Questions about / Discussion on the new rule changes

[Bryanis]

Sorry to butt in your debate on patreon, but I was wondering something about the "under construction" forum since one of my thread got there.

the rule is for making the thread in that section is :

• The developer of the game wishes to put a thread of their still-in- development game.
• The poster is not the developer, but the game is being supported by a platform in the style of Patreon or Enty.
• A developer is seeking to create their own game and is looking for help.

Now, the thread I'm referring to, is about the latest incoming Miconisomi game ( https://ulmf.org/threads/miconisomi-insarutooodaa-insult-order-rj220246.10150/ ).
I'm not the dev so reason 1 & 3 aren't kicking in here.
So I guess it was moved to under construction because the dev started a page (for his circle) on Ci-En. Yet the game isn't funded by Ci-en (I mean, he start the Ci-En while the game was, according to the blog at the debug phase).
I understand that Ci-En is a crowfunding kind of platform made by dlsite, but is just having a CI-En a criteria that make all thread related to game made by the circle / dev had to be made in the "under construction" until they are release or is it only for game actively supported (funded ?) by Ci-En ?
The former may become the norm if most dev selling on dlsite start their Ci-En pages (so all thread about incoming game end there), but the later require more fine tunning as you need to see (if you can even check that) for each game if it's actually funded by Ci-En ?

Just trying to make sure I understand the rule correctly to avoid error later on...

 

[YummyTiger]

Thank you for completely missing the point and ignoring the rest of what I said. I wasn't talking about the ethics or anything about the industry itself. I was talking about how it's been affecting these boards. Regardless, I already know what your stance is so you don't need to preach it to me.

I'm pretty sure the entire first portion of my response was directly talking about the notion that having crowdfunded games on the board is somehow bad. If that wasn't your point, then you need to be more clear. You seem to lament that the boards will be filled with crowdfunded games, so what? What then is the purpose of these boards? Is it to only talk about non-crowdfunded games? Is it to only talk about Japanese games (which is odd given the original purpose behind it)? You argue having a bunch of crowdfunded threads is a negative, I instead fail to see how it is different then having a bunch of RJ# threads for games not yet released. The western market is Patreon right now, I'm old enough to remember when all we had was a few games from Jast and Himeya (if you wanted to pay the crazy shipping). Thankfully, there are options now. So, tell me exactly why having lots of crowdfunded games on the forums is a bad thing? If they don't garner discussion, they move quickly to the background. I personally dislike 3d games and I've never been bothered browsing past them. I even stumble across the occasional game I enjoy when I run out of other options.

@bobthemanseven: Meh, I don't think you got thrashed, and you do bring up valid concerns. In my view, I don't see the market moving away from Patreon, especially considering the lack of good alternatives. So, do we bury our heads in the sand and ignore the western market because Patreon can be scummy? I fully think a split by completion has merit and may actually resolve a lot of the complaints. My sole reason for posting is because I think doing anything based on funding is not constructive and will still leave many of the same problems. Still, it doesn't hurt to test it, so we'll see what Darkfire ends up finding after using this model for awhile.

As for my progress, well... I'm just as procrastinating perfectionist, which I why I would never be comfortable with a monthly model (although, it'd definitely force me to actually work harder since I'd lose my favorite excuse). Just for the record, I've only ever ran one pledge, and there was a release for that one pledge.

 

[DarkFire1004]

Sorry to butt in your debate on patreon, but I was wondering something about the "under construction" forum since one of my thread got there.

@Bryanis, Currently, the rule is applicable for anybody that's being funded by a crowdfunding model. However, I agree with you that the use of Ci-En is going to be very popular in the near future and this isn't a sustainable rule to go by in any sense (I've likely already missed a bunch of authors). However, I'm going to leave it as is for now while I see how it works out.

 

[HentaiWriter]

Oh, what I was responding to was when you said how some creators kept the majority of/all of their demos behind a paywall, I was just clarifying that some people want to make all their demos public on Patreon but can't for that reason

 

[Jesus]

Whether or not the majority are good or bad doesn't matter at this point, it's not a gamble many are willing to take anymore.

This doesn't mean discussion or proliferation of the projects themselves should be sequestered. My stance on crowd-funding is if you think there's a chance of it not being delivered, don't put money towards it, it's that simple. Everyone's free to make their own decisions in these scenarios. Suppressing legitimate projects because of a handful of cons is collective punishment.

I agree with habisain here. If you've got a functional non alpha demo then posting in the main section with proper tags would be fine. Proper reporting and moderation would also solve the unethical creators who create threads regardless.

This too, which reminds me of another point you brought up, being that moving such threads to the UC section makes it "out of sight, out of mind" for the people who do raise a stink about Patreon/crowdfunding as a whole in threads about specific games. Moderation is the answer here too.

 

[Ninja_Named_Bob]

Oh, what I was responding to was when you said how some creators kept the majority of/all of their demos behind a paywall, I was just clarifying that some people want to make all their demos public on Patreon but can't for that reason

Public hosting on places such as MEGA isn't exactly out of the question. Your first demo should be the hook for your project, not the means by which you procure funds to continue with it. Too many times, we've seen devs who have bitten off more than they can chew with a project, have had anything except death prevent them from continuing, dropped off the face of the earth, and then returned saying "Hey guys, we're still alive!" as if that somehow makes up for the fact they were taking money for doing virtually nothing. I mean, Malice and the Machine is an example of this in and of itself. They've released "updates" exclusive to patreon where they claim they're making progress by switching engines, "updating" the models, etc. Meanwhile, they're still taking them patreon shekels despite overwhelming negativity from places like ulmf and r95zone.

Also, I find a lot of what you say is unsubstantiated by reality, and it reeks of outright bullshit and propaganda to validate your narrative while foregoing the necessity of evidence. You say "hundreds of AAA games have died during development", but I'm curious what ones you're talking about. The most recent example is Silent Hill PT which was actually a matter of Konami shifting gears and them having a falling-out with one of their lead developers. Heck, it was little more than a "proof of concept", so attributing that to "examples of games that died during development" isn't a major stretch, but still one.

Darkfire adjusting the forums as he has wasn't due to a recent discontent with patreon btw. While you've been taking money for FF (been about 3 years?), people have been discussing the subject to Hell and back. There's also been a growing annoyance with devs who either post nothing, will straight-up vanish during development (coincidentally never closing/changing their patreon), or who get an ego and act like they're top dog until the threads turn purely vitriolic. The last point I'll note is that the hentai games section needed to be cleaned up. If I'm looking for a patreon to support or want to sift through the Japanese stuff for something which might tickle my fancy, I don't want to sift through a buttload of stuff which doesn't interest me. I know I've been one of the most vocal persons on the matter of "use the search function, etc", but simplifying the sections like this is a godsend and improves the stance of persons such as myself, that being if you're not going to put in the legwork, you're a lazy cunt through and through. Especially when the mods have turned it from an over-sized garage sale into a Wal-Mart.

This doesn't mean discussion or proliferation of the projects themselves should be sequestered. My stance on crowd-funding is if you think there's a chance of it not being delivered, don't put money towards it, it's that simple. Everyone's free to make their own decisions in these scenarios. Suppressing legitimate projects because of a handful of cons is collective punishment.

Nobody is isolating or hiding the threads. Please contain the calamity that is your mammaries on the matter and recognize two very important points you've conveniently overlooked for whatever reason.

1) Having sections for the different types of games actually helps people with looking for what they want rather than sifting for hours through content that doesn't interest them.

2) With refinement and proper management, the patreon-only section could, in effect, be made to promote projects that have ongoing development while either burying those that don't, or, at the very least, marginalizing them into oblivion.

Your second point disregards a fact about the internet, that being people are generally stupid online, and do stupid things. Sometimes (almost always), people will put money towards something that's barely out of alpha or is worked on for six months before it dies. At that point, a good majority of funders will keep putting money towards it despite nothing happening, all because a developer says it's maybe being worked on. Hell, look at that abortion, Monster Girl Quest 3D on Kickstarter. People still support him despite 3 years of nothing. While Darkfire can't put a gun to your head and demand you to use your brain, him and the other ULMF staff can at least do something that limits the amount of exposure such projects receive. Basically, to quote the man himself "Do people want more quality?" If the overwhelming majority is "Yes", then there is no reason this change shouldn't last.

This too, which reminds me of another point you brought up, being that moving such threads to the UC section makes it "out of sight, out of mind" for the people who do raise a stink about Patreon/crowdfunding as a whole in threads about specific games. Moderation is the answer here too.

Mods have had to sift through hundreds of pages historically just to figure out which games were dead, which ones needed their thread locked for any reason, and which ones should be left alone. How about you go through the current h-games section and tell me how many deserve their threads locked? How many ought to be kept open? How many still have ongoing, on-topic discussions? Perhaps after page 20, you;'ll realize the immense amount of work staff have had to do over the years and recognize how overwhelmingly-difficult it is when a new thread is popping up almost every day.

Your other point about the "out of sight/out of mind" mentality of "haters" is irrelevant by its own measure. If people didn't have any interest in seeing a patreon game, why should they be forced to sift through them to begin with? A separation allows them to avoid that content at their own leisure and de-legitimizes their shit-slinging further. Or, are you of the mind that "any press is good press?"Because, we've never had patreon games bumped to first page and getting people hopeful for new content only to see the thread instead devolved into shit-slinging. Nope, never happened except all the time.

I think the devs in this thread went into hysterics without first contemplating (extensively) the merits of a separation, and how it actually helps them generate exposure while keeping the h-games easier to navigate. This is as much a benefit to you guys as it is to the users, and I find it both incredibly arrogant and inconsiderate that you're so about yourselves that you'll demand the regular users suffer for your greed. Yeah, I'm getting personal because your ego's annoy the crap out of me, so I'll stop here. Feel free to negrep me, whine, and post non-sequitur arguments that only further demonstrates your tenuous (at best) grasp on the situation rather than fear-mongering about how you're not gonna make as much shekels off the masses. Boo-friggin-hoo.

 

[YummyTiger]

1) Having sections for the different types of games actually helps people with looking for what they want rather than sifting for hours through content that doesn't interest them.

Then have sections for different types of games, THIS is not doing that. This is having section for different methods of funding development. It has nothing to do with the games. The entire funding argument ignores the fact that there is more variation within the funding model than between different funding models. Meaning, you're overgeneralizing and your method of sectioning off these forums is flawed.

I stand by my comments that:

1. Crowdfunding is not going anywhere and will only continue to expand in both western and Japanese markets. Meaning, the crowdfunding section will ultimately be just as much of a clusterfuck as the current hentai games section is now, and if the Japanese market moves in that direction, the hentai games section will be mainly obsolete aside from major companies.

2. There are far better ways to section off hentai games than funding. The primary complaint seems to be completion status. I would think the average user would be more interested in browsing completed games versus incomplete games, not whether something is crowdfunded or not. I mean honestly, how many give a shit where the funding is if they are simply downloading and playing? In my experience, they care about how much content there is and if it's finished. In this model, they will still have to sift through completed and a buttload of incomplete games if they're just looking for something to play/discuss. On this note, a genre split would be more ideal, but might require too many forums.

I think the devs in this thread went into hysterics without first contemplating (extensively) the merits of a separation, and how it actually helps them generate exposure while keeping the h-games easier to navigate. This is as much a benefit to you guys as it is to the users, and I find it both incredibly arrogant and inconsiderate that you're so about yourselves that you'll demand the regular users suffer for your greed. Yeah, I'm getting personal because your ego's annoy the crap out of me, so I'll stop here. Feel free to negrep me, whine, and post non-sequitur arguments that only further demonstrates your tenuous (at best) grasp on the situation rather than fear-mongering about how you're not gonna make as much shekels off the masses. Boo-friggin-hoo.

Hey Kettle, you're black. I've seen no hysterics beyond your post, and nobody getting personal beyond you. So grow up and learn to have an adult discussion on an adult forum.

 

[Fenril]

I'm pretty sure the entire first portion of my response was directly talking about the notion that having crowdfunded games on the board is somehow bad. If that wasn't your point, then you need to be more clear. You seem to lament that the boards will be filled with crowdfunded games, so what? What then is the purpose of these boards? Is it to only talk about non-crowdfunded games?

First off, I was talking in broad generalizations and never talked directly to you. Secondly, since I was talking in broad generalizations, I was simply saying this: using these forums as a place to advertise is bad, but using it as a place to discuss your game is good. The worry lies in developers who copy/paste their game info in order to forward people to their crowdfunding page and then disappear. Like I said, this is a forum, not a billboard. If someone drops in to post a link to their crowdfunding page, that's spam. But if they actively participating in people responding to their thread, then it's acceptable. My worry lies in these forums becoming littered with so many spam threads rather than discussion threads.

 

[HentaiWriter]

Public hosting on places such as MEGA isn't exactly out of the question.

This doesn't really have anything to do with what I was talking about. I was stating that a lot of devs don't have their demos publicly posted on Patreon posts because of Patreon's own rules.

Your first demo should be the hook for your project, not the means by which you procure funds to continue with it. Too many times, we've seen devs who have bitten off more than they can chew with a project, have had anything except death prevent them from continuing, dropped off the face of the earth, and then returned saying "Hey guys, we're still alive!" as if that somehow makes up for the fact they were taking money for doing virtually nothing.

Yep, just like AAA projects. It's something that happens even on 100+ person teams, and while I'm not excusing games dying and such, I am stating that this isn't something exclusive to Patreon games, not by a long shot.

Also, I find a lot of what you say is unsubstantiated by reality, and it reeks of outright bullshit and propaganda to validate your narrative while foregoing the necessity of evidence. You say "hundreds of AAA games have died during development", but I'm curious what ones you're talking about. The most recent example is Silent Hill PT which was actually a matter of Konami shifting gears and them having a falling-out with one of their lead developers. Heck, it was little more than a "proof of concept", so attributing that to "examples of games that died during development" isn't a major stretch, but still one.

There are countless examples if you do research instead of assuming devs are here being "hysterical" or using "propaganda". Here's a few you can find with 5 minutes of googling;

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(Amazon's first big foray into gaming, sank millions into it and multiple huge events)
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(A playlist of 35 cancelled games by AAA licenses or companies)
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(games that changed drastically and had to scrap most of their stuff)
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(more of the above)
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(has a list of quite a few big name games that were stuck in development hell that came to exist eventually, like Mother 3, which literally jumped from the N64 3D to GBA in 2D and after a cancellation that lead to nearly 5 years off the map, it came back in 2006, making total "development time" effectively almost 10 years between announcement and actual release)
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(more of the above)
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(and even more)

And a wikipedia list of literally *over a thousand* games cancelled;

You must be registered to see the links

And another list of unreleased games;

You must be registered to see the links

And on Cutting Room Floor too, you can find countless games that had massive changes in content during development, like TF2 and Overwatch which I both named and many others.

Every one of these was on the first page of results on google besides the youtube videos.

Darkfire adjusting the forums as he has wasn't due to a recent discontent with patreon btw. While you've been taking money for FF (been about 3 years?), people have been discussing the subject to Hell and back.

Yes, and I've been right there discussing it with them in every single topic, as I wrote earlier in the thread, besides the most recent one, as have most of the devs in this post and most of the forum at large. Did you read my earlier posts?
I also like the jab at FF as "taking money" implying we haven't been investing all that money back into the game

There's also been a growing annoyance with devs who either post nothing, will straight-up vanish during development (coincidentally never closing/changing their patreon), or who get an ego and act like they're top dog until the threads turn purely vitriolic.

Now if we're talking hyperbole, or propaganda, this would definitely fall in line with that, because objectively if this were the case as I stated in my earlier post, Patreon campaigns would not be continuing to grow as they are. It's definitely a very tiny minority of very vocal people who are annoyed with Patreon devs as a whole, whether you want to believe this or not.

I'm not excusing vanishing during development or not getting things done, especially if they continue to take money, nor am I advocating people thinking they're "top dog" (although who even does this? I can think of maybe like two devs and AFAIK they both got banned for their attitude). But objectively, it is the minority, a tiny one, that is upset with how Patreon is going.

The last point I'll note is that the hentai games section needed to be cleaned up. If I'm looking for a patreon to support or want to sift through the Japanese stuff for something which might tickle my fancy, I don't want to sift through a buttload of stuff which doesn't interest me. I know I've been one of the most vocal persons on the matter of "use the search function, etc", but simplifying the sections like this is a godsend and improves the stance of persons such as myself, that being if you're not going to put in the legwork, you're a lazy cunt through and through. Especially when the mods have turned it from an over-sized garage sale into a Wal-Mart.

And I'm not against simplifying the sections, but what you just wrote therein is where the problem lies; games that are made with Patreon or any other crowdfunding method aren't inherently or fundamentally different than a game not made with crowdfunding. There's this weird belief a small minority has that somehow, inherently crowdfunded games are different than non-crowdfunded ones, when there are games that did amazingly well that were crowdfunded and games that did awful that were typically funded; it's about the same on both sides. (It's actually probably a lot moreso with games doing awful that were typically funded, to be honest, but that's another story.)

I'd be fine if it were just "incomplete games" regardless of funding method, but to leave incomplete games in the main section while putting crowdfunded games here only makes no sense at all and pretty much just confuses people more.

Nobody is isolating or hiding the threads. Please contain the calamity that is your mammaries on the matter and recognize two very important points you've conveniently overlooked for whatever reason.

If they aren't in the main section, they're objectively hidden. This is like saying "If you put something at the back of a grocery store or a magazine, it's not isolated or hidden". It is because most people will not walk that far back or read that far back, and you know it with your own statements made in this very post.

1) Having sections for the different types of games

Gonna stop you right there, because as noted earlier, crowdfunded games and non-crowdfunded games are the same types of games. If we were doing it by genre, sure, or by incomplete games vs complete games, sure, but crowdfunded vs not is objectively the same type of game.

With refinement and proper management, the patreon-only section could, in effect, be made to promote projects that have ongoing development while either burying those that don't, or, at the very least, marginalizing them into oblivion.

This is true, but it also will get visited far less for the simple fact that people won't go that deep into forums. Notice how the other subforums in Hentai Games get practically no posts? Remember how the old "Under Construction" got practically no posts or views?

Your second point disregards a fact about the internet, that being people are generally stupid online, and do stupid things.

I'm pretty sure I covered this in my own post (which I'm starting to think you never read), which was the entire crux of why we were saying that people's funding patterns/behavior were part of the fault of why "bad patreon campaigns" continued to succeed.

Basically, to quote the man himself "Do people want more quality?" If the overwhelming majority is "Yes", then there is no reason this change shouldn't last.

There is; the reasons I listed up above regarding exposure. You're basically punishing the good Patreon campaigns that are delivering to punish the bad ones by keeping things this way.

Mods have had to sift through hundreds of pages historically just to figure out which games were dead, which ones needed their thread locked for any reason, and which ones should be left alone. How about you go through the current h-games section and tell me how many deserve their threads locked? How many ought to be kept open? How many still have ongoing, on-topic discussions? Perhaps after page 20, you;'ll realize the immense amount of work staff have had to do over the years and recognize how overwhelmingly-difficult it is when a new thread is popping up almost every day.

To be totally honest, not to say the mods aren't doing work (especially DarkFire), but if you give me two weeks I could run through all 200+ pages.

229 pages x 20 topics = 4460 topics
Check the first page to see if topic info is relevant/good and click link to go to game to quickly gather a few core tenets of the game if not listed in the topic = 30 seconds
Check the last page of the topic to see if conversation has stagnated or is just people necro'ing it = 30 seconds
Write down topics etc. and info about the thread to report back to a mod = 30 seconds
90 seconds x 4460 topics = 401400 seconds, or 111 hours, so in 2 weeks = 7 hours a day

And that's assuming I'm doing everything myself; if you split up the job into going by tags (Full Game, Incomplete, Other, etc.) the job could get done much faster with a few people. I'd be happy to do that come later in September or even on my spare time by checking 100-200 threads a day and reporting those back to DarkFire.

Your other point about the "out of sight/out of mind" mentality of "haters" is irrelevant by its own measure. If people didn't have any interest in seeing a patreon game, why should they be forced to sift through them to begin with?

They shouldn't, but that mentality can just as easily be flipped; what if I think Japanese games, on a forum built after a guy who was the forefather of western adult games, don't belong here and should go get cornered off in their own sub-section while "Hentai Games" remains at the forefront for western games? I don't think this, obviously, but that mentality goes both ways.

Or, are you of the mind that "any press is good press?"Because, we've never had patreon games bumped to first page and getting people hopeful for new content only to see the thread instead devolved into shit-slinging. Nope, never happened except all the time.

That's where moderation comes in (and has came in). This is effectively saying that you assume the mods are incompetent and won't defuse this stuff or get rid of shit slingers, especially when they've literally set it as a rule now.

I think the devs in this thread went into hysterics without first contemplating (extensively) the merits of a separation, and how it actually helps them generate exposure while keeping the h-games easier to navigate.

It doesn't help generate exposure. People will not click on the link to go here simply because that's how it works on forums. It's the same reason all the sub-forums for Hentai Games saw exponentially less traffic than the main board for years as did Under Construction.

This is as much a benefit to you guys as it is to the users, and I find it both incredibly arrogant and inconsiderate that you're so about yourselves that you'll demand the regular users suffer for your greed.

I find it arrogant and inconsiderate that your post is laced with disdain for people making crowdfunded games to the point that you'll take any chance you can to take a shot at them instead of debating things without having to throw insults around or personally attack people, let alone your constant assumptions and generalizations of developers of crowdfunded games.

Yeah, I'm getting personal because your ego's annoy the crap out of me, so I'll stop here. Feel free to negrep me, whine, and post non-sequitur arguments that only further demonstrates your tenuous (at best) grasp on the situation rather than fear-mongering about how you're not gonna make as much shekels off the masses. Boo-friggin-hoo.

Honestly, ULMF is probably 5% or less of my traffic.

I'm debating about stuff in here because I actually give a shit about the forum's traffic and success (especially after such a drastic downturn in visitors due to a lot of earlier issues) because there are so few places to talk about adult games in the west (especially given the legacy of this place), and to my knowledge, a solid chunk of it was the Patreon games as of late.

I'm also heavily against inequality and unfairness in general when it comes to people getting equal attention and equal treatment; if the situation were flipped and ULMF were actually segregating everything but Patreon games into its own section, leaving the main section ONLY Patreon or crowdfunded games while shuffling off everything Japanese (regardless of state of completion) into its own category, I would be just as much against that as I am this (and I've written as such in earlier topics concerning splitting the forums up).

Feel free to continue assuming that all crowdfunded devs have a huge ego or are only in it for "the shekels", though.

 

[Jesus]

Nobody is isolating or hiding the threads.

The entire purpose of subforums is to "isolate" threads with certain things in common. The majority of this site's traffic is the Hentai Games subforum. Anything outside of that receives nowhere near as much attention.

1) Having sections for the different types of games actually helps people with looking for what they want rather than sifting for hours through content that doesn't interest them.

I agree, but I don't believe it's the optimal solution either - I digress. The source of funding, ethics of the devs etc. have no bearing whatsoever on what makes a game or its concepts appealing to a given user. In other words, the fetish(es) an adult game caters to aren't exclusive to any given business model or market. I can find games about weird creatures fucking chicks made by devs from all over the world on Patreon, DLSite, Funny-Games.biz (I think this site has malware as of 7 years ago), Nutaku, and so on. So this is not a valid justification for categorizing games into subforums by their business model - it would only further obfuscate content from users that may be interested in it.

[...]If people didn't have any interest in seeing a patreon game, why should they be forced to sift through them to begin with?

Equally, why should I have to go through two (or more) separate sub-sections, both of which might contain content might appeal to me, just because someone gets offended at how other people choose to speculate with their money?


As for segregation by genre, I'm more interested as to whether it appeals to my specific fetishes than how it plays (Though either side can inform the other - a discussion for another time). Of course I have my preferences in gameplay too, but it's just about secondary. For example, a user might not be interested in a very good beat-em-up that only has monsters with CR, but they may be interested in a shitty beat-em-up that is about anthropomorphized military hardware gettin' it on forcefully through superior firepower - assuming the art quality is the same. Again, appealing to one's fetishes and kinks as well as art quality are the main criteria by which most users sort games between the "would fap" and "wouldn't fap" piles. The thing about those criteria is they're all subjective. And again, more on that later.

Basically, to quote the man himself "Do people want more quality?" If the overwhelming majority is "Yes", then there is no reason this change shouldn't last.

See above paragraph; "Quality" is especially subjective when it comes to fap material.

2) With refinement and proper management, the patreon-only section could, in effect, be made to promote projects that have ongoing development while either burying those that don't, or, at the very least, marginalizing them into oblivion.

This already happened with the H-games section as it was. Most of the ones I do care about don't even get that much post traffic beyond the devs posting updates themselves; let alone the actual trash that's buried under 3 pages of NTR games before 1% of the userbase have seen it.

When it comes to any games-in-development, it's nice that many of their devs give us updates consistently, even if they're just copy/pasted from their Patreon or their Blogspot or whatever. It means I don't have to go to a different website to follow their progress and the process is further streamlined with bookmark/watch and notifications. This also holds true of games-in-development whose threads aren't maintained by the dev themselves. Further, with the dev(s) involved directly, it's a place to be able to provide feedback, ask questions, make suggestions, demands requests, all in the same space I find out about other games I'm interested in, talk about or get walkthroughs on the ones I am playing or have played.

Your second point disregards a fact about the internet, that being people are generally stupid online, and do stupid things. Sometimes (almost always), people will put money towards something that's barely out of alpha or is worked on for six months before it dies. At that point, a good majority of funders will keep putting money towards it despite nothing happening, all because a developer says it's maybe being worked on. Hell, look at that abortion, Monster Girl Quest 3D on Kickstarter. People still support him despite 3 years of nothing. While Darkfire can't put a gun to your head and demand you to use your brain, him and the other ULMF staff can at least do something that limits the amount of exposure such projects receive.

Just like Darkfire can't force people not to fund potentially illegitimate projects, those developers likewise don't force people to pledge/donate/crowdfund them. Darkfire isn't responsible for where my money goes, neither are you, nor are those running the crowdfunding campaigns I have supported, nor is Patreon. I am responsible for judging the "risk" of my "investment" in each case, and the same holds true for each of the innumerable people who consider doing so themselves. And at the very worst, the isolated few crowdfunding campaigns that were indeed scams, yet rake in money til the last minute at least indicate demand for a concept that may yet be fulfilled by other developers. Like I said, if you don't think it's legit, don't back it. If you do and get burned, yeah it sucks, but it's nobody's fault but your own. Exploiting peoples' ignorance and impulsiveness is one of the main foundations of modern capitalism and commercialism and if you REALLY have a problem with it, crowd-funding for interactive porn isn't where you should direct your energy. I believe the platform should better protect consumers, absolutely, but just because some people choose to exploit its lack of consumer protection doesn't mean everyone who uses it is inherently shady. Less trustworthy, certainly, since you're paying for the promise, not the goods themselves. But that doesn't preclude any individual using the platform from EARNING the consumer's trust.

Mods have had to sift through hundreds of pages historically just to figure out which games were dead, which ones needed their thread locked for any reason, and which ones should be left alone. How about you go through the current h-games section and tell me how many deserve their threads locked? How many ought to be kept open? How many still have ongoing, on-topic discussions? Perhaps after page 20, you;'ll realize the immense amount of work staff have had to do over the years and recognize how overwhelmingly-difficult it is when a new thread is popping up almost every day.

I have in fact offered my time towards helping reorganise the forum. But you're right, getting the entire section squared away would be a colossal task. However, moderation doesn't end at locking, deleting or moving threads. Creation and enforcement of rules on keeping discussion civil, related to the games themselves would mean threads don't end up getting locked due to shit posting in the first place. Deleting offending posts and/or handing out short and visible bans to offenders would result in higher standards of posting.

There is a lot of leeway as to when and how bringing up the legitimacy of an on-going, crowdfunded project is appropriate. As long as it's kept civil, users should be free to question devs participating in this community as to the progress of their project or whatever other concerns they may have. It's when people take issue with the answer(s) they got that it often spirals into "shit-slinging" - but even more often, it's when someone takes issue with the principles of crowdfunding as a whole and decides to make the thread's discussion about that rather than the particular project and its particular content. Again, moderation and arbitration are necessary to "keep it clean" however we go about addressing the issue, other than banning crowdfunded projects and the discussion thereof from the forum entirely - which would be plainly unfair to the majority of projects that do deliver consistently.

A separation allows them to avoid that content at their own leisure and de-legitimizes their shit-slinging further. Or, are you of the mind that "any press is good press?"Because, we've never had patreon games bumped to first page and getting people hopeful for new content only to see the thread instead devolved into shit-slinging. Nope, never happened except all the time.

Once more, hands-on moderation is the only surefire way to mitigate this. Do you seriously think people who have a real bone to pick with crowdfunding as a whole wouldn't just make their way to threads in that subforum just to tarnish and spite them? Some people have already made so much effort derailing such threads, even despite warnings and in addition to other users expressing that they simply want it to stay on topic. Hand out short bans to offenders, make examples of repeaters and this behaviour will cease and otherwise be dealt with swiftly. This may require more manpower; Again, I'm putting my money where my mouth is and offer my time to help carry this out.

As for the age/length of a given thread;
Archive everything except threads active in the last month. If someone wants to continue discussing a game whose thread is older than that, they make a new one conforming to the new standard. This means moderators aren't retroactively fixing people's shit, and can focus on the currently active and newly (re)created ones.

and I find it both incredibly arrogant and inconsiderate that you're so about yourselves that you'll demand the regular users suffer for your greed. Yeah, I'm getting personal because your ego's annoy the crap out of me, so I'll stop here. Feel free to negrep me, whine, and post non-sequitur arguments that only further demonstrates your tenuous (at best) grasp on the situation rather than fear-mongering about how you're not gonna make as much shekels off the masses. Boo-friggin-hoo.

Lol. "Here's the "non-sequitur" arguments* that my ego generated, and my fearmongering about how every crowdfunded project is out to 'steal shekels off the masses', but damnation if I'll hear your response!!!!"
*Not that I believe any of them in this thread, even yours, to be as such. The fact that your opinion is counter to the majority (so far in this thread) doesn't mean it's not a valuable discussion to be had.

ed: ffs hentaiwriter beat me to it

All this aside; As I brought up in one of my previous posts here, there is a strong compromise; Forum software-enforced, and user-driven thread tagging and a search/filter system to go in hand - Sort of how like Steam's tags work.
You make a thread, it HAS to have at least one tag for each
Its genre; RPG, Action, Adventure, Puzzle, VN etc
Its content; Hetero, Yuri, NTR etc
This could also extend to its - not business model necessarily, but platform I suppose;
Crowdfunded, Closed Access; Crowdfunded, Open/Free access; Full Release; Full Release & Demo; Online; etc
All users (of a certain account age/postcount/reputation?) are free to apply tags to a given thread. Once it reaches a certain threshold of the number of unique viewers applying that tag, it's added (or changed or removed where applicable).
Users would then be able to filter the threads they see by including or excluding tags. So with this system, if crowdfunding is indeed a big enough issue across the userbase, a tag for it is created; Users apply it to threads on crowdfunded games; You can now choose not to have to see any crowdfunded games on the forum.
The H-Games subforum remains undivided, but people choose what they see in there based on their preferences.

The biggest obstacle obviously is coding and integrating these systems and that's unfortunately not within my skillset. But hey, ideas are free right? It'd be a lot of specialised work now that would save the majority of this forum's users a lot of effort in the future, in addition to putting this debate to rest for good.

 

[Sue Nami]

> The source of funding, ethics of the devs etc. have no bearing whatsoever on what makes a game or its concepts appealing to a given user.

Completely untrue, and because it is untrue all the other arguments fall away.

Crowdfunded projects give up-front cash for incomplete projects. Which attracts much more scammers and unserious authors. Sure, there are incomplete non-patreon projects... but the ratio isn't 0.01% worthwhile to 99.99% proof of concept like it is for patreon.

I'm glad I don't have to wade through pages of crap to find the real games, and I applaud this move.

You can point out exceptions to the rule all you like: That doesn't make them not exceptions to the rule. And no, mods cannot be expected to keep a running update of when something becomes more than proof-of-concept garbage, so suggesting that there are "better ways" to partition games is disingenuous.

Finally, there are incentives for bad forum behavior: Crap non-crowdfunded games fall to the bottom, as few are interested in them. Crap crowdfunded games get bumped by their authors because they want funding or at best, to promote their game. So crowdfunded games break the forum model that sweeps crap to the bottom. This is the part that you can't explain away by simply saying there are "good" crowdfunding sites that don't charge per month. Since fresh payers are even more necessary to the non-monthlies, then that's even more incentive for authors (or their friends) to keep bumping the topic. I certainly don't expect a mod to be able to tell between a buddy bumping a game and an actual fan bumping it.

 

[habisain]

Wow. It looks like the way people in favour of the split are conducting themselves is literally to try and inflame this thread until it gets locked, thus shutting down the discussion. I'm not sure if that's the intent, but it sure looks like it.

Should we at least try to keep things civil?

At the very least, I'll point out the obvious thing that seems too have passed a lot of people by: the rules as written are unworkable, because they require the mods to keep a list of crowdfunded projects. The Mods do not, for example, have a list of Japanese devs on Ci-En, which means that I can point out a number of threads in the main section which are in violation of this policy, simply because the Ci-En page has not been linked. Similarly, a simple way for any bad actor to get around this would be to simply not link their own Patreon, and instead tell people to Google them.

I don't believe it's impossible to only allow projects with a public, non-alpha quality demo in the main section. It's worth noting that mods do not have to police this on their own, the same way that mods do not police the entire forum on their own - mods should be thought of more as handling administration and moderating disputes between users. There are two real options: either to create a thread here if it has crowdfunding and then submit the public demo to a Mod and ask them to move it once it is verified, or we just use the reporting system for it's intended purpose and report Patreon threads which don't have public demos. Neither of these are any more unworkable than current or past systems.

 

[Loranzo]

Is it possible to have a system similar to Steam's Greenlight? (but not as shitty, of course).
Developers from crowdfunded games stay in Games under Construction until they have something substantial, then they let Darkfire or even a group of trusted ulmf users try out the game up to a certain content version the dev is comfortable with. Then it gets moved out to the main Hentai Section. The games that make it out would generally need some work put behind it, so their numbers would be pretty small, and the tester of the demo wouldn't have to be fapping 24/7 to go through all of them.
The game threads where devs disappear after posting or only have an animation as a proof of concept would generally be contained in the subforum.
It would be a way to differentiate between "good" crowdfunded games and "bad" or "not ready" ones. The good ones get exposure in the main forum, the ones who are not ready yet stays in the subforum.
Even as crowdfunded games are becoming the industry's go-to platform, we are in the in-between state where many scammers use the model to cheat money from people. Take that furry game Cloud Meadow used to be a part of that crashed and burn or Dungeon and Prisoners where people still hold out hope for. Add to that the lack of a standard for work ethics, many devs inadvertently take money from supporters without actually putting in the work because of real life stuff or procrastination.
You may say that Darkfire doesn't have to protect anyone, and it's their choice to put their money where they want. But why not protect people? especially when they are part of your community? We do it in real life, and we're generally fine with it on things like product quality and such. That's why we don't get as many toys filled with lead anymore. Sometimes protection comes from yourself, and sometimes it comes from the community or the governing body. The attitude that people who get scammed are idiots who deserve it seems only reserved for the internet, whereas victims of scams in the physical world are seen as innocents that should be protected. Why is that? It stopped people from donating to crowdfunded games? Well, now they are saving money.
For devs who say the suggested system is too much work, that's on you. This is your industry, you're the ones in place to set up standards, broadcast about the scammers people should stay away from, clean up the industry to let it progress. And if you don't try to protect your customers, then someone else will. And their solution may not be something you like. We have other industries such as oil, finance, videogames, where companies absolutely refuse to clean themselves up. Did we accept it? No, we imposed regulations on them. And these companies are did not like it, but their suggestions are always self-serving and weak so we stopped listening to them.
Crowd-funded games are really cool in that it is built by both the developers and consumers, in an emerging market where the potential seems endless. We are both in a position to shape the industry as it grows. But it's going down the same path as every industry before it. Devs of good and proper crowdfunded H-games take the position that they only look out for themselves and their own constituents. You claim that the industry is just that way. You leave every other poor sot to die in the lawless lands that is crowdfunding games. So why is it wrong for some of us to want change? To have some form of safeguard, not a hard safeguard that separates devs and consumers forever, but a soft safeguard so that the majority of people can avoid danger unless they are ready and willing to seek out crowdfunded games to support?
I also suggest that the devs who disagree with recent changes to make suggestions from the position of protecting and benefiting the forum users above benefiting themselves. Your suggestions mainly seek out ways for you to gain exposures, get more revenue. These suggestions do not endear you to the forum and engender a harder opposition to crowdfunded games.
So, I support the recent change. The change benefited the normal forum users more than it harmed them. Future changes should always have the same position.

Edit: I would also like to point toward M1zuki. There's a reason why there are so many of us M1zuki fanboys around. In an emerging industry where there are no rules, he took the absolute high road. The "pay per release" is one thing, some devs are going that route, but he did more. He had work ethics. He had a schedule, a deadline, and he kept to it. He didn't keep us in limbo, and when he knows he won't be able to work, he told us about it. He didn't fear our response when he says "I'm not working." He doesn't make excuses like, just another week, another month, another decade. He crashed and burned, yeah, but he changed the industry by at least getting some devs to follow his model, albeit to lesser effectiveness. So devs aren't as powerless to influence the industry as they may think. So I believe that more changes should be coming from devs to create a better H-game industry.

 

[Sue Nami]

> Wow. It looks like the way people in favour of the split are conducting themselves is literally to try and inflame this thread until it gets locked, thus shutting down the discussion. I'm not sure if that's the intent, but it sure looks like it.

Ad hominem. Do better.

You could try addressing the issues I raised, instead of trying to psychoanalyse the other side of the argument.

> Should we at least try to keep things civil?

You first. See above.

> At the very least, I'll point out the obvious thing that seems too have passed a lot of people by: the rules as written are unworkable, because they require the mods to keep a list of crowdfunded projects.

Nope. No more than the mods need to keep a list of loli/shota games. Someone alerts them or they notice it on its own, and it gets moved.

> Similarly, a simple way for any bad actor to get around this would be to simply not link their own Patreon, and instead tell people to Google them.

If the person is successfully HIDING the crowdfunding, then most of the things I wrote don't apply. and we don't need to worry much about it. And again, if someone actually trying to play the game runs into a crowdfunding wall, they can report it just like loli/shota. Not the issue you pretend it is.

 

[YummyTiger]

I'm glad I don't have to wade through pages of crap to find the real games, and I applaud this move.

Incorrect. with this model, you STILL have to wade through incomplete games to find complete ones. Splitting by funding has little bearing on completion status. I've been a regular to these forums for years, and most RJ# threads are created when the game is announced on DLSite, not released. So, there is no content there if you visit that thread or a mere demo. Even when it is released, it usually needs multiple patches to finish it (here's looking at you Sarah of the Rotation Cut). Therefore, I don't really understand what you're arguing for beyond that you dislike crowdfunding and don't want to see it.

As for the bumping issue, that's usually pretty easy to tell. If a thread is constantly being bumped by a user with 1-5 posts, it's a fake account. Report it, and problem solved. Give a warning, then ban the developer. I don't think splitting an entire forum that's already seeing less traffic because of a fear of potential thread bumping is the correct solution.

I'd also point out to those thinking I'm biased in my argument, that I firmly believe splitting by completion status would be worse for many Patreon devs, but potentially better for the forums. Because, I still think the average new user looks for complete games to play first and foremost, and would visit the complete forum until they ran out of content. With this model, the incomplete forum would most likely see less action, but when a dev completes something, they'd get the boon of moving their game to the most active forum--in turn, rewarding devs who complete projects.

 

[habisain]

> Wow. It looks like the way people in favour of the split are conducting themselves is literally to try and inflame this thread until it gets locked, thus shutting down the discussion. I'm not sure if that's the intent, but it sure looks like it.

Ad hominem. Do better. You could try addressing the issues I raised, instead of trying to psychoanalyse the other side of the argument.

> Should we at least try to keep things civil?

You first. See above.

Please explain where I have been uncivil. My observation is that the shouting match started in earnest after the contributions of users in favour of the split, and that there does seem to be an effort to inflame this thread to the point that it is banned. This is not an attempt to psychoanalyse any member of the forum - it is purely my observations. From memory, this is what happened in the previous thread as well, although I'll admit that due to the fact that thread was heavily moderated I cannot double check this.

More to the point, my subsequent post did outline a potential model for the forum that did address your concerns - specifically requiring moderator approval for Patreon or other crowdfunded threads in the main section, or simply the use of the report function and existing moderation powers to remove threads (and potentially users) which are of low quality. Given that moderators are going to have to intervene to enforce the new rules on thread creation in the main section in any case, neither of these should add substantially to the mods workload. If these ideas do not address your concerns, please state your reasons so that they can be discussed, because I'm obviously not seeing them.

This is a forum. It's for discussion. Not hurling unfounded accusations bred by not paying attention to what others say. Or is the only rational thing to do here to admit that this forum is incapable of having a civilised discussion on this matter?

 

[Fenril]

@YummyTiger
Well guess what, that's been addressed and is no longer an issue. Now the Hentai Games section is only for COMPLETE games and there's a subforum for Games Under Construction. No more need to sort through 3 pages of threads if you're only looking for full games. These days, there's usually only 1 page of new posts per day on the complete games.

Also, as someone who's frequented these boards for years, I can say that there are a lot of devs who don't put something on DLSite until there games are nearly complete. Sometimes people post information threads because they follow certain developers and they check their blogs and personal sites in a regular basis but there are plenty of games that come out of nowhere and surprise us all.

Even further still, there are very few threads which get more than 3 pages before a game gets fully released. Most threads which get created to discuss a game prior to release usually only have (at most) a page of posts before someone returns later to say "it's out" and then the real discussion begins. It gets the word out, it starts the hype train, and once the train arrives, everyone's ALLL ABOOOARRD. (And more often than not, these threads were created on short notice, usually days or weeks before the game is released. See my last paragraph for more info.)

Finally, there's one big divide that separates the crowdfunding model and non-crowdfunding model: you don't have to pay for a DLSite demo. That's a huge difference because that's what a demo is supposed to be: a sample for you to try BEFORE you buy. And as you've already said earlier, Patreon doesn't allow this with NSFW content.

 

[habisain]

@Fenril That's not the rule that is written. The Hentai Games section is for complete games regardless of funding and incomplete games if they or their dev does not use crowdfunding. I can point to a number of incomplete games in the Hentai Games section for example. Further, due to the fact that information in the Hentai Games section is often incomplete, I can point to a number of incomplete games whose creators have Ci-En and by all rights should be in the Under Construction section, but aren't because the rule is pretty much unworkable; the Mods do not have a list of devs using crowdfunding.

In some ways a lot of the people arguing against the split would understand if it was what you describe, and wouldn't be as ticked off about it. It's just the singling out of crowdfunding that has a lot of people annoyed.

I agree on the point that a demo should be made available and not paywalled. However, please note that a demo can be made available on ULMF directly, similar to how YummyTiger and HentaiWriter make their public demos available here. Patreon only doesn't let you host or publicly link to NSFW content, but a creator can certainly make their demo available outside of the platform provided they don't link to their demo from Patreon.

There's also the issue of games which are freely available, but funded through Crowdfunding - under the rules as written they have to be in this section, but anyone can download the current build of the game for free. I know games like Trap Quest or Lilith's Throne don't see much discussion here, but they're both very substantial free games. Forcing them into a perpetual state of "Under Development" seems unfair - especially Trap Quest, which certainly has more content than most completed games on DLSite. It doesn't seem right to relegate people giving a game away for free to a lower traffic section of the forum just because they use crowdfunding so they can afford to add more content to their free games!

 

[HentaiWriter]

I was going to reply to the posts before this, but just like every other thread about this subject, it's turned into a battle between

"people who want equality/fairness in topic exposure/accessibility regardless of whether they're a dev or not"
vs.
"people who have a hate-boner for crowdfunding regardless of logic, facts, or reason because they assume almost everyone who uses crowdfunding is abusing it, no exceptions (and/or that crowdfunded or western games are somehow inherently bad quality, and that people are literally braindead and have no free will to just not pledge to campaigns if they don't want to)".

No real point in continuing to post in the topic at this point, just because anything people say in support of crowdfunding, even if facts, statistics, links, and other proof (or just common sense) is posted, it'll be ignored by the naysayers to fulfill their mentality; I'd rather spend that time working on my game instead if I know there's no point in replying because one side is just going to ignore the other and not reply to a majority of their counter-points.

I did want to clarify one thing though;

Finally, there's one big divide that separates the crowdfunding model and non-crowdfunding model: you don't have to pay for a DLSite demo. That's a huge difference because that's what a demo is supposed to be: a sample for you to try BEFORE you buy. And as you've already said earlier, Patreon doesn't allow this with NSFW content.

As habisain said, you can (and should) be posting your content other places (like ULMF, for instance) and then Patreon should only be a sales page, not where people are getting public demos from. Given that Patreon has no search function for NSFW content, the ONLY way someone would find your Patreon page was if it was linked somewhere else on the internet or they google searched your game name, and in both cases it's highly likely they stumbled on a page external from Patreon talking about your game, where (if you've done your work right) they would have also encounted a public playable demo.

Anyways, good luck DarkFire; I have faith in time that things will work out.

 

[YummyTiger]

@YummyTiger
Well guess what, that's been addressed and is no longer an issue. Now the Hentai Games section is only for COMPLETE games and there's a subforum for Games Under Construction. No more need to sort through 3 pages of threads if you're only looking for full games. These days, there's usually only 1 page of new posts per day on the complete games.

Also, as someone who's frequented these boards for years, I can say that there are a lot of devs who don't put something on DLSite until there games are nearly complete. Sometimes people post information threads because they follow certain developers and they check their blogs and personal sites in a regular basis but there are plenty of games that come out of nowhere and surprise us all.

Even further still, there are very few threads which get more than 3 pages before a game gets fully released. Most threads which get created to discuss a game prior to release usually only have (at most) a page of posts before someone returns later to say "it's out" and then the real discussion begins. It gets the word out, it starts the hype train, and once the train arrives, everyone's ALLL ABOOOARRD. (And more often than not, these threads were created on short notice, usually days or weeks before the game is released. See my last paragraph for more info.)

Finally, there's one big divide that separates the crowdfunding model and non-crowdfunding model: you don't have to pay for a DLSite demo. That's a huge difference because that's what a demo is supposed to be: a sample for you to try BEFORE you buy. And as you've already said earlier, Patreon doesn't allow this with NSFW content.

You just contradicted yourself in the same post. Which is it? Do DLSite games get posted before release and hyped, OR do they get posted only in "under construction" until they are released? I can tell you, it's the first. That means that the complete games section IS NOT for complete games only. It's for games getting released in non-crowdfunded models, whether complete or not. AND, before you tell me those hyped games are released as complete, that's also false. Again, Sarah of the Rotation Cut is just one example.

I've been on these boards nearly as long as you have, and I can tell you I've seen plenty of DLSite games that were posted months or years before release, and plenty that went well longer than 3 pages in pre-release discussion. I've also seen plenty of non-DLSite games that received less than 3 pages and simply moved to the background, so what is your point? Additionally, since when is less than 1 page of activity per day on a public forum a good thing? That's indicative of a dying forum in most situations. Sure, I guess you get to just talk with your 5 buddies about the few games you like, but really, just create a Discord if you want to do that. Forums thrive on interactions, opinions, people. Splitting forums is almost always a dangerous idea for the long term health.

Finally, on your last point, Patreon offers free games, not just demos. Go look at the number of Patreon games that are being given away free after a short time period. I don't see ANY DLSite games given away for free. You have to pay for every, single one--or pirate it. Yes, Patreon devs give perks to their patrons, but a huge number also give the game away for free. I guess when you pirate games, the result is tthe same, but your demo argument seems downright silly. Especially since I'm struggling to find a single Patreon that doesn't offer a demo (assuming they are not a Patreon based on an idea).