Changes to the way we release new content!
I know you missed these news post as much as I missed writing them, so how about we gather around and talk about something exciting? Like our release schedule!
Since I don't want to waste anyone's time, here's a quick summary of changes we're making. You can find a detailed breakdown of our reasoning behind the changes further down the post!
Major updates will now be split into smaller chapters and released separately from one another. For example, Zahera's upcoming Part 5 update will consist of 3 separate chapters, with a new chapter being released every 2 weeks.
Minor updates (such as skins, new events, etc.) will be released in-between chapters, so the release schedule will look something like: "chapter-skin-chapter-skin-chapter..."
Overall size of Major Updates will remain unchanged, so if you played our game once every other month, you will receive the same amount of content as you already did. These changes will only affect our release schedule.
Chapters can vary in size and the amount of content offered, but we'll try to always include at least something that would be worth your time.
Players that actively follow our project will have something new to play every other week (or every week if we count minor releases).
Pricing remains unchanged, but with bi-weekly (or weekly) releases we will minimize the risks that some of our players will pledge, only to not get anything spicy to play for the duration of their subscription due to longer than usual production time.
In short, we will deliver the same kind and general amount of content we already did, but now it will be separated into "bite-sized" bi-weekly (or, in the ideal world, even weekly) releases. This is done for plethora of reasons, but the biggest ones are: This approach should help us minimize the overall stress from having uncomfortably long stretches without new releases, as well as gives our active players something to look forward to on a more consistent basis.
Why are we making these changes?
Like I mentioned above, there's a few reasons, with probably the biggest one being mental health. Whenever we take on a big project that aims to push even further beyond our current capabilities, we tend to go at least a month without having anything worthwhile to offer our supporters, except for occasional sneak peeks and spoilers. During this month our income obviously takes a hit, which adds even more stress to the pile, and when we finally release our big project, it doesn't always fully recover. It only gets worse if, God forbid, we don't meet people's expectations or misjudged how many of our players are interested in a particular character or a specific type of content we spent months working on.
Live-service projects live and die by the consistency and, more importantly, frequency of updates they offer. And while our game is not exactly "live-service" the same way most modern titles are, the distribution model and our approach towards consistent (monthly) releases do fall under the definition. Since we're already making updates way bigger than we originally intended, decision to start separating them into smaller chunks and releasing it on a bi-weekly (or weekly) basis was the most obvious and, in our opinion, healthy one.
We hope that both us, as developers, and our supporters will benefit from this change. People who played our game once every few months should still have pretty much the same amount of new stuff to look forward to, while our active members will get to enjoy way more frequent, albeit smaller content releases.
The only problem we're yet to solve, though, is how confusing things will get when we have 5 updates, each locked behind a different subscription tier. But we'll figure something out! Hopefully.
That's it for today! Stay tuned for Zahera's soon-to-be-released update, as well as a ton of surprises we've been working on behind the scenes. Among those are multiple overhauls, new character additions, new events, and bunch more cool (and degenerate) stuff!
Comments (4)
Quality over quantity, personally I don't care about the time, I was here since the start (Lie) and every time I needed to wait for the free release I was there And also, I also wouldn't mind if they said they weren't releasing anything in the coming weeks because they were preparing something bigger.
For what it's worth, we aren't going to change our internal pipeline when it comes to developing new content. We will continue planning major updates as if we're intending to release them as a single piece, and then publish chapters as soon as we're done working on them as opposed to waiting till every chapter of an update is fully finished. So, there will be no compromises when it comes to quality, simply a different approach towards releasing the content we have. As much as we ourselves would love to take time while working on bigger stuff, the reality of using Patreon as a main source of income demands that we maintain constant stream of new stuff for people to play. It can be stressful, but it's also something we can realistically work around of with enough planning, which is what these changes are aiming to achieve.
I personally believe that “drip feeding” content will be great in terms of maintaining your personal health since you’ll have more time to create, edit, and publish. However, economically I believe it will be a little counteractive. Since the largest membership is $22, I am more likely to wait until the whole update is released so that I can get my money's worth with the membership. I don’t know if I speak for everyone though in that regard. Best of luck!
We don't expect people to subscribe for each chapter, or even every major release for that matter, but going from our experience frequent content additions do wonders for project health both financially, and in terms of engagement. If you personally prefer to wait till enough new content piled up before playing, it's completely fine by us! The fact that you're playing our game at all is reward in and of itself, and regardless of how often you chose to pledge, we appreciate it all the same!