Akabur Games

[Manamana]

Re: Akabur Games

If you think he is really abusing his fan support then prove it. Make game on his level or better and make it quick. And then you open peoples eyes and they will not support his games.
imho.

There is actually no game to compare to since the disappointing WT. So any author doing regular updates is better. Take any dlsite or patreon author that has a dev blog, you'll see actual work done...
Now, I'll be the first one to be happy if he secretly was working 8 hours a day for a secret awesome project, but I doubt it.
As they say: "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck."

Money drives most people to become great but end the end, it almost always corrupts them.

The carrot (money) without the stick (no money for no work) doesn't work here, so yeah, at least in the short term I'm pessimistic about it.

Unfortunately, 15 years in business/marketing has taught me otherwise

You could have the best video game in the world, but if it's not marketed well or advertised or people don't hear about it, it simply won't gain much traction.

There are tons of people on YouTube, for instance, who have amazingly well put together videos with an extremely high degree of quality, uniqueness, all that stuff, but just have no marketing, no one knows they exist, and thus they get almost no views.

You're absolutely right, but a good product with good advertisement will attract people so that you'll have a good base community for future works .

That's true. Although there are some guys on YouTube with millions of views on their videos that somehow got that with no marketing.

Word of mouth for quality work is also marketing

 

[HentaiWriter]

Re: Akabur Games

That's true. Although there are some guys on YouTube with millions of views on their videos that somehow got that with no marketing.

No one on YouTube has ever gotten millions of views on their videos without marketing. There are no exceptions to this rule. Not trying to sound like a dick or be harsh by saying that, but you gotta trust me on this; I'm not making this stuff up, I'd have no reason to, haha.

Examples of marketing;

- Word of Mouth; Person A sees a video, tells person B it's good, person B trusts person A, so they take time out of their day to watch it. Person B tells person C and D, repeat exponentially. This almost always happens far, far after something else has been a catalyst, which is usually either;

- Someone extremely famous pushing the video out publicly, using their social media to promote the video, or

- Someone with a lot of connections or someone who is especially good at networking/marketing utilizing those connections/network to push the video up in views undetected, until it's got boatloads of views. (Alternatively, they could just have a lot of money, which replaces the need for connections/networking).

For example, let's say I have a YouTube video I want to get really big, right?

So if I had all these connections or money, I would get my followers or people I'd paid money to push the video on thousands and thousands of forums, subreddits, other youtube videos, social media, doesn't matter. Even if each person only was responsible for one website and they only got 100 views from their given website, multiply that by about 3,000+ people, and you suddenly have a video with 300,000 views.

Then, being that it's sprang up in views so quickly, of course everyone else needs to know just WHY this video suddenly has so many views, which invokes the first type of marketing, the word of mouth stuff (and this is where your product actually needs to be quality, if the video sucks, people won't pass it along to their friends).

Every top YouTuber (1 million+ subscribers) invokes all three of these methods. Again, there are no exceptions that I've ever known of, because due to the way YouTube works with the algorithms it has, there really couldn't be any other alternatives.

(If you want an example, just look at how many people go into producing that "less than three" series that Ray William Johnson did; many top YouTubers have somewhat smaller teams, but they're definitely not doing that stuff fully solo.)

 

[menaze818]

Re: Akabur Games

How do i get the Russian version of Witch trainer to work, i keep getting errors and tracebacks and etc..

 

[JBGames]

Re: Akabur Games

No one on YouTube has ever gotten millions of views on their videos without marketing. There are no exceptions to this rule. Not trying to sound like a dick or be harsh by saying that, but you gotta trust me on this; I'm not making this stuff up, I'd have no reason to, haha.

Examples of marketing;

- Word of Mouth; Person A sees a video, tells person B it's good, person B trusts person A, so they take time out of their day to watch it. Person B tells person C and D, repeat exponentially. This almost always happens far, far after something else has been a catalyst, which is usually either;

- Someone extremely famous pushing the video out publicly, using their social media to promote the video, or

- Someone with a lot of connections or someone who is especially good at networking/marketing utilizing those connections/network to push the video up in views undetected, until it's got boatloads of views. (Alternatively, they could just have a lot of money, which replaces the need for connections/networking).

For example, let's say I have a YouTube video I want to get really big, right?

So if I had all these connections or money, I would get my followers or people I'd paid money to push the video on thousands and thousands of forums, subreddits, other youtube videos, social media, doesn't matter. Even if each person only was responsible for one website and they only got 100 views from their given website, multiply that by about 3,000+ people, and you suddenly have a video with 300,000 views.

Then, being that it's sprang up in views so quickly, of course everyone else needs to know just WHY this video suddenly has so many views, which invokes the first type of marketing, the word of mouth stuff (and this is where your product actually needs to be quality, if the video sucks, people won't pass it along to their friends).

Every top YouTuber (1 million+ subscribers) invokes all three of these methods. Again, there are no exceptions that I've ever known of, because due to the way YouTube works with the algorithms it has, there really couldn't be any other alternatives.

(If you want an example, just look at how many people go into producing that "less than three" series that Ray William Johnson did; many top YouTubers have somewhat smaller teams, but they're definitely not doing that stuff fully solo.)

Well I think most of them had good word of mouth but I don't really consider that marketing because it's not something the content creator really has control over other than making good content. When I think of marketing, I'm thinking about something the creator is actively doing to get his product out there like ads, social media post and what not.

 

[Omnikuken]

Re: Akabur Games

How do i get the Russian version of Witch trainer to work, i keep getting errors and tracebacks and etc..

Russian version in Russian or English ? And which 1.# you trying to play ? Since most of them are pre-alpha translation attempts, you can't use saves between them and have to start a new game.

If you use the github link I posted a few pages back, you'll have a mistranslated engrish version that works so-so until you bump into bugs that drop you back to desktop and whatnot. Otherwise, can't help you much

 

[remicks]

Re: Akabur Games

How do i get the Russian version of Witch trainer to work, i keep getting errors and tracebacks and etc..

If you're not able to debug it yourself you're best off waiting until there's a stable release.

 

[loopy]

Re: Akabur Games

I hope they come up with better release management soon. At least have a semi-stable version in an archive somewhere, rather than telling everybody to sync or download the repo and hope like hell less breakage has occurred rather than more.

 

[menaze818]

Re: Akabur Games

Russian version in Russian or English ? And which 1.# you trying to play ? Since most of them are pre-alpha translation attempts, you can't use saves between them and have to start a new game.

If you use the github link I posted a few pages back, you'll have a mistranslated engrish version that works so-so until you bump into bugs that drop you back to desktop and whatnot. Otherwise, can't help you much

It's the russian 1.5 release.. i have 1.4 and it works perfectly but when i run 1.5 it just goes into errors.. and this is the 1.5 mods pre installed

 

[Omnikuken]

Re: Akabur Games

^ Did you overwrite 1.5 on top of 1.4 ? Or downloaded a "fresh" 1.5 and just unzipped it and started the .exe ?

Probably the latter ..... You could also try to cut/delete 1.4 away, remove the save files (users/name/appdata/roaming/renpy/hermionetrainer). Though the 1.5 isn't stable in itself and crashes a lot even if you can make it start.

Would need someone better than me to debug more in-depth :/ I just d/l the .zip from github I posted ~3 pages ago, unzip and it worked ......

 

[Crawdaddy]

Re: Akabur Games

Well I think most of them had good word of mouth but I don't really consider that marketing because it's not something the content creator really has control over other than making good content. When I think of marketing, I'm thinking about something the creator is actively doing to get his product out there like ads, social media post and what not.

I'm not in marketing, but I'd think similarly. Marketing entails active efforts to spread awareness. Trying to create virality is certainly a possibility (like Paper Magazine's "Break the Internet"), but word of mouth in and of itself is more like a consequence of marketing.

Or I might be way off.

 

[remicks]

Re: Akabur Games

Would need someone better than me to debug more in-depth :/ I just d/l the .zip from github I posted ~3 pages ago, unzip and it worked ......

This is the version from early yesterday morning, I worked through it, fixing a few things, and haven't had it crash on me. Hermione won't put on shorter skirts at all though, no matter what her whoring level is (they changed the variable whoring to hermi.whoring FYI). Might be a gameplay thing I'm not aware of though.

mega dot nz/#!Q45kTbrK!K8aGKOBr_kHHx4PIQyQx6XSwDc4bTiG3C2go26QgmPw

 

[ScottPilgrim]

Re: Akabur Games

I don't need to prove it by making a game. I can prove it by pointing at Akabur's previous games.

He produced several small games in 2012, and made a flash demo for Magic Shop (only the Ariel conversion and one other conversion) which he released in June 2012.

By June 2013 he released Magic Shop 1.0 and by September 2013 he released Magic Shop 1.1 -- I don't know exactly how long he needed to build it, but it looks like about 6-9 months, because...

By December 2013 he released Magic Shop 1.2, which had two new CG scenes added, namely the "evil & good Jasmine" scene, and the "dream" scene. That's 2 extensive CG scenes in 3 months.

In April 2014 he released Princess Trainer, which existed in a rudimentary version in Magic Shop 1.1, but was now greatly extended, with many, many new events (including all the brothel scenes). That's three-quarters of a game and a dozen CG scenes in about 4 months.

In December 2014 he released Witch Trainer, which was a rather tedious game with only 2 CG scenes (long, but for the most part a copy of each other). That is setting up a complete new game, with a few drawings, in 8 months.

Akabur himself demonstrated that with little or no funding he can create a complete game in 6 to 12 months, and needs much less than a month to produce a long CG scene.

And now he has been working on an update for Princess Trainer for 7 months, and has produced -- if we can believe what he says -- about 2 CG scenes in that time. Compared to his earlier output, working on a small update for 7 months is patently ridiculous, and demonstrates that he is actually not spending a lot of time on producing a game.

When I send money to a guy who I know produced three complete, big games in 2.5 years or less (we know he started using Ren'Py after June 2012, and he had produced Magic Shop, Princess Trainer, and Witch Trainer 2.5 years later), I do not expect him to need another year to make a few updates to a game that he already made before.

By this time, I can't imagine that even his most rabid supporters are not getting the uneasy feeling that they are throwing money into a black hole. The large number of additional supporters that he got in December 2014 were undoubtedly expecting the PT:G release within a few months, and either some more scenes in Magic Shop a few months after that, or a completely new game by the end of 2015. They aren't going to get any of these.

I think Kieran is right with his assessment. PT:G will be released at some point, so that Akabur can tell people that he has spent their money well as this was a LOT of work (even though when you examine the results, you find that only a few CG scenes have been added). But it will be released as late as possible so that he can milk his fans for as much as he can, after which he stops making promises and goes to Canada. His support will drop off at that point, but no doubt he will still be getting a few thousand monthly from his most blind fans.

As I said, I think it is really sad. Because I think Akabur is actually a talented guy who has a great sense of spicy humor, and can draw really well. But he found out that he can live well off making promises rather than producing work, and this made him evidently lazy. I believe he lost all enthusiasm for making games (Witch Trainer is much less inspired than any of his previous games), and is looking forward to his art studies.

I can't blame him for profiting from blind fans. But I deplore that we will not see any more of his work. Because in the land of Hentai games, his work stood far apart from the rest that I have seen.

This is a fantastic post that I recommend everyone reads. Cold hard facts about the disappointing turn of events over the past year.

 

[freeko]

Re: Akabur Games

It is that "turn of events" that give me the greatest hesitation for supporting someone in this manner. In what I would consider the real world, if a game company that was developing a game tried something similar to what seems to be happening here would they not be fired from the project?

I would think that at the best case scenario, having a large level of support pulled may reignite the creative desire. On the other hand it might just about ensure that nothing would be made going forward and the blind support would be the only thing left basically murdering their money every month.

Situations like this are why I avoid this space. Give me a completed game and I would purchase it if it were to appeal to me. I just do not want to put my money forward for a game that could never be made, especially when there is no protection on my end to that contingency. At least when I go to gamestop to preorder a game, there is buyer protection toward not having my money be wasted on that game if it sucks or simply never gets created in the first place. Then again, I don't think I have bothered to get my preorder deposit back on Mortal Kombat X yet..

 

[jur07dbe]

Re: Akabur Games

2 CG? Last time I checked he has atleast made 4-5 different images, and has redrawn most/some of Jasmine's cloths so he has atleast done a little more than 2 CG.

I will atleast defend that. He's still a lazy greedy slowpoke though

 

[menaze818]

Re: Akabur Games

^ Did you overwrite 1.5 on top of 1.4 ? Or downloaded a "fresh" 1.5 and just unzipped it and started the .exe ?

Probably the latter ..... You could also try to cut/delete 1.4 away, remove the save files (users/name/appdata/roaming/renpy/hermionetrainer). Though the 1.5 isn't stable in itself and crashes a lot even if you can make it start.

Would need someone better than me to debug more in-depth :/ I just d/l the .zip from github I posted ~3 pages ago, unzip and it worked ......

No i didn't alter anything i downloaded it how it is..

 

[SHerring]

Re: Akabur Games

2 CG? Last time I checked he has atleast made 4-5 different images, and has redrawn most/some of Jasmine's cloths so he has atleast done a little more than 2 CG.

I will atleast defend that. He's still a lazy greedy slowpoke though

A CG is, as far as I understand the term, a longer scene with different possible progressions and outcomes. Usually based on one or two big images, but with lots of overlays of faces, positions, costumes, and bodily fluids.

A full CG may take two weeks, or even more, depending on the complexity. But as an artist you would be silly to spend more than a month on a full CG -- that just isn't worth the effort. (I personally would say that even two weeks of full-time working would be overdoing it, but YMMV).

Now, Akabur at present did two main things in PT:G: he added extensive material for Lola and he added extensive material for Iris. I am assuming that that is one CG for each of these characters. It could be more, but Akabur never said that there would be more. He didn't even show any visual hint that there would be as little as one CG for each of them, but I am still assuming he did make one, because otherwise I don't know what that extensive material would amount to.

Of course he did more than that, but redrawing a bunch of clothes is hardly any work. And even if he did 5 images, as he may have claimed, and even if this costs him 5 days per image, then we are still only looking at at most two months of work in total -- and quite lazy work at that.

But I agree that it is hard to say what he did accomplish in the past 7 months, as he basically is not telling anyone. Which you'd think would be enough of an alarm bell, but his rabid fans are blind AND deaf.

 

[ScottPilgrim]

Re: Akabur Games

Updated list: - Iris's story arc. (Done.) - Lola's stoyr arc. (Done.) - Sex events for Iris. - Sex events for Lola. (Done) - Group sex events. - Azalea's story arc. (In the works) - Quite a few side quests. - Other events involving Jasmine and Iris or Lola. - Some random events. - A few new costumes and accessories for the girls. - SGs, SGs, SGs... - Few other things I don't want to spoil.

Akabur posted this as a comment yesterday. Sadly from the sound of things it seems he's not even 50% done. I wonder how long he'll stretch development into 2016 at the risk of angering his devout followers, if it's even possible to anger them at this point.

 

[ChrisJew]

Re: Akabur Games

Snip.

You haven't seen his drawing videos? He draws fairly complete scenes REALLY fast. His coloring shouldn't take him long, as it's fairly basic.

 

[cvonsuela85]

Re: Akabur Games

You haven't seen his drawing videos? He draws fairly complete scenes REALLY fast. His coloring shouldn't take him long, as it's fairly basic.

Which begs the question, why does it take him 5 days to do 1 if he draws fairly fast, unless he has some kind of injury to his hand that he hasn't disclosed.

 

[velsomnia]

Re: Akabur Games

I'm going to try to make everyone's day today, I just downloaded the latest version from GitHub and found out that if I edit the .rpy files in notepad and re save them after deleting its companion .rpyc file the game should recompile new .rpyc files once I restart the game. So im going to run 2 copies of the game and see if I can get a few lines of text to translate into English at the beginning of the game. If it works without renpy spitting errors at me I will continue and translate all of the Russian text that I can find so that all of us English speakers can enjoy the new content.