Hello everyone,
A big thing happened more
than a week ago. We're not involved in it at all, but we received
many questions about it and people asked me about my opinion on it,
and I realized, that even if I don't have any stake in that thing
itself, it's becoming apparent that it probably will have an impact
on all of us hentai game devs that use patreon.
So, let's talk about said
"big thing":
As you may or may not know,
the game Breeding Season, which used to be one of the most funded
hentai games on Patreon, was shut down.
The reasons for this was
apparently a mix of bad management as well as differing opinions of
the team members which initially led to them breaking up.
First regarding my opinion:
I think it's regrettable,
that a hentai game had to be closed down, especially in this manner.
In my opinion there can never be enough hentai games, as there's too
many fetishes, too many groups of people with different tastes among
the hentai community.
This leads to the
conclusion, that every game that gets shut down or never reaches it's
final stages is really a loss to the community as a whole.
Although, yes, I have to
agree that lots of hentai game dev teams are inexperienced.
And most projects are way
too ambitious. So it's likely this isn't the last game that goes
down...
I wish that each and every
dev team out there manages to finish their game and satisfy their
fans. But sadly this is just a dream... (though I honestly wish
everyone to succeed)
Now, more importantly,
though, lets get to our own case:
I want to assure everyone,
that we're not going to go down, and there's several reasons for
that.
First of all, we are able to
get shit done.
We finished Paperheads back
in the day, and most of our games had been self-funded.
The money that went into
Paperheads and Geisterhand were from previous jobs I worked in, and
LDH's initial funding (before the first release on Patreon) was via
money Crescentia saved up from doing commissions, and later on a
friend of ours also supported some of our projects.
LDH's add-ons as well as
Deathblight RPG are the first of our games that have been funded via
Patreon. We've been hesitant to do
this at first, but we realised that we need to take this step if we
want to continue doing hentai games in a timely manner.
Sure, our projects don't
sound super epic in scale, as we don't promise high-resolution super
detailed graphics with dozens of animations and hundreds of enemies
to interact with in hentai animations. But there's a very good reason
for that!
It's because we have
experience and know what we as a team are capable of both in terms of
skill and time, and because we know what's just flat out unrealistic
to promise. Simple as that.
We don't promise big things,
if those things are unrealistic. You can do those things if you have
proper funding and a well coordinated team of experienced artists.
It's sad to see that developers
actually have to promise people the moon in order to get their games
funded. But it's always been like
that, even long before Kickstarter and Patreon. Back in the day it
was the publishers who promised people the greatest of games all the
time and often enough disappointed fans afterwards with mediocrity.
And the games that actually turned out to be great, often had little
to no support and fans. Somewhere, sometime, someone
had to make unrealistic promises in order to get a contract or
funding.
That's basically how life
works all the time.
(but yes, I refuse to do so,
as I believe that this only leads to long-term frustration and
problems)
The only concern remaining
would be, if there's a chance we'll break up or something similar
happens to us as it happened with Breeding Season, right?
Well, no need to worry
there, because our team coordination is great.
I've been doing team-leading
jobs for more than 10 years now, and even though I hate talking about
myself in such an arrogant and seemingly haughty manner, I really
know what I'm doing and it should be difficult to find someone with
team-leading abilities that match mine.
(it's surely not impossible
to find someone with similar skills in this regard, but it's damn
difficult)
Team-leading is not about
being the big boss, it's more about communication, respecting every
team member equally, respecting the fans and customers, and most
importantly... taking responsibility for all the bad stuff that
happens and adjusting the course so stuff won't go wrong next time.
(I'm not talking about
making useless excuses, but about taking responsibility, adjusting
the course, and seeing things through to the end, aiming for the best
possible outcome in any bad situation, instead of bailing out)
As a team-leader you don't
actually "lead" with an iron fist or something, it's more
about walking down the path together with your team as a whole,
communicating with everyone, being the center of the group,
encouraging everybody and being more of an equal part of the group.
(of course there's certain
occassions where you have to call the shots all on your own, but
that's usually happening rarely)
A good leader isn't called a
leader because of his/her position (or title), but because people
respect him/her as a person, and they have faith in his/her judgement
and general abilities.
About the "rights"
on Deathblight content:
There's nothing to worry
about with the ownership of Deathblight.
If it ever happens that
we're breaking up, Cres keeps ALL the rights to Deathblight, the
games, the characters, everything. So worst case scenario,
nothing would be lost and she can simply continue doing things or,
depending on the situation, build it back up.
But honestly spoken, I doubt
we'd ever break up.
We've been working and
living together for more than 4 years now.
And... how do you call it?
"It's a match made in
heaven" or so they say.
Yeah.
(well this is very personal
stuff, so I won't go into the details, but it really is working out
greatly)
At any rate we're both sane,
responsible, and are highly dependant on building up and sustaining a
good reputation. Creating Deathblight is
important to us, and we can't afford to lose any credibility or screw
up big.
In the future we hope to
expand our Patreon even more in order to deliver you more awesome
stuff. If possible we can even go full-time with the help of Patreon,
but for the time being we're still dependant on doing commissions and
hired work.
So, let me sum this up:
We can get shit done!
We have experience, so we
don't promise more than we can deliver!
Our team is well coordinated
and we've been working together for more than 3 years now! (I've been
working together with Cres for more than 4 years btw.)
We're great at producing lots of content with minimal funding, however, having more funding would help us to produce even more content.
(or possibly hire a skilled pixel artist to tackle bigger projects in the future)
You can ask our long term
Patrons:
We do deliver and usually we
deliver more than what we promised.
Regarding our progress on
our current game project:
The summer heat is slowing
us down, but we're getting closer to our first release.
We're aiming for the highest
quality this time, so you can really look forward to it!
Before we can release the
first version of Deathblight RPG (working title), we need to finish a
bunch of graphics. Currently we're about 50%
towards the first release in terms of finished graphics. The remaining 50% should be
getting done a lot faster, as the graphics are mostly naked.
(the first 50% was naked +
clothing + destroyed clothing, which is of course a lot more work
than (mostly) naked characters only)
 |
| small selection of a few sample graphics |
We're aiming for a first
release towards the end of august.
But please keep in mind that
if the summer heat gets worse, we might not be able to meet that
estimation.
The first release will just
include Ferania and Minori, the full combat system with hentai during
combat, and a room full of enemies up to the first mid-boss.
There will be one game over
hentai scene in the game.
From there on we'll be
working to add more and more content to the game.
(more events and more game
mechanics, more enemies, more hentai scenes, more areas, more story
and of course more characters too)
We're currently posting most
of our progress reports, previews and artworks of the game on
Patreon.
But we'll keep you updated
about releases and (once we get there) content updates on this blog.
I hope this answers all of
your concerns and questions regarding our stuff.
If you still worry or have
unanswered questions, please feel free to ask in the comments.