true...
If they do something even half decent, I hope that it will somehow either awaken akabur, or his patrons...

 

[Omnikuken]

Re: Akabur Games

That last blonde girl on the far right has no nipples ..... Wtf is she a robot/doll/magically animated mannequin or just an extremely early draft for basic figure shape :/

 

[Ragtime]

Re: Akabur Games

That last blonde girl on the far right has no nipples ..... Wtf is she a robot/doll/magically animated mannequin or just an extremely early draft for basic figure shape :/

All of those are works in progress, the artists aren't done with a lot of the shading etc. especially on the faces/hair, and obviously on that ones nipples. 4chan is VERY picky, they notice the smallest imperfections (stuff that only a trained artist or someone looking really hard would notice.) most of the time it goes like this:

1) artist posts updated drawing
2) I give it a quick look and am very happy with what I see
3) 10 people make posts complaining and nitpicking stuff that I didn't notice at all, and I go and have a second look to verify that they are actually not trolling.
4) artist fixes the issue
5) people stop complaining and start their usual flamewar/trollfest

as an example of what I'm talking about:

Some guy posted

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image along with this statement:

Mo, Maverick. I am an anon from yesterday who wanted to approach to create art. I did these first pics of mine. They could be useful for a breast expansion potion or similar custom request. I tried to mimick at best Akabur style. I want to proceed in creating art in such way, starting from Hermione:
1) filled/ripped shirt (breast expansion clothed version) for Hermione;
2) full body Hermione corresponging to all the missing chibi position which appear in the original game (kneeling, dancing, exaust on the table, sucking, back view, taking from behind);
3) other characters (Luna?), and remaking some arts around much more Akaburesque (Dafne, the chubby one, Tonks;
4) (later) Hermione splash arts?

shortly afterwards someone posted

You must be registered to see the links

image along with this statement:

It's not about ego, and I'm not sure where this perception of yours is coming from that I have a massively inflated one. If anything it's the opposite.

I legitimately think the breasts look unattractive. They sag a lot and there's some strange shading choices that make them look an unusual shape.

I was probably a bit careless in my word choices as I don't want to discourage him but I do think they can be improved upon.

Stuff like that is just the tip of the iceberg, every little change that they post is reviewed and nitpicked until something that the majority is happy with is produced. Hopefully by the end of it all we have something amazing.

 

[Manamana]

Re: Akabur Games

1) artist posts updated drawing
2) I give it a quick look and am very happy with what I see
3) 10 people make posts complaining and nitpicking stuff that I didn't notice at all, and I go and have a second look to verify that they are actually not trolling.
4) artist fixes the issue
5) people stop complaining and start their usual flamewar/trollfest

1 to 4 is good, and helps have something professional artist level. I saw that in Reddit and other "big" forums too, where you have specialists in everything possible...
5 is 4chan specialty...

 

[droglob]

Re: Akabur Games

Or like in 99% of these projects it remains in nitpicking development hell long enough for them to get tired and abandon the whole thing entirely. Deja Vu, all it takes is for one of them to leave and get the snow ball rolling.

 

[loopy]

Re: Akabur Games

Yeah, I've skimmed through a few of those threads. Suggestions are one thing, like when an artist posted a picture where it looked like the girl was living in a universe without gravity, but a lot of what goes on there is just ragging on people until they stop posting. That exchange was fairly tame, but sometimes people post equally decent work, and the posters there just tear the artist down after every revision he makes to try to keep them happy. Of course, the flip side is an artist will take a shortcut that looks really sloppy and then defends it to the death. It's a weird crowd.

A few of the more productive people seem to have thick enough skin to tolerate the wolf pack, so hopefully they'll take what's useful from that community and do something worthwhile with it.

 

[Manamana]

Re: Akabur Games

I hope these artists don't expect flowers when they go in 4chan...

 

[Omnikuken]

Re: Akabur Games

Useless trivia : There's a .txt in PT that tells us Akabur used a GTX 650 to compile and test the 1.02 version ................... Let the flames begin

 

[Manamana]

Re: Akabur Games

Useless trivia : There's a .txt in PT that tells us Akabur used a GTX 650 to compile and test the 1.02 version ................... Let the flames begin

And what's the problem in that?