Apr 3, 2019
305
970
As long as he is raking in a 6 figure income, why would he change? Genuine question. The fact of the matter is if he had actually worked and released the game 3-4 years ago (which he easily could've done) he would've missed out on close to half a million dollars of Patreon money. And he knows this.

Whether or not he is doing it intentionally is irrelevant. What is relevant is the fact that he is making a very comfortable upper middle class income quite literally doing nothing but writing a report every month. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, why would he do anything to rock the boat? And yes, releasing new content is rocking the boat when people are happy to give you money for zero content.

Westerners hate paying for games, but they love supporting game devs. The same fan that happily supports Crush's 6 figure income with a 20-30 dollars a month Patreon subscription for years on end would've foamed at the mouth in anger if Crush had released the game finished all the way back in 2017 and asked for a 30 dollar pricetag upfront. It is to the benefit of all western indie devs to drag out the Patreon process for as long as possible to milk your audience, because you know that once the game actually releases sales will be minimal.

All these suggestions on what Crush should do is worthless because Crush is winning and winning hard right now. If he had worked hard at start he would've lost out immensely. From his perspective, why fix something that isn't broken? Why go down a path that would've ruined you if you had gone down it a few years ago?

Before any white knights come with a "very well thought of rebuttal":

Yes, Patreon shows 5k a month.

No, Crush does not get the whole 5k to spend in anything he wants

Yes, there are some fees as with any payment service

Yes, there are taxes (guess what, everyone has to pay taxes on income)

Yes there are other collaborators but anything about payment for those collaborators is pure speculation.
 
  • Like
Reactions: PitayaPear

IjjKpoe

Newbie
Oct 14, 2020
52
167
Before any white knights come with a "very well thought of rebuttal":

Yes, Patreon shows 5k a month.

No, Crush does not get the whole 5k to spend in anything he wants

Yes, there are some fees as with any payment service

Yes, there are taxes (guess what, everyone has to pay taxes on income)

Yes there are other collaborators but anything about payment for those collaborators is pure speculation.
The nice thing of Patreon is if you are on USA is that you can declare that money and not be subjected* to federal or statal taxes as they can be declared as donations and/or for working purposes.

*You still pay taxes but you can get a huge discount out of it.
 

orellion

Member
May 12, 2023
171
127
The nice thing of Patreon is if you are on USA is that you can declare that money and not be subjected* to federal or statal taxes as they can be declared as donations and/or for working purposes.

*You still pay taxes but you can get a huge discount out of it.
Not sure where you read that nonsense. Patreon creators are treated by the IRS as a self employed small business. They are subject to both regular income taxes (about 22-26%) and self employment taxes (15.3%) You can count Patreon fees, your PC, and some other items as a business expense which is one small plus.
 

lucasloki

New Member
Nov 16, 2018
13
34
Before any white knights come with a "very well thought of rebuttal":

Yes, Patreon shows 5k a month.

No, Crush does not get the whole 5k to spend in anything he wants

Yes, there are some fees as with any payment service

Yes, there are taxes (guess what, everyone has to pay taxes on income)

Yes there are other collaborators but anything about payment for those collaborators is pure speculation.
dont get me wrong... lets say he get 2k from it... 2k a month i pay my bills and with a lot of free time he might have, he could work on something else, making 2k a month extra be very welcome
 

Prawnstar69

Newbie
Oct 11, 2024
18
64
You forget: writing junk reports to look busy, I think that's most of the work time he spend
Well, credit where it's due, seems like he's showing up at least regularly for now... baby steps. In good faith, I'm going to assume he is really trying to finish this.

So where I see the crux of the issue is accountability, and would agree on the "junk" assessment of the reports. Surely he can do better: to make reports and changelogs TIME BOUND (E.g. Eva Kiss), or SPECIFIC + MEASUREABLE (E.g. DeepSleep).

Hope we can see something with a timeline (i.e. release will be DATE) or measurable (i.e. this week I wrote NUMBER words) rather than meaningless (e.g. I worked 1 scene in 3 ways, 40 hours per day 10 days this week, on code nobody can see) because in the end, we'll typically only get 1 playable scene per update, provided it not a reboot which actually subtracts content.

See you when next release drops!
 

BeccaBoo

Member
Apr 21, 2018
480
1,414
Latest update

Hey guys! It’s 8.26PM and my brain is mush. I wanted to finish the thing I was working on then report, but I am sticking to Monday transparency.

Last week I said I was waiting for feedback on that week’s “Test 3”, which had just dropped – this was more of a hit and everybody seemed to like it. (ENF is popular with more than just Javier R and Ashani it seems )

I ended last week’s report by saying I was going to try to streamline the design, which I felt wasn’t working in my test playthroughs (and was getting mixed feedback from testers). I did that, and have been working this week on:

Adding decision points that didn’t previously exist. These are crucial for making the game feel less like a slideshow and more like a game.

Based on tester feedback I rewrote an important NPC relationship, (basically to make him less of a dick, which was actually undermining the heroine’s likeability for being into such a douchebag).

Took out a sex scene that wasn’t really working, and replaced it with a totally new one.

Got partway through reintegrating a popular Lifepath scene I wanted to cut, but testers wanted me to keep; we’ll see.

Pushed this all out for testing and feedback.


I’m working flat out I need to crash now. Thanks everybody for the patience and support, I’ll get straight back on it in the morning.
 

IjjKpoe

Newbie
Oct 14, 2020
52
167
So he basically is taking out things that "dosn't work" for other things and call it progression.

I choose to believe but the motivational cookie phrase of "sometimes you need to step down to advance" is being taken too seriously.

Also thank you Chrush for making a character "less douchebag", how could our heroine could survive with such a douche character while being infiltrated inside a Prostitution Bar in Thai where all customer are known to be respectful. Thank you Crush! Our heroine mental health was at risk.
 
Apr 3, 2019
305
970
Latest update

Hey guys! It’s 8.26PM and my brain is mush. I wanted to finish the thing I was working on then report, but I am sticking to Monday transparency.

Last week I said I was waiting for feedback on that week’s “Test 3”, which had just dropped – this was more of a hit and everybody seemed to like it. (ENF is popular with more than just Javier R and Ashani it seems )

I ended last week’s report by saying I was going to try to streamline the design, which I felt wasn’t working in my test playthroughs (and was getting mixed feedback from testers). I did that, and have been working this week on:

Adding decision points that didn’t previously exist. These are crucial for making the game feel less like a slideshow and more like a game.

Based on tester feedback I rewrote an important NPC relationship, (basically to make him less of a dick, which was actually undermining the heroine’s likeability for being into such a douchebag).

Took out a sex scene that wasn’t really working, and replaced it with a totally new one.

Got partway through reintegrating a popular Lifepath scene I wanted to cut, but testers wanted me to keep; we’ll see.

Pushed this all out for testing and feedback.


I’m working flat out I need to crash now. Thanks everybody for the patience and support, I’ll get straight back on it in the morning.

I swear I've read this same report before, they always follow the same template.
 

PickerLewd

Engaged Member
Dec 22, 2022
2,259
2,515
Also thank you Chrush for making a character "less douchebag", how could our heroine could survive with such a douche character while being infiltrated inside a Prostitution Bar in Thai where all customer are known to be respectful. Thank you Crush! Our heroine mental health was at risk.
I don't know anymore if the reports are from the events at the Thai bar or from past events. They have already driven me crazy with so much back and forth :ROFLMAO:.
 

philyb

Newbie
May 23, 2018
34
53
Latest update

Hey guys! It’s 8.26PM and my brain is mush. I wanted to finish the thing I was working on then report, but I am sticking to Monday transparency.

Last week I said I was waiting for feedback on that week’s “Test 3”, which had just dropped – this was more of a hit and everybody seemed to like it. (ENF is popular with more than just Javier R and Ashani it seems )

I ended last week’s report by saying I was going to try to streamline the design, which I felt wasn’t working in my test playthroughs (and was getting mixed feedback from testers). I did that, and have been working this week on:

Adding decision points that didn’t previously exist. These are crucial for making the game feel less like a slideshow and more like a game.

Based on tester feedback I rewrote an important NPC relationship, (basically to make him less of a dick, which was actually undermining the heroine’s likeability for being into such a douchebag).

Took out a sex scene that wasn’t really working, and replaced it with a totally new one.

Got partway through reintegrating a popular Lifepath scene I wanted to cut, but testers wanted me to keep; we’ll see.

Pushed this all out for testing and feedback.


I’m working flat out I need to crash now. Thanks everybody for the patience and support, I’ll get straight back on it in the morning.
I play this game every year or two and it feels like there is almost no progress - or if there is then a chunk of content was removed on top of it. How is he working flat out? It has essentially turned into a VN with barely an illusion of choice. I am confused.
 

IjjKpoe

Newbie
Oct 14, 2020
52
167
I don't know anymore if the reports are from the events at the Thai bar or from past events. They have already driven me crazy with so much back and forth :ROFLMAO:.
My honest take is that the events of the "transparency report" are still from the life path -introduction-.

So i guess i must correct my statement to; "Thank you crush for making a CIA/MI6/The AESEAN ones i don't remember agency less douchebag! How could our heroine survive being inside the top statal intelligency agency with someone not being nice!"

But as someone said, Crush follows a pattern; He isn't happy with som scene already done (he never say which one) so he "replaces it" with something fitting. Then he isn't happy about a random sex scene (he never say which one) so he makes another. Then he adds some stupid thing with 0 value (like the grandma being spy and now this douchebag character) so he can really justify he is advancing on the develpment "hey guys! I just re-made everything i already did but.... NOW OUR GRANDMA WAS A WW2 SPY I AM WORKING 26/9!!!!".
 
  • Like
Reactions: ZzZzZiggy

ffive

Conversation Conqueror
Jun 19, 2022
7,474
17,413
My honest take is that the events of the "transparency report" are still from the life path -introduction-.

So i guess i must correct my statement to; "Thank you crush for making a CIA/MI6/The AESEAN ones i don't remember agency less douchebag! How could our heroine survive being inside the top statal intelligency agency with someone not being nice!"
The way it reads to me, that's perhaps about whatshisname (Connor?) guy from the bar and how Kate was totally getting off on him banging her even when their "relationship" started basically with rape and went from there.

I mean, can't really think of any other option to fit the criteria (douchebag with Kate being into him and no option to act otherwise)
 

Geffe

Newbie
Jul 14, 2019
52
139
What the hell is Crush even doing? All he had to do was write a few scenes to bridge from university to the start of the Bangkok mission, and maybe a few extra lines for things like Kate being a CIA officer who went to Harvard, rather than an MI6 agent who went to Oxford. Instead, from what I can glean from the last few reports, he is significantly changing/removing stuff from the lifepath that was perfectly fine. Nuts.
 
3.50 star(s) 124 Votes