Why is there not enough closed testing?

[pussyreaperxxx]

I've been on this forum for close to a couple of years now(albeit not very active). Having played hundreds of games/VNs, I found it quite peculiar that less than half the games uploaded here have actually been completed.
I don't think there is a way to know how many of those games were already in a complete state when they were uploaded here but it would be quite an interesting stat.

Before discovering this site, I had no idea that games this early in development were even mass shared like this, but porn games quite a niche genre in gaming so it's not shocking that most devs are fine with getting the attention, even if it cuts their salary a bit. What I find disheartening is that a lot of devs that are actively involved in the community abandon projects purely based on reception of very early versions and this doesn't happen only to bad/half-assed projects.

Now, there is no way to confirm this but a lot of the lack of interest, in my opinion, comes from the fact that a lot of the people don't actually bother downloading 0.1 or 0.2 or even 0.3 versions of games, and rightfully so, a majority of games barely have any "content" in these early updates. And even the people that do play them sometimes give bad reviews which perpetually ruins the reputation of the game, even if those things are easily fixable/can be changed early.

Which bring me to the main topic, why do more devs not just do closed testing for a select number of people for very early versions like most "mainstream" game devs do? ( I know some porn devs do)
You could then then release a more polished first update to kick things off. I have always felt that the first update of a game should be the biggest as it has to show off a bit of everything the game has to offer, unless it is an episodic series, and even in that case technically all updates, including the first have to have a lot of content.

My assumption is that a lot of people don't find any difference between closed testing and it being shared to a forum that not many people will access anyways, but I think a majority of people interested in porn games will either magically find them messing around somewhere or will find them on forums/subreddits that are related to porn games only, the latter being way more likely. Which means a lot of the core audience of these games is the people who are trying these early versions on sites like F95.

Firstly, you are losing a large chunk of people from your version being "0.1", then the people that do try the game and find less content leave the comment "will try it again in 8 months or so". From some of the threads I have read, a lot of people don't even like devs setting up Patreon before having the demand for it... and so on, feels like it does way more harm than good.

I would really like to know the rationale of devs releasing very early demos that barely show anything other than the rough premise and character models because I may be wrong here, it feels like it would be better to just have a few people try these early concepts as closed beta/alpha testers, maybe discuss them/have polls and then release the first version with a good amount of content if you're not sure about it.

And of course, this doesn't apply to a lot of devs that have been successful and made their name within community, as they know this already, but they're a minority.

There have been some threads in the past that talk about making a separate category for 0.1s so that people can be more constructive towards them and suggest improvements/ give direction and I don't necessarily agree with that idea but I do feel like the a lot of devs right now are somehow pressured by this invisible force to not put too much content in the first update, when it should be the opposite. Hope this trend changes.

 

[Avaron1974]

The first mistake people make is calling them devs. Sure they are "developing" a game so technically that's what you could call them but these are people in their spare time throwing something together either out of passion or a desire to make money.

Most of them have no training nor any work experience in games development.

Shit, i'm learning to make them and my main job is a chef. I know nothing about games development outside of the Ren'py and Daz tutrials i'm currently watching. Even when I start work on it I won't be a dev, i'll be a chef making a game as a hobby.

That's also the reason for the lack of intensive testing, it's usually 1 guy or gal sat at their PC or if they really suck at life, Mac.

I can test the game i'll be making until the cows shit gold and make all of us rich but I have an incredibly high end rig testing a game made on that rig with no clue whatseoever if it will run on peasant Pete's potato.

Same for Android. I could run it through an Android emulator but I couldn't extensively test it for bugs.

As for amount of content, again they aren't developers. Depending on rig power it can anywhere from minutes to hours to render a scene so that 0.1 with hardly any content could have taken someone several weeks to put together because they are truing to push renders through a barely operational Commodore 64.

It's also what makes me laugh about people demanding animations in everything. Not all devs have the horsepower and animations take .. fucking .. hours to put together whoch means those updates are going to take so much longer. Plus not all devs have the know how so you get those stop frame animations that look terrible and ruin scenes. Take Dreams of Desire, people rave about that game yet i've had to force myself to play it because every single sex scene is complete and utter shit. It's that janky stop frame nasty crap that makes it impossible to get wet over due to motion sickness.

Very few davs here are professional, even some of the big name devs have full time jobs on top of this. Philly is one of the more popular devs who does great work and goes out of his way to help any new dev that asks him for advice yet he works full time. Most also have families.

Expecting extensive testing, hours worth of content as well as gorgeous renders and bestseller writing from someone who only has a couple of hours a day .... if that .... to work on it is maybe expecting a bit too much.

On top of everything else not everyone that tries developing a game is cut out for the public commentary that comes along with that. You put your work out there and some people are going to shit on it from a great height. Some devs just can't take criticism.

I've seen devs calling people with legit complaints out for trolling which i beyond a joke. Sure there are trolls but someone voicing their criticisms is not trolling their work.

I can only speak for myself but i've got a thick skin. I have to have. I'm a 4ft 8 ginger lesbian with a small chest and oddly proportioned arse (bigger than it should be for rest of body, it looks odd) that burns if the sun so much as peeks out from behind a cloud with a twin sister that has blonde hair, big tits and gorgeous to boot. I had the piss taken out of me for years until I got my timing down to banter back now I love it. That said i've never much cared what people said about me but I know some devs are more sensitive.

That isn't a bad thing, not everyone is cut out for bants and I wouldn't wish a lifetime of mockery on anyone regardless of how much I enjoy a bit of verbal sparing some people are a lot nicer and don't deserve harsh treatment. I've seen one too many bad reviews break a dev to tears and have them walk away. I've seen far too many bad comments bring devs down with depression.

Point i've taken far too long to make, so TL;DR, these are amateurs playing at dev, a lot of them are going to get things wrong. It just comes with the territory.

That was a lot of typing.

Sorry if you read all that, I can't give you those minutes of your life back.

 

[Mimir's Lab]

I think as a small and unknown dev, it's scary to put your trust in strangers who have the ability to take your hard work and steal it, especially with how easy it is to decompile source code from renpy. Imagine preparing a release for several months then having a closed test session where a douchebag steals your content and rebrands it and releases it. Now you have to prove that you actually made the game yourself versus a guy who can make similar claims because he also has access to the source code. It's just added headache for potentially little gain. The alternative is to release what you think should be a decent first version and make corrections as critiques come along. Sure, first impressions are important but your end product is always subject to change; You don't have to keep a mistake you made.

As to why some 0.1's are so short, I think it's because devs get excited about their project (a little too excited) and release it prematurely. Other times, devs might misjudge how long their content is because it might take hundreds of hours of work to produce only a couple minutes of content.

 

[pussyreaperxxx]

The first mistake people make is calling them devs. Sure they are "developing" a game so technically that's what you could call them but these are people in their spare time throwing something together either out of passion or a desire to make money.

Most of them have no training nor any work experience in games development.
give you those minutes of your life back.

That's a fair point, I'm not much of a dev but I have written erotic stuff, most of which I never released anywhere and maybe if I put some effort into learning stuff, since I already know a bit of coding, I probably could just make a game out of it. I can relate to how one can create something out of pure passion without being a professional. So yeah, it could just be the lack of experience/time/resources. (btw yes, I did read it all)

I think as a small and unknown dev, it's scary to put your trust in strangers who have the ability to take your hard work and steal it, especially with how easy it is to decompile source code from renpy.

I'm pretty sure there are ways to avoid it like publicly declaring that you're asking of testers/ adding stuff within the tester's version that shows your ownership but yeah, maybe it is too much work for someone who is already not doing it full time.

 

[Volta]

I think there are a number or reasons people don't put their stuff through closed testing enough, one is that as a dev just starting out finding someone to help with your V0.1 isn't going to be that easy, the number of comments that go "oh nice 0.1, see you in six months" is pretty large and that's just the people who comment. Next is for larger devs, why would they invest time and effort into closed testing when they can get their high tier patrons to do it and make them feel privileged to get the raw jank a few days early, it never made sense to me on that front why you'd pay more to receive an inferior product early.

The last reason is one that i'm most familiar with, i'm the grammar/read-through monkey for Recreation's Bad Memories, i go through the RPY's and proofread and typo check, play the game through and make sure it all works in terms of grammar and English, it's a general sanity check i suppose. This check takes more time than you'd think, the more that needs editing the longer it takes, it can be a few days or a week or more, depending on the time i get and the size of the update, i'm a fairly diligent guy so i don't piss about with it but the dev would be putting themselves at the mercy of another mans timetable this would only get more frustrating with a group of testers, good organisation makes this a moot point, however most starting devs are nowhere near as organised as Recy, now fit this onto the per month model that so many devs have wanted to use and those extra few days waiting for the other guy just isn't feasible.

TL: DR
- no one really cares for an unknown's 0.1
- why do closed testing when you can do high tier patron beta testing and get people to pay for it?
- testing take time, coordination between tester and dev and could easily become like herding cats for even a modest testing group which screws with deadlines.

 

[I'm Not Thea Lundgren!]

1. Most new game devs are hobbyists that don't have any prior experience.
2. Most new game devs don't want their friends and family to know what it is they're doing.
3. Because of the first two points, there aren't a lot of avenues for new game devs to get their games tested before release, so most games are released first on sites like this so that the testing is done by the people who download the games.

 

[khumak]

As others have hinted at, I think the main reason is that most of the devs for these adult games are amateurs with little to no real training beyond what they've taught themselves and learned through tutorials and are doing it in their spare time alongside a "real job". Most people don't have the luxury of doing it full time because the pay cut would be too big.

I look at some of the patreon target levels for revenue where devs will write some notes about what they plan to do when they reach certain levels and I have to wonder where some of them live. Most of the target levels I see where a dev says they plan to quit their job and become a full time game dev, I look at that target and think damn, that wouldn't even cover my mortgage let alone food or anything else...

Most of these games are done by a solo dev on top of them having a full time job. So when they get a few versions into the game and find out it's harder than they thought it would be and they're only making $200 a month on Patreon they decide it's not worth it and abandon it. Or they release a new version without much testing beyond the few quick playthroughs that they did themself.

So while devs who live in a low cost of living area could definitely go full time and make it work, I think most people who live in the US or any similarly high cost of living area could not. Of course I'm looking at it from the perspective of having a fairly well established career in a high cost of living area. If we're talking someone just out of high school working at Burger King and living in a low cost of living rural area, then the trade off might make more sense. Of course someone with the skill set to be a dev is probably not working at Burger King...

I do think a lot of devs release their initial version too soon. There should be enough there to get a feel for how good the game might become IMO. For an adult game, that should include at least 1 sex scene as well so we can see that you can actually make a decent sex scene.

I know in my case if one of my games ever gets far enough along to start releasing to the public, I'll be looking at it as a part time hobby, not a full time job. For the area I live my game would have to be more successful than Being a DIK for me to be able to go full time and I don't see that happening any time soon, especially for my first game.