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Black Fox4 days ago(+2)

I get that completely, and I honestly agree with you.

A lot of the projects people find most interesting are usually the more ambitious ones, but that’s also exactly where things can go wrong. Bigger storylines, more mechanics, more branching, more depth — it all sounds great, until the scope starts fighting back and the dev realises they may have built something too big to handle.

I feel that myself with my own project. I’ve got loads of ideas, but I do have to stop and ask whether they actually fit the game, whether they make sense to anyone else, or whether it’s just me getting carried away because I’m too deep in it. That can be a real danger, even with “just” a visual novel, but even there, story structure, routes, variables, mechanics, UI, art, all of it adds up fast.

And yeah, when people are supporting through Patreon or similar, I completely understand why that frustration gets even stronger. It’s one thing to lose interest in a project as a reader or player, but if you’ve actually backed it and believed in it, only for it to stall out, that’s a different level of disappointment.

And like you said, the really annoying part is that it’s often the more unique, riskier, more interesting projects that fall away, while safer or more generic ones are the ones that manage to survive.

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Andy (Tiggs) K4 days ago(+2)

Further complicated by people like myself who Do Not Like safe & generic. 

It's like every time I find a game or story that feels like it was written with my narrative or gameplay preferences in mind , there's a high chance it'll get dropped or changed. 

On top of that, what really doesn't help is that I'm old enough to have seen way too many projects fail because the creators or decision makers ignore what works in favour of what the audience does not want. 

"Oh, it's just the haters. I'm sure we'll succeed anyway." They rarely do. 

And it's always things with great potential and that deserve better than their eventual fates. Seen it too many times.

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Black Fox4 days ago(+2)

Yeah, and you’re 100% right to be cynical about that.

After seeing it happen often enough, it stops feeling like bad luck and starts feeling like a pattern. A lot of creators get so locked into their own vision that they stop paying attention to the people who were actually connecting with it in the first place. Then when people push back, it gets written off as negativity, “haters,” or people not understanding the direction. Most of the time, that ends exactly how you’d expect.

Potential on its own means nothing if the people behind it stop listening, overreach, or drift away from what made the thing interesting in the first place.

And being in my mid-to-late 40s myself, I get that mindset more than a lot of younger devs probably do. Once you’ve been around long enough, you stop getting dazzled by big promises and shiny ideas on their own. You start looking at consistency, follow-through, and whether someone actually understands why people connected with the project to begin with. Age gives you less patience for nonsense, but it also gives you a better eye for what usually goes wrong.

I think that’s also why so many more generic projects survive. They play it safe, stay easier to manage, and avoid taking too many risks. But the trade-off is that they also don’t leave much of an impression. The more unique projects hit harder because they actually try to do something memorable — but that also means they need a steadier hand behind them.

That’s why I think people who stick around, comment, point things out, and react honestly matter more than some devs realise. Not every suggestion should be followed blindly, obviously, but shutting that out completely is usually how good ideas end up disappearing up their own arse.

For me, I’d rather build something that keeps its identity while still staying grounded in what actually resonates with people. That gives a project a far better chance than vanishing into “trust me, I know better” mode and hoping for the best.

So yeah, I fully get why you feel like that. When you’ve seen enough promising stuff mishandled, dropped, or turned into something safer and duller, it’s hard not to expect the worst. And honestly, after enough years watching the same pattern repeat, that kind of skepticism isn’t negativity — it’s experience.

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