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I can assure you that Togashi is still charging for his napkin doodles and rants about breakfast cereals. If you're one of those people who's still being strung along by a story you once liked that has lost any possibility of finishing or having any sort of satisfying progress, even, then you might have some sympathy for those in the same situation - or even for a different artist who doesn't want to admit that their baby is dead and their paltry efforts to keep it alive aren't going to amount to anything.
They're not the first and won't be the last to end up in that situation. It's a sad state for all involved and any goodwill you feel toward Togashi is a self-delusion; i.e. the one you still like can't be a grifter, he puts out something every once in a while! At their core these are always artist/audience relationships that take on battered housewife notes.
- Mar 16, 2021
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My dude, you're talking to someone who was a $25 patron for 4 years. For 3 of them he was taking $50 a month. I honestly don't remember receiving any of the supposed perks I was entitled to. I think 2 or 3 votes in all that time, and that was it. I'm not saying Togashi isn't a POS, but there's a major difference between the way he treats HunterxHunter and Bane treats Blackgate. For starters, Togashi isn't just silently reaching into your wallet and taking double what you agreed to give him for absolutely nothing in return. If you're familiar with these kinds of grifts, you should know the danger of giving those kinds of creators your money, time and attention.
I'll admit, I don't know much about Togashi and HunterxHunter, but from what I can tell, he hasn't gone out of his way to make it impossible to communicate/interact with him in any way, while silently stealing from what audience he has left.
Blackgate isn't a case of a creator not wanting to admit their passion project is dead. Blackgate is a case of Bane not wanting to admit that he's just stealing people's money. If it was just him not wanting to admit his baby is dead, why would he have gone out of his way to hide and not speak about the state of the game despite hundreds of people, who were actively funding the game I might add, asking him what the hell was going on. It's why the updates are so minimal, and the change logs so vague. Legally speaking, you are paying for an update, and you received an update. For Togashi to do the same thing would be for him to sell you a new volume of HunterxHunter, but it's literally jut a reprint of the previous volume, but he made a note on one or two of the pages, and kinda tweaked one or two of the panels. And he then charged you twice for that 'new' volume.
Part of it is that people who fund on patreon often don't understand that they're not buying a product, they're patronizing someone to do their thing. That comes with no guarantees that it'll ever finish, and given the track record of western erogames it's more likely than not that it never will going in. Unless they specifically commissioned a product then there's no recourse, legal or ethical, to hold them accountable. As much as that sounds like a grift it is the price of admission when you're giving money to support an artist.
Then there's the format. If Miura or Togashi were forced to turn in -something- every month or so to keep their contracts then we'd likely have seen the exact same thing: little nothing updates that exist just to say that they did in fact do something. It's not so much a difference in goodwill as a difference in how they're getting paid and the generosity of their contracts.
It's not unfair to say what patrons remain are getting taken for a ride, but a lot of it sounds like people who're frustrated and want to turn on the artist. That battered housewife syndrome goes both ways. The writing's on the wall, projects that have hit this stumbling block where their artist has some desire to finish but lacks something to see it through hardly ever get back on track, but all this withdrawn behavior sounds like caution against the sort of fan who wants to crucify him as much as anything. If he's being upfront about his pay scheme then no one's strictly getting tricked here. There are always plenty of fans in these situations who want to believe even if it's delusional past a certain point. I'm not saying it's not scummy, but the story sounds pretty familiar.
Then there's the format. If Miura or Togashi were forced to turn in -something- every month or so to keep their contracts then we'd likely have seen the exact same thing: little nothing updates that exist just to say that they did in fact do something. It's not so much a difference in goodwill as a difference in how they're getting paid and the generosity of their contracts.
It's not unfair to say what patrons remain are getting taken for a ride, but a lot of it sounds like people who're frustrated and want to turn on the artist. That battered housewife syndrome goes both ways. The writing's on the wall, projects that have hit this stumbling block where their artist has some desire to finish but lacks something to see it through hardly ever get back on track, but all this withdrawn behavior sounds like caution against the sort of fan who wants to crucify him as much as anything. If he's being upfront about his pay scheme then no one's strictly getting tricked here. There are always plenty of fans in these situations who want to believe even if it's delusional past a certain point. I'm not saying it's not scummy, but the story sounds pretty familiar.
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Genuine question, but I just saw that Bane makes two builds on the exact same day every month. This means that Patreons are charged double. How are people allowing themselves to be taken advantage of like this?
- Jan 29, 2019
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Simple, exactly the same as why people get Scammed:
- They are desperate (to see this game become true) - which makes them highly vulnerable
- or They don't care (about the money they are parted)
- or They are just that stupid to realise it's a Fraud
- you can see many live examples of "white knights" still defending the dev, with Obfuscated Arguments that purposely avoid addressing any Real Problem
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Most of his patrons didn't allow it, and it's one of the reasons why he started hemorrhaging followers/patrons. If I remember right, he didn't originally start double charging on the same day, there was some time between updates to "justify" it not being rolled into a single update. Now there's maybe a handful of hours between updates.
His remaining patrons are:
a) people who forgot they pledged
b) people who don't care
c) people sticking to the project because sunk cost fallacy
d) new people who aren't aware of the bullshit
e) simps who put more time and effort into praising Bane and his project than he puts into actually making the game
I was in camp C until I realised that some of the 'updates' were just removing content that was edited back in a few months later.
- Sep 8, 2019
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Yeah, that's about how I remember it. The updates were generally a couple weeks apart, with each of them having a reasonable amount of content. As he stopped working on the game the updates got closer and closer together until he just started dropping them on the same day.
It used to be an update round about once every 2-3 weeks. The September 1st updates (0.188 and 0.189) were released at 4am and 5am. Bane is barely waiting a full hour between posts at this point.
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That's my favorite part about this clusterfuck. Even after Bane started doing that people still aggressively defended him. It's kind of bizarre.
It makes me wonder if any of those people legitimately believed that Bane could put out a meaningful update in an hour (or even a day), or if they were non-donors who wanted to simp for a scammer.
- Jan 29, 2019
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I mean, those defenders are actively avoiding to talk about the double dip (Or any indicators of what a scam it is).
It's just Copium + ignore reality
.TBH, I'm curious if there really are "simps" that still donates money, or it's just keyboard warriors.
If I "invest" money into a project (and still care about it), I'd want to see the outcome / or try to push in that direction;
Not arguing with randos on internet whether the project is a scam.
It's not about the update being meaningful. The fact that there is an update means it's theoretically closer to release. 2 updates means double the progress, which means faster release. That's as far as any acknowledgement goes.
There were a lot of people who were not patrons that loved yelling at patrons whenever we'd question Bane in any way. I remember a lot of people yelling at me about how I just wasn't appreciative enough of Bane's masterpiece, how I wasn't a true supporter and just wanted to see Blackgate and Bane fail, or how I was an idiot for not understanding that game development takes time and money.
It always made me wonder, if Blackgate was this timeless masterpiece in the making that only they truly believed in, then why weren't they the ones giving Bane money? Especially once his higher tier patrons dropped out. You'd get to support Bane in a more tangible way than yelling at his patrons for not quietly giving him more money.
Seeing as how little interaction anything Blackgate related gets, I don't think there's anyone bothering to defend it anymore. Not really. Most of the people who defended him either got bored and went somewhere else, or they realized that everyone else is right, and they just quietly left.
Bane got hundreds of dollars out of me when there was still some naive hope that there might one day be a finished game. After years of being ignored and the occasional cryptic tweet about "square breathing" and changelogs about how much strain his non-effort is putting on him, I clicked that it was just copium.
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Yeah, that's a good point (though I'd still think the dates were a bit suspect, unless I just didn't pay much attention to my e-mails). I know some people (myself included) will occasionally check in on a project every few updates, and in situations like that it probably would seem like Blackgate is still moving ahead.
Oh yeah, I remember that well. One of their biggest arguments was that criticism would "discourage Bane from finishing the game," or the infamous, "you don't understand how hard coding is!"
Bane eventually ended up turning off non-patron comments, which is when engagement fell into a chasm.
I'm a former patron and also ended up donating longer than I should have. I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt at first since creative writing can be tough for certain personalities (especially with heavier themes, as are often found in Blackgate), but the last straw for me was when he released a "paid for by patrons" update and didn't actually publish an update.
It's hard to blame people for donating. Blackgate has an intriguing universe with some pretty solid characters. While Bane's writing style is a bit inconsistent (I distinctly recall awkward lines like "Rotis is fine so it's fine" being littered throughout), he was also capable of some pretty solid prose.
It really sucks that it ended this way.
- Jan 29, 2019
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Lol, anyone "blaming people for donating" needs to get their sanity checked.Yeah, that's a good point (though I'd still think the dates were a bit suspect, unless I just didn't pay much attention to my e-mails). I know some people (myself included) will occasionally check in on a project every few updates, and in situations like that it probably would seem like Blackgate is still moving ahead.
Oh yeah, I remember that well. One of their biggest arguments was that criticism would "discourage Bane from finishing the game," or the infamous, "you don't understand how hard coding is!"
Bane eventually ended up turning off non-patron comments, which is when engagement fell into a chasm.
I'm a former patron and also ended up donating longer than I should have. I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt at first since creative writing can be tough for certain personalities (especially with heavier themes, as are often found in Blackgate), but the last straw for me was when he released a "paid for by patrons" update and didn't actually publish an update.
It's hard to blame people for donating. Blackgate has an intriguing universe with some pretty solid characters. While Bane's writing style is a bit inconsistent (I distinctly recall awkward lines like "Rotis is fine so it's fine" being littered throughout), he was also capable of some pretty solid prose.
It really sucks that it ended this way.
Creating game / writing / coding is hard, and people struggle often, that's all understandable.
And it's totally reasonable if someone still want to financially support even they might not get return.
What's crossing the line is Bane Actively tries to extort more from his supporters, meanwhile not only stopped offering returns, but deliberately deceive.
That's where it became a scam.
You don't do business with shaddy people, unless you are doing shaddy business.
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That's the only way people interact with Blackgate, if they still do. Check in once a year and see if any of the routes you are interested have more content.
It was funny because your criticism will discourage him from finishing the vn that he had already virtually stopped working on. The coding complain was also so stupid to me because, yes, coding is difficult, but in theory, anyone can learn to do it. Anyone with an internet connection could follow a few Ren'py tutorials and know enough to pop out their own vn in a month or two.
I mean, I had to learn some coding as a part of my college courses, and yeah, I am really shit at it, but theoretically speaking, I could put together a vn if I wanted. Not a very competent one, but a functional game either way. It is difficult, yes, but it is far from impossible. The surge of vns post-Blackgate is proof enough of that.
I am 99% certain that the reason he turned non-patron comments off was because of the guy who went to the effort of listing the EXACT changes each patch had. Literally compared each version, word for word, and listed every change. Made it shockingly obvious how little Bane was doing. Didn't stop people from yelling at him about hurting Bane's feelings...
I know it might sound harsh, but I fully believe that if writing anything with heavier/darker themes is very mentally taxing for you as a creator, you're an idiot if you start a large and ambitious project that revolves around the very same things you struggle to write. If its something you as a creator wish to explore, by all means, do so. But stick to something small scale, a short story or two, a few pieces of art, not a large scale game with branching paths and a dozen characters.I'm a former patron and also ended up donating longer than I should have. I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt at first since creative writing can be tough for certain personalities (especially with heavier themes, as are often found in Blackgate), but the last straw for me was when he released a "paid for by patrons" update and didn't actually publish an update.
My personal favorite updates were the updates where patrons paid to have all the art replaced with pictures of beans, and absolutely nothing else was added. Because beans are so random and so funny and such a great joke to charge all your patrons for.
I think the worst part is, removing Bane from the equation, Blackgate has everything to be a really great vn. A diverse cast of solid characters, an intriguing setup and universe, some fantastic art from Darkgem and some well written parts of the story. All of that is what is keeping a handful of people interested in the game, even though it's spent far more time as a scam than an actually developing project. If Bane hadn't pissed off nearly the entire community built around the game, and the people who worked with him on the game, it could have potentially been seen as the golden standard for furry vns. Instead it's just become a cautionary tale of what not to do as a creator, and what to look out for as a fan.
Yeah, it really does suck
Never blame the victims of a scam, always blame the scammer.
To be fair to Bane, he did briefly drop it to only charging once a month, I think during the peak of Covid in 2020. I don't know for how long, but at least he was slightly less awful for a very brief period of time. It did take a global pandemic to get there, but it's nice to know that if something major like that happens again, he might take less from the people still supporting him.
Maybe if world war 3 breaks out we might see a proper update for the first time in half a decade.
- Sep 8, 2019
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Hey man, this is the Internet. People are stupid around these parts.
The reason I specifically brought up the "coding is hard!!1" line is because there really isn't much coding in Ren'Py. You technically can make some reasonably complex stuff in it (combat systems, RPG mechanics, etc) but for simple VNs it pretty much reads like a movie script or play.
Exactly.
I dunno. Considering he has a habit of removing stuff, only to add it back in later, even that's debatable.
See above. Ren'Py does a lot to allow writers to just write. The only coding most simple VN authors will have to deal with are setting variables, jumps, and basic logic. Nothing too wild, really.
It's not quite as simple as something like Twine, and it's not quite as visual, but it's not awful.
cascatass was a goddamned hero.
And yeah, I have zero doubt that was the reason. It's one thing to see a lame one-line changelog about a character that you may or may not give a damn about, but it's something else when someone actually goes through and quantifies it.
The wild part is that Blackgate was set up perfectly to avoid that sort of mental fatigue. Write a heavy chapter for one character, then switch to something a bit lighter with another character.
Dear god, I remember seeing that. Wasn't it an April Fools update or something? LOL RANDOM.
A proper dev would have slipped something like that into a random update and had it automatically trigger if the date was April 1. You know, a fun little side gag delivered along additional content rather than being its own bespoke thing.
Couldn't have said it better myself. That's precisely why the abject failure of this project stings so badly, and why so many people were quick to defend it.
Maybe Bane simply ran out of ideas or tired of the concept. Of course, if he were truly sick of developing it all he had to do was communicate and/or pass the project onto someone else. Then again, I suppose he did communicate what sort of person he is (albeit in a roundabout way) by handling this the way he did. If anyone takes a proper investigative dive into this and still finds themselves on Bane's side, they're truly a fool.
On a random (and sad) note, I'm pretty sure that in the past couple days you, nackedsnake, and I collectively wrote more about Blackgate than Bane did in the past three years.
He calls them "rewrites". So a character might see their first update in a year or more be "rewrites" to an earlier night. Sometimes that meant that some words were swapped out for synonyms, sometimes that meant entire routes broke and became completely unplayable.
I assumed it would be a case like RPGM, where it's a purpose-built tool kit, so you could make something pretty basic right out of the box. But with some coding know-how, you could make something much more complex. I mean, Lustful Desires is also built in Ren'Py and it is definitely far more complex than Blackgate in terms of gameplay systems.
Cascatass really did a lot for making people realize just how bad things had gotten with the updates. I remember one of the major things he kept pointing out was that the "rewrites" completely broke Eterni's route, and Bane was content to just leave it unplayable for more than a year. Must have really sucked to be paying Bane at least $100 per update and your character's route isn't even playable anymore...
I've said it before but Bane is clever with hiding what he does. Cascatass almost definitely was the catalyst for the comments being locked off, but he didn't just turn them off immediately. He waited until Cascatass hadn't commented on a couple posts, then turned it off. So that it didn't look like it was a deliberate action to silence criticism. It's very transparent to anyone actually paying any attention, but that's not who he's aiming to take money from.
I think Bane fell into the trap of trying to make everything heavy. A route like Alin, at first glance, looks like it'll just be focused on the town drunk and how much he wants dick. Seems light hearted and humorous. Last thing I remember it ended up with him having a dead husband who was somehow linked to Gruff and his father and why they hated each other.
I think he was too focused on everything being connected to absolutely everything else, and everything needs to be really dark to fit the horror theme. The strain that that could put on an author could, understandably, lead to them needing to take a break, put a project on hiatus for a bit. A better person would have said as much, paused the patreon, and maybe worked on a different project.
It was... An April Fools joke that removed all the interesting visuals. And it stayed like that until the next update. I think it lasted for 3 weeks or something like that. So unless you thought it was a REALLY funny joke, or just didn't care about the visuals, you didn't really have a reason to touch the game until the next update.Dear god, I remember seeing that. Wasn't it an April Fools update or something? LOL RANDOM.
He did infrequently make vague, cryptic posts on twitter. It basically amounts to, even though the project is completely dead, he's going to keep doing what he's doing. Even if people don't like what he's doing, he's going to do it anyway. So all we know for certain is that, as long as there is someone he can take money from for Blackgate, he will not stop. How burnt out or disinterested he may feel doesn't matter, because it won't make him stop.
I think, once the last patron has left, he'll just quietly step back, and eventually come back under a new name with a new project to try and do it all again.
It's unfortunate that even the people who have lost faith/interest in the project put more effort into it than Bane. On the bright side, actually discussing it with people instead of just quietly simmering every time it's brought up has made it easier to accept that it's dead. Like a bittersweet farewell or something. At least, for me anyway
- Sep 8, 2019
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Ah, I'd mostly checked out by the time that mess started, as by that point he would regularly write changelogs like "+ Alin Night 8", and—surprise!—there wouldn't be a night 8.
After that point I independently verified Cascatass's findings a couple times, then stuck around in the comments (before they were set to patron-only) to occasionally back him up and/or post my own thoughts.
Yep, exactly! Ren'Py is built around the Python language, so there's a lot of power under the hood if the author chooses to exploit it.
At its most basic, you can write scenes by simply doing something like this:
Code:
init:
image background = Image("background.png")
image jack happy = Image("jack_happy.png")
image jack neutral = Image("jack_neutral.png")
image jill happy = Image("jill_happy.png")
image jill neutral = Image("jill_neutral.png")
$ jack = Character("Jack", color=(192, 192, 255, 255))
$ jill = Character("Jill", color=(255, 160, 192, 255))
label start:
scene background with fade
show jack neutral with dissolve
jack "hey gurl"
show jill neutral with dissolve
jill "Hey, Jack."
show jack neutral with dissolve
jack "wana fuk lol?"
show jill neutral with dissolve
jill "Hmm..."
show jill happy
jill "Yeah!"
show jack happy with dissolve
jack "aw yis"From what I remember, Crome was one of the first people to openly speak out against the project. Apparently Bane ghosted him pretty early on.
I know there have been a couple of people that signed up to the $50/$100 tiers after the original people in those tiers understandably bowed out. That had to have been a pretty nasty wake-up call for them.
Honestly, I think it was the exact opposite. I believe that Bane simply ignored the comments until he realized exactly what was being said. I went through the project page, and Bane actively responded to positive/neutral comments on future posts immediately after disabling non-patron comments, only for that to eventually taper off and stop entirely.
I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't even realize that non-patron comments were enabled.
Ah, that's…nice. :| I can't even fathom behaving like that. If I were in Bane's position I'd feel like a complete piece of shit.
In a way this is almost like a wake, except we're airing out dirty laundry rather than celebrating what it was.
Honestly, though, there's a certain comfort in knowing that other people feel the same way about something that you do. I think it's safe to say that a lot of the people here who are actively discussing this matter only feel so strongly about this because of how good the game is.
I'm not sure if you follow Lilith's Throne at all, but the same sentiment exists among fans of that game, too. The reason people are so irritated about that game's glacial development (though at least it's making more forward progress than Blackgate!) is because it's such a unique game with an interesting premise.