Alright so, I just posted about this on Patreon but I assume not everyone who follows the game checks Patreon and to the blog side of things there's some slight differences to what I've got to share. So, basically, I'm stopping work on Shield High. It's been causing some tension in my relationship for a while, and it really came to a head these past few days. Obviously, confronted with the choice between the game, and getting married, I've decided getting married is a little more important, and so work on Shield High has to come to an end.
I'll be keeping the Patreon up, but it'll be switched to a per-update basis after this month. I'm not expecting anyone to pledge, I just don't want to go through the effort of setting it up again if I ever do return to working on the game. The free release of the final Patreon version will be on the 7th, as usual, and then I might put out the current state of the game a few days after that. I'll only take a minute of work to put it into a not-broken state.
I'm really sorry to have to do this, but that's how things go.
Pudding Earl
EDIT: I 100% realize the irony of this happening after advertising this like, two days ago. To those of you who have come from that, I apologize.
Well, I do hope your marriage goes well. It's definitely more important than making a game.
ReplyDeleteThis might be a little selfish to say, but I somewhat hope that you might be able to convince your spouse that you're generating income from making games like this so it's not like it's a terrible thing. But I bet you already tried, so it's not like we're gonna riot.
Like I said, have a happy one and I do hope that some time down the road you can find a way to continue, but don't let it become between you and your own happiness.
It's been an on-going fight, and sadly "I'm making almost $50 a month doing this." Isn't a very compelling argument. To put some numbers into perspective, with the amount I work on it in my current situation, that was between $1 and $1.50 per hour of work in a month. Not exactly a good income there.
DeleteI was actually a few days out from making a post about Patreon and putting numbers into context for people, because I realize that it's very easy to see a small Patreon and think "Well, my little bit of money isn't going to help." and so not donate. I do it quite often myself. But since it's come up, I may as well throw it in here.
So, my downloads fluctuate pretty dramatically month to month, however from the downloads I get, I can guess I have a core fanbase who checks in for each update of about 200 people. If about half of the people from that core 200 were $5 Patrons, that'd be $500, or about the same as I'd earn in America from working part time, so I might be able to swing it with that. If everyone was to become a $5 Patron, then I'd be earning $1000, or a full time minimum wage job, so...I'm pretty sure I could start work again if we got there.
Obviously this is all a hypothetical, since I'm not going to make any claims that might seem as though I'm holding the game hostage unless people start paying. Though...in some ways the nature of economics is that's kind of the case, if people make something profitable to produce, it'll probably start getting produced.
Thanks for the well wishes all the same, I'm trying to find something else to work on for the time being, though it's been a bit difficult to find something that sticks.
Hey, just wanted to say good luck with the whole marriage thing :).
ReplyDeleteIf you do fire up another project, may I suggest focusing on functionality. For games that update monthly, people seeing the new content is a thing. But if the game isn't stable, or doesn't have a working save function, seeing that content is a labour that gets worse over time.
Especially if the development is fleshing out one path to the end of the game, as opposed to working 'fat' and doing many paths at the start (but short). The longer the path, the longer it takes to start from scratch (no save) to see the new content.
Anyway, good luck.
Cheers