No, thank you for the support and for your words.
Anyway, because of this game’s theme, I think I’ve attracted a mostly adult audience (talking about Patreon). Generation X, just like me. One proof of that is my Discord server, which has more than 160 people but is basically dead because I’m the only one talking. People over 40 don’t really use Discord that much. In fact, I didn’t use it myself before creating this.
I don’t know if you’ve seen my Patreon, but I really can’t complain there. It’s been going pretty well for me compared to others. A lot of new devs think making a game is easy money, and that’s exactly why they fail. I knew from the start this was a marathon, something that takes a lot of time to grow. On Patreon, I make around 500 dollars a month, while others never even reach 200. Of course, there are always others who easily make over 2000 in half the time. Patreon’s full of all kinds of people and projects.
The problem with my game was mainly here on itch. Something went wrong from the start and I never figured out what. I’m in contact with several other NSFW game developers, and what’s been happening to me here has happened to many of them too. Itch just acts weird with some developers, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
At first, my idea was to move people from here to Patreon. I was doing that for like a year. But then the whole Visa/Mastercard issue came up and things got messy. So after thinking it over a lot, I came to the conclusion that it’s not good to lose options. That’s why I decided to stick with this new system.
I have a part-time job in the real world, and together with what people contribute on Patreon, that’s what covers my expenses and the game’s development, since both things together make up a full salary. If I didn’t have that, I’d have to look for a full-time job, and the game’s development would slow down a lot. That’s what Patreon is for, to help someone who really intends to do something actually make it happen.
Creating a game, even if it’s just an AVN, is a long, tedious, and incredibly demanding process. And for that, you need both time and money. I’ve got the time, but without the money from Patreon, things would be very different, and there’s no way I could’ve just made a full game and then released it to the world afterward.
It’s just me doing all this, and it’ll always be just me. The money from Patreon and what comes from here goes into my everyday life (bills, food, etc.) and a bit of savings to slowly upgrade my hardware and help speed things up a little.
When I started this, I had a crappy computer with a video card that wasn’t even made for this kind of work, a GTX 1050 with 2 gigs. Now I’ve got a much better main PC than the old one (it died, passed away, and had to be completely replaced about 8 months ago), with way more RAM, a better processor, and an RTX 3060 with 12 gigs. I also have a small secondary Mini PC that I use sometimes for coding while the main one is rendering. All of this is thanks to the supporters, like you. Every bit helps.
💖💖💖