Why do I charge for content? History of BF!

Hi folks,

I posted this on F95 in response to someone who was asking why I felt the need charge a fee for chapter 4. In typical fashion I didn't use 10 words when 500 or so would do perfectly well. I go into a little history of how BF came into being, thought I would repost here in case you didn't see it there.

I'll try to answer this and show my reasoning behind my decisions here but I will start by saying I totally understand your frustration and this is in no shape or form an attack on you or your concerns.

I never started out making this or any other content as a money making exercise. It was started really to help my mental health issues. I was and am still going through some struggles in that area and desperately needed a release from the reality of life and it's problems. I'm an IT professional of 30 plus years in my day job, I hadn't coded in a while and missed it, so initially I started out trying to learn more modern languages like Python and heard about Ren'py. So I went about building a Proof of Concept (POC) VN based around Newcastle United, I never released that as it contains a lot of copyrighted images and videos. I enjoyed building it so much that I thought about what I wanted to do next.

I had had this story in my mind for a long time, I had never put it into words but the story was there, so I started writing out a skeleton for how the plot flows. I was also looking at what was out there for trans focused games and found myself a little frustrated with a lot of these games painting trans characters in a negative way or as freak shows, as incidental side characters, or characters added just to fulfill a tag. They were not and still are not the focus of many games that put them in a realistic setting and tackle the huge challenges of their lives. This isn't just in the adult games area either it's in mainstream movies too. So I decided to set out to fill this hole, as I so admire the strength of this very marginalised community.

The first challenge I encountered was, how the hell am I going to add images to my story, I had no artistic skills whatsoever nor the financial means to pay an artist. I tried my hand at Stable Diffusion and found some early success but after generating the initial characters and a few environments, I started having issues with how AI messes up with things like extra fingers or misshaped limbs. I also had no idea how I would be able to consistently take these characters and drop them into the huge amount of scenes I had planned.

So I pivoted away from AI and moved to DAZ, it was free apparently (more on that later), this was another new skill I had to learn from scratch. It became apparent though that I also required to get familiar with Blender and Gimp too, other tools I had never used before. There was a massive learning curve ahead of me with this and Ren'py too.

I took my basic game design for the POC and started building out the initial scenes, quickly I realised that building with the free stuff DAZ gives you, the free downloads available on their shop and other sites, was never going to be enough. I was even using Sketchfab, downloading free models, importing into Blender and then converting for DAZ use. If you look at Jon's bedroom it was made mostly of these models.  This was clearly not sustainable so I started buying assets.

I took some advice from a trans comic creator and used the latest generation of DAZ models, Genesis 9 for my main characters, as those base models are gender neutral which makes them easier to transition. Anyway what I was seeing though perhaps because of not using Genesis 3 or 8, like a lot of developers use, that render times were horrendously slow on my 2070 super. I needed to upgrade my rendering rig if I was ever going to produce anything anytime soon. I cashed in some vacation time and bought myself a 4080 super.

So all this background, damn I do like to tell a story don't I :), is just to try to explain the initial and continued costs I incur. I have over 1200 assets in my DAZ account alone, I'm scared to look at the amount I have spent there. There has also been the cost of upgrading the rendering rig. Add that to the general electric bill  I have rendering 16 hours a day (the render rig literally never stops when I am awake), I also have another PC on all that time, that I use to code, set up renders, post prod work, promo stuff and do stuff like write this ridiculously not needed long message, I really should be working out right now :)

The other hidden cost is in my man hours. I am one person here, doing everything. I wake up at 5am or so, work out, then I am developing this, around my day job. I do not take a day off and will sit at my computers for most of the free time I have. I do not play video games anymore, or watch TV or any of the waste time activities we as humans do.

I have five kids, one is grown up now and living back in the UK, the other four are still in elementary school. I would love to financially be able to offer my work here for free to everyone. But I'm literally struggling to make ends meet as a single income family. I've not had a pay increase in eight years and if things stay as they are I don't expect another one in the 10 years I have left before I retire. We can barely pay the bills, my debts continue to rise and we will lose the house in the next six months or so. This is all part of my mental struggles I talked about at the start of this ramble. I therefore simply have to try to recover my costs of development, it's really not an option.

In an ideal world, you build up a following through free game development and then you can try to generate income, I don't personally though have that luxury of that time.

I really love doing what I do here, a labour of love is a well worn expression but Best Friends for me is definitely that. Being financially able to retire a little earlier and do this full time would be an absolute dream for me but is highly unlikely I'm afraid.

As I said before this isn't a money making exercise, I'm not even coming close to covering my costs.  The gross revenue I have made from Itch barely covers the cost of the power supply upgraded I had to make for my new GPU and I get less than half of that revenue :( Patreon, helps a lot and I am so fortunate to have such a fantastic group of people supporting me but again, this revenue doesn't pay the bills and is also subject to the tax man taking his cut in a few months time.

If I really wanted to just focus on money generation, it would be so much easier if I went in a different direction rather than focus on a niche genre, render heavy, story focused game. I sometimes find it somewhat disheartening when you see games with ZERO story, a few AI generated renders, that do little more than flash a boob or two, yet they are bringing in three times the number of Patreons I do and charge $30 or so. They obviously do a great job of marketing and hitting on all the tags that bring folks in.

I suspect my story is not unique among indie developers, this is not a path to quick financial gains, it takes a hell of a lot of effort, time and money to build anything remotely worthwhile. I also recognise the times we are living in are really tough on all of us financially, that's why I so appreciate every single contribution however big or small I receive and I never take it for granted. I try my best to update the game as fast as my rendering rig allows me to try to pay back that tremendous support.

So TL;DR, I'm so sorry you feel this way, I do appreciate your concerns and understand the point you make, I would love to be able to present the business model you talk about but in my situation it's just not possible.