Balance

The comments section of this post featured an interesting talk started by Vysirez.

This all seems massively complex considering there is currently not a whole lot of story/gameplay to the game. I'm still following the patreon cause it's only a dollar a month, but it's been a rather long time since the demo came out and the character creator is nice, and the backstory system is well developed, it's been a year or two and the game hasn't progressed past the endpoint that was in the original demo. 

William Urquhart and Jumpy James Johnson Junior replied to the effect that working on the foundation will improve everything upon which it's built.

I found this talk fascinating because I agree with both points of view.  I feel like there's a constant tension between getting things right and getting things released.

My personal inclination is normally to take the time and get things right.  For example: the sex scenes in the game right now are boring, and I want to fix the way they work before we hit you with a lot more of them in Bangkok.  But I also know I need to speed up the release schedule.  It's hard to nail the balance sometimes.

I feel like one of the things I'm bad at is identifying and ruthlessly cutting non-critical tasks.  Tommygun is especially helpful with this, since he passionately argues against adding tasks that will delay the next release.  I've come to see him as a champion for the fans who want more story instead of more game mechanics.

I'm going to try to get better at this.  And I've booked a call with an actual World Famous Game Designer – somebody who's worked at a senior level on some of the biggest games in the world – to get some advice on managing the project better.  I'm truly committed to making this a great game, guys, and I know that I need to improve in order to deliver that.

Okay, that's all I wanted to say!  Next dev day is tomorrow, when I'll be working on the improved Sex Engine rules.  See you at the end of the day!