Novus
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New Game Information and a Poll
🕑 Added 2020-04-25 10:05:40 +0000 UTCAhhhhhhhhh!
Okay. Sorry. Had to do that. Also, know this is long, but please take a couple of minutes to properly read it :-(. I've kinda been freaking out for the last week or so, since it became clear that the New Game poll was going to end in either a tie, or bloody darn close to a tie. I've been constantly going back and forth about what to do about that fact and DEEPLY REGRETTING not doing the poll earlier than I did, since it means I don't have enough time to run a straight tie-breaker style poll before development is supposed to start. I considered running one anyway, and flipping development for Chastity Quest and the new game around for the first month in order to give me the time....but honestly, there's a good chance it wouldn't do any good. That it would just be close again. There actually weren't a lot of people who voted for both...so it wouldn't force many people to choose or something.
So, I'm going to be blunt here. The poll ended just hours ago, with only a single vote difference between Haven's Port and DoL: Dungeon Master Edition. Worse, the majority of my higher-tier patrons voted for Haven's Port (which lost by 1 vote) and, generally, those patrons who've been around the longest voted for Haven's Port as well. This has stuck me in the super-uncomfortable position of apparently having a truly split audience..,.and two games that, in some ways, are complete opposite ends of the spectrum. Part of me wants to take the easy road and go with DoL: Dungeon Master Edition. Technically, it won by one single vote. It's also, arguably, the easier game. Unfortunately...another part of me baldly wants to take a stab at Haven's Port. Not only have I never been comfortable using other people's art for my games...I also have a bit of a confession to make. As of last month, when I was working to launch Chastity Quest Build 2..I switched over to doing almost full-time development in order to keep up. This was, regrettably, possible due to the whole Covid-19 pandemic. I've refrained from mentioning it because, frankly, the world has enough news about it. The last place you need to hear more about it is from the dude that makes your porn. Even now, I only mention it because I need to do so to explain my position. I lost about 60% of my day-job contracts due to the collapse of the markets I was working in. Most of them were for small startups...that crashed and burned with the markets. In fact, only ONE of my contracts, the lowest paid one at that, is still actively available to me now. While this has meant that I've had the hours to keep up with monthly releases for two games...it also means for the first time in the 3+ years that I've had this patreon, I'm actually reliant on it to help pay bills. Sort of.
The truth is that I am actually VERY LUCKY and I had several months worth of savings. I am far, FAR better off than most people who lost work to this Apocalypse Lite. And, in fact...it's actually acting as a possible chance for me to actually take the plunge and really switch over to serious development as a source of income. Which...is kinda the other reason that Haven's Port is a somewhat more attractive idea, in some ways. It's by far and away the more 'serious' game, so to speak. As in a more professional-level development. Of course, that seriousness comes with start up costs...which DoL:DM doesn't. And, if things don't work out trying to go full time and I'm forced to find new contracts...I will almost certainly have to move to do only one game a month (still developing both games, just releasing them every-other-month). Chastity Quest, in particular, is simply proving to be too time-consuming to work on the builds of alongside a day job (at least if I'm crunching it into half a month). And....And...Yet...bugger...
See why I've been kinda spiraling for the last week? The net result of that spiraling....hasn't really been decided yet. Over the next few days, I'm going to take a very hard look (whenever I can spare a few moments) at the costs associated with starting up Haven's Port and doing it PROPERLY. I already had a general idea, of course, or I never would have proposed the game. Nut I hadn't sat down and crushed the numbers to the degree needed for a cost/benefit analysis, yet. That's not exactly something I normally have to do, as a hobbyist developer. Which...may not be me anymore? Anyway, I need to look at things like a good water asset, a couple of clothing assets, a new figure model, some BDSM gear models, etc. Depending on what I find, I'm going to either take the plunge and go with Haven's Port, as it's the more 'serious' development option for going Full-time with...or decide it's not a good idea, with things as they are, and go with DoL:Dungeon Master Edition. Which technically one in the voting anyway.
One thing I want to make clear. Even if I go full-time with development, my tier plans won't seriously change. One game will be on the $3 tier and one on the $5 for first access. I hate money-grubbing developers that try to squeeze every cent out of their patrons. You'll never find me doing that. I've always simply tried to supply enough awesome content that everyone feels I'm doing right by them at their donation level. And that's always how I will run my patreon. I would sooner shut it down completely then be a dick about how I run it, like some devs I shall not name, are.
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All of this being said, I don't want this to delay actually development starting on either game that might be chosen.
Therefore, the poll that was always going to be necessary for Haven's Port is going ahead. There's no complexity to this poll, really. It's just a straight vote to see what gender of protagonist you'd all time to see IF Haven's Port goes ahead as the New Game. Personally, I think a Female protagonist would work better, simply because there tends to be more things that work for them (putting a male out in a pillory for sexual-service punishment just doesn't work very well, for example, unless you're into watching guys take it in the rear. Which I'm very much not). But, honestly, I can make it work either way. It'll only change the types of content a little, really.
So, if Haven's Port is the New Game. Which gender would you want the protagonist to be?
Comments
Novus
Yeah, well as a non-commercial project DoL was technically completely LEGALLY fine (due to a combination of how I was using the art, where I was getting it from, and patreon's model). I was never really comfortable with it, since there's a difference between legal usage of something and ethical usage, and using other people's art for DoL was very much on the borderline of that ethical usage bit for me. It's why I spent so many hours (about 25% of DoL's total development time) tracking down and linking every piece of art I could. As well as spotlighting some of the artists in updates. It's one of the strongest reasons that I'd really prefer to work on Haven's Port. It's just that I feel I really need to be SURE that I can pull Haven's Port off, if I'm going to go so far as to overturn the technical winner (even if only by one vote) of the poll, in favor of doing Haven's Port. The fact that the poll is already clearly trending toward a Female Protagonist actually helps, since I have a better existing asset-library for females characters in Daz (from when I was working on Eros Academy). I won't be using the Genesis 3 figure models, if I go forward with Haven's Port, instead switching to the newer/better Genesis 8 figure. But some of the bondage devices and such acquired for Eros Academy will cross over...at least for female figures. I never really had much male content in that game, because my patrons at the time kept voting for more lesbian content ...Which, given the ongoing poll about the gender slanting in Chastity Quest, doesn't seem to have changed a bit :-p. Thanks for putting in your two cents, by the way! It helps, a lot more than most people realize I think, to get commentary from patrons. Particularly on things like this, where some people could easily be upset by what decision I make, and the reasons for said decisions!
Troqu
I'm obviously not objective as DOL:DME was the only one of the three I didn't vote for, but I'd like to think I'd say this even if it was reversed: If you want to make this into a full time gig using the current situation as the push you needed, do what you feel most comfortable with long term. Learning to do things/plan in ways you haven't had to before as a hobbyist is a short term inconvenience, but even before saying it above I could tell you were uncomfortable with using stolen art because you had so many "please tell me if this is yours and you don't like it" warning bells through the game (and actually made good on that disclaimer) and that's only going to get worse with this being your (potential) main income source.
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