Unreal Engine Project Extermination: Operation GroundZeroes [Phase 2 - 2023-07-16] [MATEYDEV]

[JustAl]

[...] if you don't think f95 holds any value to the game as it is currently then why communicate at all here? [...] I've been in more than a few discord servers and while they're great for feedback, don't get me wrong, a lot of them tend to be overly moderated, almost to the point that you suspiciously never see much negative feedback. [...]

I'd like to add an unfortunate bit of insight from experience: developers want their labor to be respected and may choose to fight with and moderate their community even on platforms where they officially can't be moderator staff, such as F95. I've witnessed a few hostile developers who would lay down insults and belligerence towards any user who seemed dissatisfied or even asked for guidance to progress in gameplay. I've seen developers engage in Like-For-Like politics (against F95 rules) to create a horde of hostile fans for their game that would stalk users into other threads and harass said users if they had in the past spoken about the game negatively, even if they're not doing so at the moment and thus said stalker fan derails the thread for no valid reason. The game thread itself would be suspiciously devoid of negative feedback, though you can easily filter it out from the scant few posts the developer didn't put a Like on as they would put a Like on literally any positive post about their game.

Some developers can't tolerate hard feedback and some can, and there is a concise point that users don't treat developers humanely because doing a lot of work is already hard, and figuring out stuff that's difficult to get right and making mistakes is harder against an audience that doesn't forgive mistakes. Talking against their unfair treatment just gets backlash in return. It's why one of the best ways the answer the audience as a developer is to outright not speak outside of official progress reports. Hence why actual big game studios prefer the one-sided progress report approach and use forums to rack up feedback without being forced to engage with an audience who may not appreciate what the developer has to say. Likewise, the developer can let the community talk amongst itself not only for the protection of their time and sanity but to safeguard from the possibility that the developer themself may have the wrong idea on how to progress and may actually glean insight amidst the banter. Or just as well, choose to ignore it anyway since reading a huge pile of words is slower than actually doing work.

In short, it is easy to become a YandereDev who is hostile and unproductive. To understand how, read the above. I think Matto is a decent dev so long as his progress is steady and his progress reports give statement on plans and delays.

Developers want to make a nice game and players want to play a nice game. They can work together but sometimes it's best for them to stay apart for a while.

 

[DustyX]

Admittedly, I only discovered this game via f95 site itself as I don't have any active patron-pledge-thingymabobs and am otherwise oblivious to where else I may stumble upon emerging or indie-developed games besides a few YTs I subscribe to that play promising early access (or pre-EA) titles.

Even to this day, knowing this game exists I'm still unsure how else I may have came across it if not here because I wouldn't know where else to look... but that's just me, others may and likely are well more versed in sniffing out such projects that are underway to that I have no doubt.

But to weigh in (with my insurmountable internet clout *cough*) on the murmuring and discontent of adult content (or the VERY NSFW content therein) I feel as though this game has plenty potential to stand on its own feet without pr0n being a 'draw' for prospective buyers to become the bulk of the consumer base.

I'm not likening this game to say Skyrim or Fallout 3, NV or 4 but --in terms of modding-- those games have withstood the test of time for over a decade without adult content and several years later people still buy it --and then proceed to riddle it with debauchery thanks to mods-- but the point still stands that the game is purchased for its base content and has done just fine.

The mods like QoL, armor, weapons, quests, companions etc certainly extended the games shelf life and adult mods played its part too for certain players. Rant [?] over.

TL;DR: Indie games can function and survive just fine without adult mods/content being injected to give it a new lease on life, just look at Skyrim. Is this game like Skyrim? No, but it continues to draw new players despite lack of adult content. Adding adult content gives it more life sure but its life support doesn't hinge on it if that's not the main premise... which it's not.

Also, just for the record: I'm just as keen to see more pr0n in this game all the same, I will feign horror if my plucky corpo femmes become brood mothers for slimy eldritch horrors.

 

[Alket]

There's always a choice, if you don't think f95 holds any value to the game as it is currently then why communicate at all here? Every game here is in a constant state of change, this isn't the first time a game changed and to say "because of those changes this forum has less significance" sounds odd to me.

I keep in touch with a couple of developers I have supported in the past and their experience has been different. Moreover, I've been in more than a few discord servers and while they're great for feedback, don't get me wrong, a lot of them tend to be overly moderated, almost to the point that you suspiciously never see much negative feedback. Let's not pretend like this isn't a well known issue. To be clear I'm not saying this developers discord is like that. Also... you're putting a lot of faith in how smart people are with their money, I personally don't see things that way and my own experiences tell me differently.

[...]

I understand your point of view, I just want to answer the question on the "why communicate at all?": while Matto himself told me to let this thread fester and not waste my time here, I firmly believe that it's better to keep people informed and clear things up at every point than let the risk of rumors and misunderstandings spread...especially here...because I fear what a bunch of uninformed or misinformed people can do to a single dev on Patreon when sheep mentality kicks in...look at Eromancer, good dev? Bad dev? Doesn't matter, it happened and it was a low blow. Let's be honest, we don't want to be here, we don't want this thread to be here, but we don't have a choice and I believe it's better to do some "damage control" than none at all...nevertheless, I think that 90% of the people here understands what this game is and where it wants to go and I believe they're fine with it, I'm here to clear things up with that 10%, because I believe that informations should be shared, so that they can also do an informed choice with their money if they choose to.

[...]

I'll agree to disagree.

[...]

cheers

 

[Hawkie]

I am still sad he lost the 2.5d game he was working on.

 

[mugijos95]

Okay this might not be true to every case and even in this one in specific might be also false in a way Alket, but I'll add in addition to what you said as response to Spillthebeans that even comunication of the progress in threads like this one where the dev might not see actual short term value, there's still people who might be interested in the final product and thus have more chances of becoming potential customers, this is obviously my perspective -so take it with a grain of salt- but while I had mentioned before I can't aford pledging for now, but I'll be buying it when it eventually releases (specially if on Steam).

 

[Escuro]

To switch shoulder aim with a weapon and press middle mouse button

That fixes one issue, but the UI design still leaves some to be desired. That could genuinely be fixed by a black background for contrast to be able to see it.

 

[Spillthebeans]

-snip-

I agree for the most part, I still think there is a lot to be gained by interacting with your community but at the same time you have to build yourself up to dealing with all the chaff to get to the productive users and admittedly most people aren't cut out for that. This is a well known issue for Q&A testers as well.

I understand your point of view, I just want to answer the question on the "why communicate at all?": while Matto himself told me to let this thread fester and not waste my time here, I firmly believe that it's better to keep people informed and clear things up at every point than let the risk of rumors and misunderstandings spread...especially here...because I fear what a bunch of uninformed or misinformed people can do to a single dev on Patreon when sheep mentality kicks in...look at Eromancer, good dev? Bad dev? Doesn't matter, it happened and it was a low blow. Let's be honest, we don't want to be here, we don't want this thread to be here, but we don't have a choice and I believe it's better to do some "damage control" than none at all...nevertheless, I think that 90% of the people here understands what this game is and where it wants to go and I believe they're fine with it, I'm here to clear things up with that 10%, because I believe that informations should be shared, so that they can also do an informed choice with their money if they choose to.



cheers

I respect your honesty and willingness to tough it out here in spite of your opinion of this place. Take care of yourself.

 

[JustAl]

I agree for the most part, I still think there is a lot to be gained by interacting with your community but at the same time you have to build yourself up to dealing with all the chaff to get to the productive users and admittedly most people aren't cut out for that. This is a well known issue for Q&A testers as well.[...]

This is why it is important for Alket to be here. He's acting as a community manager. The community manager gives the community a good face to pass feedback to development staff, the community manager filters the feedback to be concise and technically effective, and the development person(s) work in that direction.

It's like what happened with Hello Games and No Man's Sky - the team manager declared that the rest of the staff leave all the feedback discussion and collection to him. It worked out great: the toxic hate the game got for being so shallow on release that it was labelled a scam didn't reach the dev team, and the feedback filtered from the banter was actionable instead of depressing. Depressing feedback reduces action. The team maintained focus and managed to salvage what appeared to be a lost project.

Thus, it's nice a community manager is here. The dev arguably shouldn't be here, that's fine. If a community manager is here, let the community manager deal with the feedback discussion. If the dev was here they could become distracted or demotivated. That said, if even the community manager expresses that the feedback from this community isn't helpful, it's a sign that maybe folks around here should be more helpful. If you want to give good feedback, really play the game more and think about anything wrong to be fixed or additions that can be a bonus. "More sex scenes" has already been mentioned too many times so it's not helpful to talk about anymore.

 

[mrme]

No gameplay, no challenge, nothing to experience beside the sex scenes...there are very few devs that are trying to merge actual gameplay and adult elements, for example, speaking of this genre, only Matto, Devolution (Delta Zone) and Horn (Yuna) come to mind...in a sea of content and updates released daily.

Alice in Cradle is another good one, albeit a side scrolling metroidvania (as was the now ancient Nightmare Sphere)

 

[Alket]

Nightmare Sphere

...I forgot it existed...

 

[Tomoushie]

mugijos95 nailed the point here: of all the many adult games I've played and tried in the years, I cannot name more than a few that actually felt good to play and experience, practically all of them where go from A to B, see sex scene, move on...and that's not considering the thousands of VNs disguised as games.
No gameplay, no challenge, nothing to experience beside the sex scenes...there are very few devs that are trying to merge actual gameplay and adult elements, for example, speaking of this genre, only Matto, Devolution (Delta Zone) and Horn (Yuna) come to mind...in a sea of content and updates released daily.
If you don't care about the gameplay aspect of the game but only want the sex bits of it, that's fine, we have different expectation or interests, I'm searching for a game, maybe this is not for you, no issue with that.
And regarding the mod, with all the crackdowns that are happening on Patreon and in some markets, it was deemed necessary to separate the sfw and porn with a mod, not ideal, granted, but safer. Most important: this way he can actually go ballistic with it and truly uncensored, allowing third parties that are more interested and/or adept to that singular aspect to even take over, because let's not pretend that Matto isn't aware that the biggest chunk of supporters wants adult stuff to be part of the game, he knows that, so he's not gonna drop it.



Quite frankly, as part of this community, I can tell you that you kinda missed the point on my post you quoted, let me try to clarify: this community holds close to no value regarding feedbacks, suggestions or even advertisement for the game at this point, because what this community wants might no longer be what the game actually targets, maybe never was, because even in the first iteration it was clear that, while sex was used as shock value to reel in audience, no point denying that, the focus on the gameplay and polish of that aspect was paramount. But Matto has no choice regarding being here, he was dragged here, the whole:
View attachment 3321668
it's on the OP for a reason. You say that many discovered him through this site? Again, correct, but you don't mindlessly start giving money to someone, you inform yourself about the project first, then you start throwing money...and you can always stop.

Also, when you say something along the lines of "since people on those platforms (Patreon, Discord ,Twitter) are following and/or paying him they'll go along with everything, while here, from those who are not giving you money and pirating your game illegally you can get unfiltered truth", sorry, but I call bullshit on that, we're not kids (I hope that there are no kids here, but I have doubts): if I give money to someone to keep working on a project, if I don't like what the project is or where it's going anymore, I first complain then pull support and move on. So it's ever more important to "please" the Patrons, not this community. If a Patron is not satisfied he should voice his concerns, if what he wants doesn't align with the project (whatever that project might be) anymore then he should leave...seriously...what are we even talking about here? The people who follow him and support him are those interested in his project the most, period. If you don't like it why would you even support it? It makes no sense...the most honest critiques can only come from those who are invested in it, even if not monetarily.

In fact, you should think about publishing your game on Steam - I imagine you've already thought about it, but I'd rather say so. Because I'm a user who's never really trusted Patreon or similar sites, I like to centralize all my games in one place and I trust Steam. Furthermore, I think that on Steam you'll have to separate SFW and Adult content anyway, as they contain non-consensual scenes. Some developers, like Karryn's Prison / Kalyskah, are going to do this, so that the game can be accepted on Steam.

 

[Tomoushie]

There's always a choice, if you don't think f95 holds any value to the game as it is currently then why communicate at all here? Every game here is in a constant state of change, this isn't the first time a game changed and to say "because of those changes this forum has less significance" sounds odd to me.

I keep in touch with a couple of developers I have supported in the past and their experience has been different. Moreover, I've been in more than a few discord servers and while they're great for feedback, don't get me wrong, a lot of them tend to be overly moderated, almost to the point that you suspiciously never see much negative feedback. Let's not pretend like this isn't a well known issue. To be clear I'm not saying this developers discord is like that. Also... you're putting a lot of faith in how smart people are with their money, I personally don't see things that way and my own experiences tell me differently.

It sounds like we have different viewpoints and experiences so I don't really want to waste any more of our time on senseless arguing that is quickly going off topic so I'll agree to disagree. For what it's worth I hope this game turns out well and maintains proper support, I find it to be more unique and interesting compared to many others.

I personally agree that F95 plays a key role in promoting games, even if they're posted illegally, some developers voluntarily post them on the forum because they know that if their game is of a certain quality, they can make a profit from it, especially to advertise on their social networks or sites like Patreon.

Many games have only succeeded, in large part, thanks to the huge community on F95. 7 million members is no mean feat. Games like Breeders's of Nephelym have managed to amass over 5,000 members on Patreon, and owe their success in large part to F95. Unfortunately, some developers manage to abandon their game, or walk away with the money they've raised by abandoning ship. For some, this was the goal, for others it was a success they hadn't imagined and couldn't resist the smell of money.

 

[MoreNow]

I understand your point of view, I just want to answer the question on the "why communicate at all?": while Matto himself told me to let this thread fester and not waste my time here, I firmly believe that it's better to keep people informed and clear things up at every point than let the risk of rumors and misunderstandings spread...especially here...because I fear what a bunch of uninformed or misinformed people can do to a single dev on Patreon when sheep mentality kicks in...look at Eromancer, good dev? Bad dev? Doesn't matter, it happened and it was a low blow. Let's be honest, we don't want to be here, we don't want this thread to be here, but we don't have a choice and I believe it's better to do some "damage control" than none at all...nevertheless, I think that 90% of the people here understands what this game is and where it wants to go and I believe they're fine with it, I'm here to clear things up with that 10%, because I believe that informations should be shared, so that they can also do an informed choice with their money if they choose to.



cheers

as someone who donated more than $100 to Matto, I regret every penny.
Especially since Matto has apparently given his public facing Dev communication to a random community member with far too much bias.

This is a website for porn games.
Matto has worked on 3 porn games that have been lost or abandoned.

Matto received money for each of those games. My money.

And here I am, being ridiculed for say "hey, looks like the fourth out of four games will also be abandoned".

Alrighty then

 

[JustAl]

as someone who donated more than $100 to Matto, I regret every penny.
Especially since Matto has apparently given his public facing Dev communication to a random community member with far too much bias.

This is a website for porn games.
Matto has worked on 3 porn games that have been lost or abandoned.

Matto received money for each of those games. My money.

And here I am, being ridiculed for say "hey, looks like the fourth out of four games will also be abandoned".

Alrighty then

I'm going to be honest, what you're dealing with is the sad truth of solo game development.

When you preorder a game from a major company, you can almost be sure that regardless of delays and a final product that is a letdown, you will get your game. That's still not guaranteed when a Duke Nukem Forever situation happens - which will forever instill a phobia of hearing a developer say, "we're redoing our game with a different engine / better technology to give you a better game". Alternatively, see the "I have so much money it's like I've existed forever" kind of problem, something Star Citizen's development team is known for though is more commonly seen with other software / drug development, where a business just manifests with a ton of money from somewhere ("somewhere" for games / new tech toys being: gullible mega-donors) and promises so much of what they can't deliver until they run off with your money and leave unsupported vaporware behind.

Still, other than an established known studio losing their collective mind in a spiral towards destruction or a digital grift half of tech-literate people would recognize as a scam, you'd usually get your game even if it's less than stellar. When you donate to a solo developer you don't get that promise because it's a single dude / dudette smashing effort during their woozy-after-work hours to exert the mental strain to release a passion project that may not really be profitable or feasible. Or maybe the game is their full-time job but with this kind of talent you wonder why they're not working on boring Excel spreadsheets for twice that much money at half the effort annually.

Well, a person skilled enough to make a great game is sane enough to prioritize their life. We're on a pirate site, so no guarantee that everyone's nice enough to pay a sum that enables a dev to happily leave the normal working world. Typically game development is either a free-time activity or a "WTF have you been doing for 2 years" question on a job interview. What I mean is, it almost always makes sense for a solo dev to quit their project if it demands a lot of time and it doesn't give a livable salary with the expectation that you can keep customers coming and paying. Heck, even Illusion, a well-known Japanese porn game dev closed down not too long ago. So a solo guy has no worries vanishing from existing and reappearing under a new pseudonym, potentially plagiarizing their own earlier work in their new project.

So lets be realistic, okay? You ought to donate money because their work is so inspiring you can throw it into the void to motivate a person and add a bit of hope that their project gets finished. You're not paying an established business. Your return on investment is barely better than paying a busker on the street a freshly minted Benjamin Franklin bill and seeing what happens next. Are they gonna be the next American Idol or appear on Britain's Got Talent? Who knows.

You're not doing it for a service, you're doing it because you want to thank someone for giving you a nice experience and to fuel a dream. Indie work is risky. Imagine who felt burned donating to or buying tickets for a startup Punk Rock band 40 years ago. It's like that.

 

[DustyX]

JustAl : A kickstarter would also be a comparable-- well... comparison, granted there's certain checks and balances to keep a creator from just going "Psyche!" and running off with backer money, but those that pledge to a KS are doing so on the premise of investing in the product's development and fruition rather than pre-ordering a product that's already assured to be made.

Similar [albeit not 1;1] premise with this project, payments made are to help sustain its development, not pay for the finished product [which will come at its anticipated completion].

 

[Alket]

In fact, you should think about publishing your game on Steam - I imagine you've already thought about it, but I'd rather say so. Because I'm a user who's never really trusted Patreon or similar sites, I like to centralize all my games in one place and I trust Steam. Furthermore, I think that on Steam you'll have to separate SFW and Adult content anyway, as they contain non-consensual scenes. Some developers, like Karryn's Prison / Kalyskah, are going to do this, so that the game can be accepted on Steam.

Steam release is the target (alongside, maybe Epic and/or GOG); the page will be created once there will be a proper demo, not just a showcase of functionality PoC. Matto hopes to have enough stuff to put it together by the end of the year...that's why he's focusing on base gameplay, animations and models so much.

 

[Tomoushie]

Steam release is the target (alongside, maybe Epic and/or GOG); the page will be created once there will be a proper demo, not just a showcase of functionality PoC. Matto hopes to have enough stuff to put it together by the end of the year...that's why he's focusing on base gameplay, animations and models so much.

I wish you a lot of courage and success in this goal, your game is very promising

 

[Alket]

Hi poopers!
this, but the game matto was building before, section seven IMO was at least 1000 times better than this one... don't missununderstand me: this operation groundzeroes is good, but is not at the level of section seven. it's like matto left a gold mine for an iron one instead... IMO, of corse...
and now: just my thoughts dudes, and nothing more... so no flame or whining or tragedies or pikes lifted to the sky, please...

The prototype that was Section7 will be incorporated in this game in both mechanics and ambience settings eventually™.

Basically the concept of S7 will become a level/location of OGZ...

 

[Tomoushie]

Hi poopers!
this, but the game matto was building before, section seven IMO was at least 1000 times better than this one... don't missununderstand me: this operation groundzeroes is good, but is not at the level of section seven. it's like matto left a gold mine for an iron one instead... IMO, of corse...
and now: just my thoughts dudes, and nothing more... so no flame or whining or tragedies or pikes lifted to the sky, please...

You're comparing two games at different stages of development and with different architectures. Developing in 2D on UE and in 3D on UE is not the same workload. OGZ's project looks far more ambitious.

 

[Alket]

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