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I'm already sick of the +18 games


Changer

Demon Girl Pro
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Re: I'm already sick of the +18 games

Making a game with dialogue trees and different paths can be tricky. My game has a primary focus on player freedom with dialogue choices, and spells you can cast mid-conversation. It can seriously get to be a lot to keep track of. I have several scenes which when considering that many characters can have their personalities change, have to be written 16 different ways. xD

So, that kind of thing is probably not first game material. I made quite a few simple games before starting on this one, and I'm sure it would be more overwhelming if I was only just starting out. xD
 

autizboyz

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Re: I'm already sick of the +18 games

Well first of all im not trying to knock all the patreon dev outhere but im just going to say patreon or whatever that thinf called is easily abuse by evil game dev out there. Note : im talking about rpgmaker game.

Some of op said that are quite true, take an example if you pledge $10 for 1 year (i know you can cancel it anytime you want im just pointing the worse case scenario), and the game isnt even finish or it still further away from it to be finished, that game alone cost $120. You actually payed $120 for unfinished product, it cost way more from any dlsite rpgmaker game outhere.

So my point patreon game dev is lack of telling how long that game is going to be finished (and yes im aware too some dev or i must say most of patreon game dev are work alone but that doesnt make an excuse if you are planning to make a game that people are paying for, you should add atleast your own deadline. A year, 2 year or whatever so people can know and well inform how much money they would have thrown). I myself dont know approximately how long a game from the scratch to be finish, but from my experience in any job there should be a deadline if there isnt any we can just laid back and take our time to finish our job (this is what im afraid of from pledging since most of them dont say/know approximately how long that game is going to be finish. I rather buy a finish product that quite buggy, heck even if it buggy there will be a patch later on because its part of their job).

Before i got swarm by mad dev try to think what i said first.
 

Yoshiiki

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Re: I'm already sick of the +18 games

Well first of all im not trying to knock all the patreon dev outhere but im just going to say patreon or whatever that thinf called is easily abuse by evil game dev out there. Note : im talking about rpgmaker game.

Some of op said that are quite true, take an example if you pledge $10 for 1 year (i know you can cancel it anytime you want im just pointing the worse case scenario), and the game isnt even finish or it still further away from it to be finished, that game alone cost $120. You actually payed $120 for unfinished product, it cost way more from any dlsite rpgmaker game outhere.

So my point patreon game dev is lack of telling how long that game is going to be finished (and yes im aware too some dev or i must say most of patreon game dev are work alone but that doesnt make an excuse if you are planning to make a game that people are paying for, you should add atleast your own deadline. A year, 2 year or whatever so people can know and well inform how much money they would have thrown). I myself dont know approximately how long a game from the scratch to be finish, but from my experience in any job there should be a deadline if there isnt any we can just laid back and take our time to finish our job (this is what im afraid of from pledging since most of them dont say/know approximately how long that game is going to be finish. I rather buy a finish product that quite buggy, heck even if it buggy there will be a patch later on because its part of their job).

Before i got swarm by mad dev try to think what i said first.
I do agree.
Problem with estimation lies in dev not being able to tell how long it could take to do x and y. Though, after half or a year estimating should be possible with bigger/smaller error. No deadlines without any financial support from people is more or less fine, let him/her [dev] get a hang on it.
While on patreon or other form, try estimating using a backlog, compare with earlier months and such. With any form of project management it should be doable at some point, rest is error margin.

Price part is also weird. Depending how you look at this.
If it's a total price for a product in making, then yeah, it's not cheap.
But supporting isn't paying for a product, it's helping to... well, support it.
It may be a matter of semantics, but it does change point of view. But it's still a person to person.

What annoys me most is this way of thinking:
Hey, you are supporting with 1$? You can access newsfeed but not any releases.
Like... why? Does that mean this supporter is not good enough? There are simple ways of dealing with that, with lower support = wait week or two weeks longer. Anything but that middle finger.

So what, you think you will get more people that will pay 5$ to get latest release? Yeah, right.
More likely people will just say "fuck that" and grab pirated copy.
Investing in supporters/fanbase is always better than creating means for people finding cheaper ways.
Better to have 200 supporters giving 1$ rather than 40 giving 5$.
 

Ryu82

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Re: I'm already sick of the +18 games

Just some thought on this and some info from me, about cost and stuff.

I'm a developer and make games (Indie-games but no H-games) since about 4 years. I don't make H-games mostly because I can't draw good enough for it and it is also easier to distribute normal games because of Android, Steam and such.

I started about 10 different games but only actually finished 2 games. From my experience it is really hard to finish a game when you start it. You think at first I can do this in so many hours and finish the game in 300 hours. Then when you work at it, it works out well at first and then every day you find new problems you didn't think of, then you have a bug here and there, some problems with third party libraries and so on. After 300 hours of work, you see that you have less than half of the game finished and your estimations were totally off.

Sometimes you have some weird bugs and issues that you need weeks to figure out. Of course the players don't see this and think you are just lazy, but that often isn't the case. The longer you work on a project, the higher the chance that something just doesn't work out and you find things you didn't think of.

Then from the cost of living and stuff. Where I live, I need to create a company to be able to sell games and from what I get from players, I need to pay more than 50% tax, so I can spend less than 50% of it. Then you need to pay off like tax advisers, take care of your book keeping, think about your rent if you don't want to be poor and unable to live after you can't work anymore and other stuff. To be able to live from your own games, you need to make about $5000 (USD) as a bare minimum (after tax you have $2500, then you need to pay rent, healtcare, insurances and stuff which costs about $2000 a month and you also want something for yourself).

There are not that many games who make $5000 a month or more, so most of them need to have a full time job and can only make games in their free time. Patreons might pay for them and the game will be never finished, but the developer will most likely still invest hundreds of hours in it. Hundreds of hours he could have earned a lot of money with a normal job instead. I'd say for 99% of game developers they earn a lot less money from making games, even if they don't finish it, or especially because of that than they would earn with a normal job. They just make game because it is more fun to do so.

Then, if you want to hire a professional to work with you, you need to make a lot more. A good developer costs you at least $6000 a month. You also probably need some infrastructure and maybe an office where he can work at. If you hire a freelancer developer instead of that, you are likely pay more than $10000 a month. Then even a full time professional will need months to finish a game if it should be a good game. This means that in patron, a developer who calculates right and doesn't want to go bankrupt would need to make at least $12000-$15000 a month so he can hire a professional without the fear of going bankrupt. This might be less in some developing countries, but should be similar in most industrial countries.

Working with non professionals doesn't really work out in most of the cases like other people said.

As conclusion I'd say I can respect other devs who actually finish games and even developers who don't finish them usually don't have it easy and take much more of a loss than some supporters on patreon who only pay $1 or slightly more a month.
 
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Dusky Hallows

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Re: I'm already sick of the +18 games

As a dev, I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about what the real problem is here. Most successful projects that I've seen have frequent updates, usually, some kind of build released monthly, and it's very easy to see the work that's being done. These games might take six months or six years, but so long as they're updating (and the updates are worth the price) then there isn't a problem. If you feel the updates aren't worth the cost of your pledge, tell the Dev, and if that doesn't work then lower or cancel your pledge.

Pledging to a Patreon is not a guarantee of an end project, it's funding the continued development of that artist's work (be they a youtuber, an adult game dev, or a podcast creator). Game development can take a long time, and it's up to creators to find ways to make content updates worth the money to their patrons. If their patrons are still pledging money, then the creators will never believe that anything is wrong.

So are all content creators innocent? No. There are plenty of scam Patreons which are usually pretty easy to spot. They usually have inconsistent or weirdly worded pledge tiers, lots of different art styles which don't mesh, no demo or a demo which doesn't match their description, and little to no way of contacting them. These kinds of projects which are obviously exploitative (and even use stolen art a lot of the time) shouldn't be grouped in with the rest of the NSFW devs out there. Some of us are working hard to make games because we want to make a lewd, enjoyable experience for others.

Like others have said, this is the wild west. You have to be a savvy consumer and scope out a Patreon before you decide to pledge, look at their public posts and see how frequently they update. How long have they been up and how much of a demo do they have? Is progress slow? Ask them, there might be a good reason. If you're not sure then you can always follow a project without pledging and decide after a month or two how much money you think the project is worth. When in doubt, low ball it. You don't have to pledge at the highest tier you can afford, let a Creator prove to you that their project is worth pledging to.
 

bullkinglink

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Re: I'm already sick of the +18 games

As a developer my self i never use patreon before nor do i ask for money
however what needs to be taken into account game developers are people to

Whenever they can or can release their games is on how busy there lives are just smile and hope for best also never work with AAA companies they you go bald before your 30
 
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