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June 2024 in Review and A Change in Postings
🕑 Added 2024-07-01 18:14:00 +0000 UTCHey there one and all, welcome to the last Goals and Review post for the foreseeable future. Yes, we’re not burying the lead here, this one’s it for a while. We’ve been having such wonky time lately despite best efforts that it’s time we start looking inward a lot more than exclaiming outward. We’ll talk all about it below, but first we’ve got a month just past to go through the list on since we posted aims for the month just leaving us. Let’s go accounting together once more, shall we? We shall!
Our June Goals:
- Agents of Heels v0.27 to the Daring fans. Failed – The biggest fish still alludes us, we’re sorry to say. We’ve been having stern talking to-s within the team about this and why there was such confidence about a release in the early days of June. It’s been a month of introspections for sure, which is partly why this post has a change up from the usual at the end, but we’re determined to grasp things and sort them out as if we don’t change won’t come by itself. First and foremost we want sexy stuff going out the door to please fans regularly, so while we find a way to make that a reality again, we’ll leave this box unticked.
- Official Handover to Noemi’s Toscana Rebirth, plus v0.23 Progress Reporting, AKA Get Publicly Teased! Failed – This time last month it was the plan and expectation to get AoH done in the earliest days and then be through to the handover and into teasing again. That clearly didn’t go as planned and so neither did this. Simple as that. No tick, with a hard sigh of upset with it.
- beWilder’s Wildest! ‘23/‘24 Return with Winners Week 2 and Hype’n’History to go With It! Failed – Pretty much going to refer you to the same goal debrief above. Repeated yakking over every point the same way is one way in which we’re changing already, at least a little bit.
- Make the Most of June’s Heat Across All Our Media Pages: Patreon, Discord, Bluesky, Badly Renamed Twitter, As Per Usual! Partial? / Fail? – Hard to say, you all maybe decide? On the one hand, it’s been really quiet here on the Patreon page as we wait to get the release made and to spring into the next wave of posts like a manic-depressive on an upswing. We didn’t get there in time by the end, so we had no posts of note, so that is a mark against. On the other hand, though our Discord was also quiet, we were there as much as we are any month, ready to chatter with the folks who care to. We shared some chatter about past concepts and future fun ideas, some Ti**y City talk too, even sharing a milestone on NTR’s progress behind the curtain too. We’ve also been on Twitter and Bluesky both, including regular weekly #ScreenShotSaturday posts and pics from the past (this month featuring Nat, Ivy, Kate and even a stretch in the park just 2 days ago), so there’s some light here to speak of. It’s more a drought of news rather than anything else that’s been the cause for quiet, so as not to disappoint those waiting release with off-topic nattering etc and distraction. So, hard to say what is deserved here, a little or nothing… Again, we’ll leave it to you all to be the decider.
Those were the goals and this here is the final score. It won’t take an electric abacus to add this one up. With a score of between 00.00% (0/4) and 12.50% (0.5/4) if you’re generous on the last one, that’s a failure by any test. Not the note we wish to strike, but perhaps it goes to show the need for a key change as well as anything. As you long time readers know, the next section is where we spring hopefully eternal into the month ahead, but as the post title tells, a change is a-coming, so let’s talk.
Again, as those fans of some time will know, we’ve been doing these posts monthly since April 2018, making this the 74th in a row, given we haven’t (if memory is withstanding) missed one. At times they’ve been very useful, a genuine effort to be transparent in our accounting, regardless of whether we hit 100% or had a bad month down in the lower 50%s. Lately however, they have become a bit ridiculous, haven’t they? Almost a little divorced from reality, you might even say. What were once promises made to supporters now reads like a wish list sprung from fantasy, and that’s no help to anyone. At this time, they only serve to create ill-ease to write up, the poor use of an afternoon a month, and inspire frustration on the part of the reader. At this time, these posts only cause more harm than good, or so it feels, so it’s time to take the tough decision to stop doing them, at least until things become reliable enough to hold some credibility.
This is a tough decision, but one perhaps overdue. Every month I set down to put an optimistic but practical best foot forward, to rouse the hope of the fans and ourselves too in fact, as well as try to set some, any, kind of professional standards. I do so, but often the execution is beyond my control alone, and it turns out by the end of the goals lists’ lives it’s often a day of scraping face off the floor to save as much as possible. For that alone it might be worth a pause in these. A large part of why I’ve soldiered on with this so long past their helpfulness is it is admittedly hard to let go of a monthly streak lasting over 6 years now, and to avoid to even seem as if slipping in our emotional investment in the lives as Adult Game Devs (something we are very lucky to have, we know, it’s not that at all), but those alone really aren’t good enough reasons to keep a possibly harmful habit going, is it? If anything, to make a 75th month’s list in a row may only serve to be 75th time the fool.
So, here’s what’s going to change for now, as we give things a shake up and new methods a trial run. We’ll break it down by category, so here we go:
Goals Posts – Gone, for now. Indefinitely. We would love to see them return, but first we must return to form where monthly or even bi-monthly (every 2nd month) lists would have some grip to them. For now we’re going to focus on that more than anything else and not have confusing or even ignored lists of goals going on one side of things and reality on the other. We will be keeping to our announced 6-week cycles (9 for AoH which are getting 150% content endgame versions currently), so there are internal goal to guide us, we will just let them speak for themselves as releases and through better tailored/timed Teaser posts rather than through hit/miss goal posts for now. It’s a standard practice in this field to have “they release when they are released” schedules and we’ve actually been asked before a few times to just do that, so let’s try that and see it causes any less stress all around.
Teasers Posts – We’re keeping these happy posts, but with a change up in the whens rather than the whats of them. As it stands we’ve been running up a habit in the last few years of posting teasers every other week or so after the handover to keep up a steady contact with the fans, then we use up all 3 bullets and we end up with long stretches of little to say as the game production goes on (see June just pasted as Exhibit A). We don’t post fun extras so as not to seem distracted from the work at hand in the late phase, and we don’t post more teasers so as not spoil the release altogether. It’s a weary time for us, wanting to talk but with little to be able to say that’s not going to take away from the experience of the next release or come off as ADHD at the wrong time, so here’s the change up. Instead of posting Teasers with set intervals in weeks past, we’ll tie them to progress instead. Public Teaser at 25% done, Backer Teaser 1 at 50%, Backer Teaser 2 at 75%, and that way you’ll all have a better idea of when to expect release and a more overall consistent (if slightly more spaced out) communicating from us.
Additional Posts – Way back when in the early day we use to post 2-3 times a week, mostly extra fun stuff to wrap up the fandom in side-sexy and world building, but we paired that down over time to come off as less distracted. Still, there is room for more than just teasers and the game release ahead at times, like certain holidays, big news items, maybe even just for the Hell of it from time to time if the early half of the new Teaser Posts plans could do with a little something to break a long silence. It’s not the highest priority, but injecting more fun into things in little bits won’t hurt anyone. The final rounds and the big finish to bWW!23/24 will be the first of these and coming soon.
Discord – One of the goals we want to keep is being in contact and approachable by the fans, so with that in mind Discord won’t change. We work and mostly live in front of screens, so we’re around to enjoy the topics of beWilder as much as you care to, but we’ve also got to stay on top of the production too. Discord is as the fans want to make of it. Come and start a chat, join a chat, ask a question, make a comment about your fav ladies… Any of that is welcome and we’ll be there to make it a duologue at some point, surely. Short of that, we’ll start a few of our own from time to time but it’s mostly the fans direct / interconnecting contact domain.
Bluesky + Twitter – In recent years we’ve embraced more social (they say) of medias, so that’s another avenue to reach out and get in touch if it’s more convenient for you. We mostly use it for weekly posting of screenshots and older concept images, as well as chatting with fellow devs / being part of the wider community. As part of our weekly activity and proof of life you’ll find us there and loving ladies, so if all else fails you’ll find activity there. We prefer Bluesky by the way, but as that community is still growing, you’ll find us on old Twitter too.
So that’s what things are going to be like for the second half of the year here as we try to find better ways to do things as we match with the pace of production and a more grounded in reality outreach to the fans as a whole. To swing and miss so publicly dispirits us all, so here’s hoping this change up will make for a better, steadier hype again. If not, well, we can always go back, can’t we?
Before we call wrap however, there is one thing we really would like to keep from our traditional posts, and that would be the thank you to all our supporters for their love, patience, generosity and as the name displays, support. It really does mean a lot to us and makes our lives and by extension the lives/misadventures of the ladies we’ve got possible. We do it all for you and all for them, so seriously, cheers and thank you. Until we can be back to the blazing pace we once held onto with pride, know you have our eternal gratitude forever and always. Let our 1 goal going forward from now be: To Build Up a Production Flow and Fandom to be Forever Proud Off. Until then…
Be fellow champions of change and beWilder!
Comments
beWilder
Yeah, it's a little like that, honestly. We've had setbacks a few years ago that lead to delays and issues, which even after picking up the pieces and getting back to better places and security we're still finding it hard to just fit back in the groove. We need to find some way to see us through AoH's last bits as best we can for the game, the fans and us (discussion in progress internally), get NTR shaped up in a few places it's lacking, and get some excitement back in the veins. That'll be a lot of the problems solved we hope to dream... ... For now though, just saying we'll get things done we clearly are having a hard time achieving and giving people hopes like the goals do, it's not the way to go. We see that. Especially when people's money is involved. The biggest suck of all is posting we'll get something done in June, not making it, and thinking somebody out there likely supported expecting the game and didn't get it. Leaving people feeling bitter like that hurts everyone involved. Going to still send out links for the current AoH because of that but hopefully we can allay those fears too. Cheers Ben Hill, and thanks!
Ben Hill
Sounds to me like you all need a morale boost as much as anything. Back to beginnings, set small achievable goals in the production line: this many renders a week, on Fridays we......, every other evening we...... Set the rules yourselves, but make them small and achievable. Get the good feelings back and move on with success. You do great stuff, we need you to recover from this.
