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May 28 Update (Patreon)

Published:
2023-05-28 17:02:53
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

(I actually wrote this post a while back, then there wasn't time for it between updates going out. It's still basically current, it just feels odd to read something I wrote a while back when I had more free time.

Also, there is an unplanned meme! This is another one from Argo and Annikath, and apparently they memed about it on Discord, but I have been too busy to notice.)

Time for another meandering post. I played a popular retro RPG recently and enjoyed it; I really do love this genre. But it also got me thinking about the gap between the work I'm able to produce and the types of indie RPGs that have gone viral in recent years. I'm thinking about it along several different categories.

Design: All the RPGs I've done are based on RPG Maker plus the most interesting scripts/plug-ins/add-ons I could find. I like to think I could design some fun core mechanics if I had the flexibility, but that remains to be seen, doesn't it? In the future I'd strongly consider commissioning some custom combat/game mechanics.

Visual Aesthetic: Probably the most visible difference. A lot of popular games could have been made in RPG Maker, but they don't have the same core look. It would probably cost $20-50,000 to give a game its own unique aesthetic. Not trivial, but not impossible. Despite the fact that many players are indiscriminating about this sort of thing, I'd consider it for future work.

Music: I know I'm going against the grain here, but I'm not convinced this draws in the right type of players. Plus I'm tired of stock music getting called custom and custom music being called RTP.

Sound Design: I wonder about this one. With OEA I replaced almost all the RPG Maker core sound effects, but not the battle sound effects. Not sure anyone noticed. No real conclusions here.

Voice Acting: A pretty big deal for visual novels, but not usually expected for indie RPGs. Voice acting is something I'm reluctant to take on, so it will likely remain an omission for the near future.

Promotion: Perhaps a major factor, as I've never had any meaningfully successful promotion. At times I've considered running a Kickstarter for a project, not for the money but just to get the press that comes with it. I feel like I haven't seen any evidence that normal press routes are worthwhile: essentially everything is random or backchannel. So this aspect is an open question.

Implicit in some of the above is one of my overall limitations: programming. I think it's no accident that almost all the solo or small team projects are led by a programmer, because coding is central to the work. There are too many hack coders out there, both SFW and NSFW, and even incompetent work will quickly cost tens of thousands of dollars. And even for the one person I've worked well with (the programmer for DStP), there's just so much more communication and less iteration when you aren't doing things yourself.

This is a sympathetic audience, so let's give me some basic credit: given enough time investment, I could develop my skills in a given language or more powerful engine. I've been trying to do so nights after my main work for some time, but a while back I decided to throw in the towel. Spending time developing skills means time not creating content, and I don't think a large percentage of fans are willing to wait for that. Even if I took a major chunk of time off and learned a lot, how good of a job would I actually do? I'm getting older and the idea of dedicating months just to become competent at best makes me grouchy.

I've always tried to experiment with new things and not get too deep in any ruts, but your brain does build up patterns over time. I know I'm never going to be an artist, for example: the fundamentals of what it takes to build up those skills are a bad match for how my brain works. Whereas with writing, design, and the various other fields I've focused on, I still derive enjoyment from the parts of the work that are less enjoyable. I like to think I'm a little flexible, but am I flexible enough to start over in areas where I have no real competence? It seems not all of them.

The silver lining is that setting this secondary goal aside means faster progress on my core projects, it just interfaces with my long term goals in an awkward way. I can spend more money on system design and visuals, but based on OEA I'm not sure this will pay for itself.

So I view this as a bit of an obstacle. I'm grateful for my success and all of you have ensured that I can keep making games like this in perpetuity. But I'm not so wildly successful that I can fund a small game studio for years. I'm not really sure what the right next step is, after the completion of my current projects.

Files

Comments

DukeLeto7

Typo report from Caszador via the forum bugs post: "Typo during the Succession Crisis part 2, when talking to the ardan ambassador who tells Simon to investigate the council rooms. 'The fact that the guards don't means that whoever is working at night has permission to be here. Hence my worry.' There's a missing word. The fact that the guards don't what?" I suspect this may be a misreading on their part but don't have the extracts loaded to check.

Darthjake

I like RPG Maker, probably because it's what I started playing games on and I own several of the products on Steam. (They were on sale, don't judge me :D) I also am starting to warm up to renpy unless the author disables roll back, I'm lazy, sue me. I also tend to mute/lower the music on alot of my games because I might be playing them while talking to friends on teamspeak and I don't want the moans to leak through, or the music to blast into my eardrums while I'm trying to talk to my buds. Obviously you are here to create, and you want to create the best product you can, while minimizing the cost to you, and getting good profits to continue the cycle. I've enjoyed most of the games you've made, and even tried out the ones I wasn't interested in, and didn't totally dislike them. (Sidescrollers or Platformers) So all I can say is keep up the good work!

DragonWarrior45

I sort of disagree about game music, and sort of don't. In SFW games Music tends to be one of the main things I judge a game through. IMO good music either means enough time or enough budget to afford it while still making the rest of the project, since it's pretty much always secondary unless the game is actually music based. Making it a good sign for the quality of the overall game. On top of that, music can be some good advertisement too, other people can go "what song is this from?" And stuff like that. If you hired someone else to make it, it'd also almost be as much advertisement as another Annikath! Anyways all that is to say, that normally I disagree about music being unimportant. But on the other hand, You are an NSFW dev, and with NSFW games, it's extremely rare to find good and unique music. In fact most NSFW visual novels I've played don't even have music! NSFW RPGM games usually have music, but it's rarely anything more than one set of basic music, so it's not like it matters. TLS is already a step ahead in music IMO just from having a few custom songs alone!

DragonWarrior45

(All this really signifies though is that I'm one of the types of players that'd be drawn in by the music normally) but I definitely think music is important! ...Just less important in the adult industry.

FenyxSCPlayer

I have a friend that went trought a programming boot camp , he said he could have lost his mind but ended up a competent programmer after about 3 months with no previous knownledge (competent enought in what he studied to join 2 or 3 jobs and leave them because they werent paying enough or wasnt confortable in it, and still find a third job in a city, other programmers from UNIVERSITY couldnt find jobs in) Maybe you could use kickstarter for that, take 3 months "break". I wouldnt pledge in that, but i would keep my patrean at least for those. your game anyways can be still expanded a lot after you finish the main storyline. For example the only time you do something "bad" to your party members with catastrophic results is the whoring of qum, maybe you could add things like that for each party member , you could add more scams like the flowers one... the investments part of your game is a diamond in the rough that you could expand(I was gonna use the word exploit but I fear to be missunderstood) even more

Jeffrey Lebowski

I agree in that I personally find music to be a critical element of a games identity and pay attention to it. I don't know the cost/benefit ratio though, since I don't know the cost at all and don't know whether other players really care as about game music as I do. But music can absolutely be a make or break factor for me depending on the quality of the other facets.

sierralee

It's "The guards don't (stop this)" implicit from the previous line.

DragonWarrior45

Oh I fully agree, I don't know the common cost or cost/benefit ratio either, but I consider the benefits high. If I'm gonna play a game for 10s or 100s of hours, I want to listen to music I think is good while doing so. Or at the very least I want to hear something, and something that doesn't make me sick of the game faster. However in SLs case, I sort of doubt it's worth changing anything. TLS already has good music even if a lot of it is stock, because it's good music that fits the scene, isn't overused, and there's quite a variety of it considering the size of the game!

Jeffrey Lebowski

Yeah that was my thought, too. Stock music isn't necessarily bad and I have seen some elitism around what makes a good soundtrack. Like seeing that its free music and immediately deciding its bad and the entire project is somehow cheap. I like most of the tracks used throughout TLS. Plus, SL switches tracks a lot so none of them really become overused and she has pretty good instincts on choosing which track fits with a given scene. Given how often the music changes and the sheer size of the project, commissioning a full custom score seems like an extremely intimidating concept. Might be worth it for a smaller project in the future though.

Rachnera

> I think it's no accident that almost all the solo or small team projects are led by a programmer, because coding is central to the work. Out of curiosity, do you have statistics about that? My own impression was that the field was far more diverse than that. But it's based on a few arbitrary examples, like: Toby Fox: Composer; Robert Kurvitz: Writer; Chris Bourassa : Artist. So not exactly a reliable source.

Dark Art

If I may Sierra, you are missing a major elephant in the room. You are only one person with limited resources, so there is a limit to what you can do. Its only natural. Now, for one person team, you are doing pretty good. Actually, nah... You are doing pretty damn awesome. I dont know your financials, but the fact that you have been operating for years and have been able to consistently produce various content, tells me that you are pretty solid there too. But there is a limit to what one person can do. Maybe its time to start thinking about teaming up with someone? Not hiring, not outsourcing, but actually teaming up so both (or more) folks will be able to play their strong sides while the other team members can do the same with their strong sides and produce something greater than each would be able to achieve alone?

Rachnera

I fear it's not as magical. _From my own experience..._ (not saying it's an absolute truth either) Programming boot camps are designed to give you the skills you need for a specific industry job. They're time efficient because they focus solely on some aspects of coding, on a few standard frameworks and tools, on training you for what you'll be doing 90% of the time in a big company with an almost assembly-line style workflow (boss -> product owner -> designer -> coder -> tester). Think of it as learning about to be a mason. You can be a very good (and well-paid) mason, no issue there. But you cannot build the house without the help of an architect, of someone to dig up and set up the foundations, of someone to do the painting at the end, etc. Becoming the jack-of-all-trades you need to be to make a fully functional feature all on your own is not sadly as quickly or easily learned.

FenyxSCPlayer

I suppose you are 99% right , you sound like a coder while I only dabbled in it when I was a teenager in a Spectrum (BASIC is a completely obsolete language as far as I have seen) But still maybe there is something alike to her purposes? just brainstorming here not trying to present a totally well informed truth

sierralee

To be clear, rescoring TLS was never in the cards, I was referring to the budget for future projects.

sierralee

I should clarify that statement was just an impression based on the indie RPG projects I'd been looking at recently. I could definitely be wrong. Toby Fox I'd consider another example, because to my knowledge he did all the programming himself. Robert Kurvitz is a bit of a different case due to being with a larger studio. Chris Bourassa... is actually a very direct counter-example. I'm afraid writing is never going to be as valued as a strong artistic lead, though.

sierralee

True, but the trouble is finding people to team up with. Many of the people doing well for themselves have no interest in collaboration, whereas if I put out a sufficiently large carrot I'll get a bunch of low quality requests. I'm sort of hoping that I'll find some connections after I've fulfilled all my TLS promises, but there's no guarantee.

Dark Art

Building and maintaining a functional and relatively happy team is not easy or a quick thing that can be done over a weekend. Still, others do it, so I am sure its within your abilities. I've ranted at you on this before, so I will not go there again, but I will say that you CAN do it.

Jeffrey Lebowski

Oh yeah I totally assumed that was the case, I was just thinking about the value of putting more thought into the musical score of game projects in general and got off on a tangent about how unwieldy it would be to even attempt to rescore TLS. I've seen a lot indie projects, some of them basically one person with some commissioned help, and its interesting to how their specialties affect their projects. Some of my favorite indie games were made by people who are primarily composers or musicians (such as Lone Survivor by Jasper Byrne) and the music and sound design is one of the main highlights of the entire game. For you, I see the same thing, you do good work in all realms but it is clear that you are a writer first, and thus the writing and story design are obviously the standout elements. I really think it is fine to specialize as long as you reach a basic standard of competence in all the necessary skills for the project. Of course, what you define as an acceptable standard in any given area may change over time. But I'd ask if its because you feel you should be better in certain areas because of outside expectations, whether your success depends on improving your skills in certain areas, or because you want to round out your skills because it would make your work more enjoyable. On the note of whether your audience would have the patience for you to disappear to develop new skills, I'm a bit biased since I am part of your core audience that would wait a long time just to see what you do next.

Sundeigh

Voice acting in any capacity on NSFW work is usually a big no-go for me. I can't say I have ever heard voice acting in an NSFW game that does anything positive for the experience as the VAs usually aren't to the quality standard that a larger studio could support. In my opinion, it is better to let the player imagine how the character may sound or in my case don't sound. I tend to read everything out loud as I am very much a vocal processor which means Yarra and Simon sort of have the same voice which is mine. I don't usually read NSFW scenes out loud as I don't interpret them as information-gathering moments but that doesn't mean I want some amateur VA telling me about doing the seggs.

sierralee

I can't say what effect being a decent programmer would have on my overall enjoyment of my work. It's not something I'm as inclined to, so in a sense less of my time would be spent on my favorite parts of the work, but some aspects of game development would definitely be better. For everything else? Entirely outside expectations.

Lord Forte Games

Some interesting thoughts here. As someone working on a project of my own, a few of my own. I can't speak to success yet, since I haven't started releasing, but I do feel there can be a lot of value in dabbling in something you aren't ever going to fully master or even try to master. Like you, I don't think I'm ever going to be an artist, it doesn't suit my inclinations or skills. But I think I've added a lot of value to my work through relatively minor dabbling in art, mostly using photoshop to recolor or slightly modify assets. I don't consider this really being an artist so much as the skill of manipulating existing assets to better suit my needs, and it's fairly easy. I feel similarly with programming. To be fair, I'm probably more inclined toward programming than you are, since I'm a mathematician by education and computer science is the prodigal child of mathematics, but I wouldn't consider myself a programmer. I don't truly know Ruby, I'd struggle to write anything from the bottom up in Ruby. I have dabbled in it a lot, though, usually by reverse engineering the work of others. With this limited dabbling plus the excellent tool of Yanfly's Lunatic scripts (or just generally tweaking existing scripts), you can do a lot of interesting things. As an example of something very useful from dabbling, I've yet to encounter an issue with adding scripts that would otherwise break saved games that can't be fixed by adding a quick line at the right spot(s) to initialize the object throwing a nilClass error if nil. It might just be that I'm more of a generalist by nature, but as someone who's also primarily a writer, I would say that this kind of dabbling can alleviate some of the issues you mentioned without requiring one to fully learn a new skill. One other thing is, one factor I'm not sure your analysis includes (even if I'm sure you've considered it, as per your past posts) is that your work is inherently limited to people in a fairly small audience. While some things with meta themes have been very successful, I personally feel they're much shallower than your work is, and have a much lower intellectual bar for enjoying. As someone who enjoys your work, I obviously don't think this should change, but I do think that the double limiters of being more in-depth adult content and needing the ability to be aware of, engage with, and enjoy meta themes is probably much more of a barrier than any individual component. In this regard, even as someone who generally enjoys your work, I haven't tried OEA and don't really plan to because the overall premise just doesn't appeal to me. No amount of production value in any area can really, in my opinion, change when someone just fundamentally isn't going to be interested in a premise. I mostly mention this in the sense of, I wonder how good of a way to measure return on investment OEA in particular is. It might be my own biases speaking, but I do feel it has more inherently limited appeal than any of your other projects at a glance (I might feel differently if I tried it, but if someone never tries it, that doesn't matter). Maybe you have the numbers to say it's not something others feel too, of course, but it was a thought I should at least share given my personal feelings there.

Innocuous

Thoughts on your categories: Design/Programming: I'm curious what things you're interested in doing with programming that you feel you can't do right now. There will always be limitations, whether personal, practical, logistical, physical, or fundamental, but just because limitations exist doesn't mean something of value can't be created. You could be the best programmer ever and still need others help on how to do or implement something. I think design (along with writing) are the strongest aspects of your games by far, so a limitation on design capacity might be something that you feel on the development side that doesn't translate to the player perspective. Visual Aesthetic: To me this is the weird cross-section of 'most-marketable asset' and 'least valuable feature'. AAA games historically and to this day market themselves on the most beautiful and realistic graphics, and to some level it has to work because games keep getting made like that, but it never says what it's like to actually play those games and, broadly speaking, they tend to be shallow in the gameplay department. Meanwhile stylized pixel graphics never go out of fashion because they still look good and tend to be where games that sell themselves on gameplay. To zoom in on the indie-adult market, I'm not sure how much nicer graphics would truly attract a larger player-base, because players looking for an interesting game tend to not be looking at adult titles, while players looking for fetish material have an endless plethora of both games and other media to choose from. Music: I agree with you on music. I think people are broadly either in one of three camps: game music doesn't matter because I'm turning it off and playing my own, game music barely matters as long as it's not intrusive or irritating, and music nerds ready to dissect and analyze everything. Unless music composition is a core-competency that you already have, trying to market a game on its unique music only draws in the third group while being meaningless to the first two, and whether you succeed or fail is still only of interest to that group. From a development stand-point I don't see how a significant investment in just music for a project like this would return meaningful results. Sound Design: Like music, I think an average player would notice if all sound effects were removed (maybe), or if they were replaced with something out of place or irritating. But everything in between is lost on the average player. It might make more sense if it was a horror game or puzzle game, but for an RPG sound design doesn't need to be better than functional. Voice Acting: Like you said, it would be nice for a visual novel, but impractical otherwise (and even for a visual novel not required). There are over 200 named characters in TLS. Even if you had infinite money the logistics of voicing the game would be a nightmare. And for future development projects, including voice acting can lead to all kinds of issues including but not limited to: needing to limit the script to limit number (and cost) of voice actors, needing to work the script around voice actor availability, balancing audio between different actors and recording sessions to sound cohesive, and finding voice actors who are good actors, willing to do NSFW voice acting, and good at NSFW voice acting. Promotions: I think one of the advantages you've cultivated is the existing audience familiar and interested in the products you're creating. How you grow that audience by promoting outside of it? I have no idea. If it makes you feel any better, the connection between marketing time/dollars spent and return on investment by increased interest/awareness is something that even mega corporations have to essentially guess at.

sierralee

Programming: I was referring to the inability to program a game using a less supportive engine. If I wanted to create an RPG in Unity, it would take forever to learn. I have an idea for a trippy platformer than I'm enthusiastic about, but I can't create it, in the sense that I can't afford the time it would take to become competent in the necessary skills. From an RPG design perspective, I mean unique combat elements you can build a game around, ones that would allow new strategy and give a fresh feeling distinct from RPG Maker games. This I could hire out. Visual Aesthetic: I agree with you in general, but I think in this specific case the look of RPG Maker graphics turn off a lot of people. Realistic graphics aren't within reach for me, but custom pixel art would be. Promotion: Yeah, the question is how to get the attention of a general audience. It's not something I've managed to this point.

Runcible Technician

Make a studio, bite the bullet. It's the worst kind of risk but the problems you describe can only be fixed by a team working together. Unless you want to stay solo forever. Then it's just the same dance of finding whoever to do whatever. I don't mind the stuff I've done for the games, but I've always felt bad that you didn't have a sprite artist to just, you know, be there in a studio to do stuff for you.

Innocuous

At a certain point, you may be looking not just for 'a programmer', but a programmer specialized in the type of work or the language you'd like to work in. If you want something made from Unity, it would be someone who already has a familiarity with the engine and how to work with it. But if you decide to switch from, say Unity to Unreal engine, then your Unity-specialized programmer would be able to work with the new engine, but slower and less efficiently than if you got a new Unreal-specialized programmer. If you want to make a platformer, see if you can find another small developer whose already made a platformer who would be willing to work with you. On visuals, I know RPG Maker does have somewhat of a stigma, but so do RPGs in general. Or at least full RPGs, not just games with 'RPG elements'. For some reason I thought of the old 90s style of forced isometric perspective. This allowed for beautiful painted backdrops to 'explore' which gave the impression of 3D despite it being a low-poly 3D model moving around a 2D plane (like original Baldur's Gate or original Final Fantasy 7).

Innocuous

I'm pretty sure opening a studio is financially insoluble. Based on what Patreon says, Sierra Lee brings in ~ $5K/month (from this Patreon, ignore other sources of income for now). Taking out Patreon's fee, this would translate to around $55,000/year, which is an okay yearly salary for 1 person (depending on where you live). However, if you try to consider that business income (where a business tax may then apply), split it in half to have 2 employees (1 being Sierra Lee, and the other being another full time employee), then each of those employees would be making ~$13/hour, or potentially less than minimum wage depending on where you live. And that's ignoring other business expenses that would make this even worse. Sierra Lee does have other sources of income (game sales, book sales, etc), but even if we assume that the sum income from these equals Patreon's income (which is a large assumption) we're only barely getting to the point where a studio could possibly exist with Sierra Lee and maybe 1 other employee (or more likely 2-3 part time employees). Unless Sierra Lee has an angel investor to cover costs for an indeterminant amount time, or an unusually large amount of personal savings, a studio with even only 3-4 total people would be functionally bankrupt in less than a year. Conclusion is Sierra Lee is making the right financial choice by only bringing on contributors as basically contract work on an as-needed basis, even if that type of workflow has limitations.

Runcible Technician

i.e. worst kind of risk. Some people put their homes up for mortgage to start a studio and gamble everything on a launch title.

sierralee

You're correct, obviously. But another problem is that I'm not sure any developer worth their salt would be willing to collaborate. Over the years I've reached out to various people, from those with moderately-sized Patreons to those who clearly aren't supporting themselves, and I've been universally shot down.

sierralee

Combined other income is higher than Patreon income, but your analysis is generally correct. I make comfortable money for one person and not enough to support a team indefinitely. If it's not clear enough from my work, I am conservative when it comes to my finances and my highest priority is to be able to do creative work forever. Hail Marys have worked for some studios, but games fail far more often than they succeed. Add in the fact that I'm quite happy as a solo developer and that's recipe for things not fundamentally changing. I'm doing better than treading water, financially, so my position is increasingly strong. Maybe if one of my books or games really took off, or I ran a successful Kickstarter, I could dedicate that money to a employee on a new project, but even then I'd run into the problem of finding good collaborators.

Joker

From my experience as a programmer the biggest hurdle someone has to clear as a person to have a long time chance to do well at it is being able to think logically. And from the ridiculous amount of variables and switches you employ in tls, I am pretty sure you clear that hurdle. That being said it is a lot of work and it does take a lot of time to learn. So I think you could do it, but whether or not you should is up to you.

Dark Art

A bit of a side track, but have you ever thought about using AI for your artwork? Platforms like Stable Diffusion and the like, might be useful. You'll not find another Picasso or Rembrandt in there, but funky, freaky and fun images? Absolutely. It will need some research, but from what I hear, those things most definitely can be useful.

Lamsey

The problem with AI-generated content would be getting it to be consistent and sufficiently nuanced in emotional expression (quite aside from the copyright questions). Annikath puts in a lot of hard work to get the details right in every single image, right down to body language, facial expressions, anatomical consistency, composition, setting/lighting, etc. Each finished scene is the product of many iterations after incorporating a lot of guidance from Sierra and feedback from others, and I imagine that getting an AI model to produce that standard of work would be way more time-intensive for Sierra than working with a talented, reliable artist on commission (the tricky bit is finding artists as reliable and productive as Annikath). AI tools could maybe be used to generate concept art quickly, but for the final product, I don't think there's any substitute for a skilled artist who's committed to getting the details right consistently.

Dark Art

Oh you are absolutely right. I think I should have been more clear from the get-go. Of course AI will not replace a skilled artist, thats just nonsense. And of course even suggesting that would be nonsense. That being said, AI can create plenty of black-splashes, funky but perfectly usable textures, decent looking portraits for somewhat generic use, etc. I am not an expert or even a skilled user, so I can only guess to what extent an AI can be used, but I am 100% it can save on T&M, especially for something large scale. In other words, AI can remove the need for someone to do the grind. That grind might be boring and repetitive, but still very much needed.