Poll related musings

Thank you to everyone who took the time to respond to my poll.

So, the poll is pretty lopsided, and it seems unlikely the last few days of polling will change that -- it's been pretty stable for a while. In a way is nice as it gives me a clear notion of how to proceed. If I screen the results for Patron-only, it tightens a little bit -- but not a lot. Damsels is still the clear preference.

First, I'll be focusing the majority of my efforts on Damsels. The game is popular, people like playing around with it, and the amount of material that can be added to it is theoretically pretty endless, since it's a very open-ended game. I have a bunch of ideas for it, including the addition of new characters that can join your roster, but which can only be recruited as a result of game play. I think Damsels fans will be happy with the new content.

Strange Gift is probably going to stay in its current state, more or less, for a while. I don't think just creating the renders that I had intended will have that much of an impact on the how people like the game, even though it would certainly make it look more polished, so I'll focus my efforts elsewhere. In its current state, I think it's a challenging game to win, from what patrons have told me, and so it serves that purpose for people who like challenges; more renders aren't going to improve the thing it succeeds at, and doing them for a game people aren't enthused about would be a soul-sucking slog.

Many people would like a more story oriented game, with the whole focus on scripted, rather than procedurally generated characters. I suspect that's particularly true of the people I'm not reaching with Damsels. I hear you. I'm in a better mindset to make that kind of game than I was when I started Strange Gift, and I'll be thinking about how best to make that kind of game right. I've started collecting ideas. I think I'll be able to reuse many of the graphical assets from SG -- some of the locations, and some of the models. It is likely to be similar to Bondage Island in theme -- that is, a contemporary, BDSM oriented game in which you try to convince women to be in D/s relationships with you, with no supernatural elements.  I'll build it differently, scripting one girl from start to finish at a time (probably two girls for the first release, as I did with Bondage Island) and release it only when I feel like I can give you a sense of story -- an ability to play both story lines to completion.

One person remarked that Strange Gift was released too soon. The purpose of my release schedules has been to release often in the hopes of getting feedback early, so that I could be responsive to that feedback. I don't know that this has been entirely effective. I've gotten some amazing ideas from people. I've gotten bug reports. I've even gotten bits of code now and then. But I often don't get a lot of feedback, and when I don't, I would often be better off not releasing so early or so often. I'm realizing that the Agile model on which I based my release patterns is built on the idea of a customer who needs the product to perform some particular tasks, and may not be as well suited to the entertainment business that I'm in.

So -- short form -- There will be a Damsels release in February, and one per month for a while. At some point, you'll see a new game from me, that will probably be more like Bondage Island than my other games, but with render quality closer to the best from Strange Gift.