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On Behalf of Writers
First thing's first, I do plan to hopefully submit something for consideration. You'll see below why it may not happen.
I don't know how many submissions you've gotten lately but I think it would probably help the situation a lot if the writers could just write and leave the programming to someone else. Personally, I was getting all excited about submitting something this very night until I saw that it required learning something which is as of right now completely foreign to me. And while I do understand that we don't need to understand the whole thing, even the basics are a little math-ish for a lot of creative types.
I was like, "Hey cool. A tutoria-- What the shit is an fn setVariable?"
Long explanation made shorter: There's a steep learning curve. While I may be rather interested still, it's not likely to attract a whole mob of writers.
Second thing I figured I'd cover is the getting paid thing.
Writers and artists all over the internet are extremely aware of the fact that there's a very good chance that no payment will ever come from this. For several years I've been dealing with that annoyance both for my writing and my drawings. There are only a select few artists who receive payment on the regular. Even fewer who get paid well enough for it to be a job.
My point is not to discourage you from continuing the project or anyone else from submitting something. But I will say that I'm not even going to touch a project that expects me to write or draw a minimum per month without a super solid expectation to get paid enough that it could be a replacement for a part time job. Frankly that's not what's being promised here. Of course, I'm not expecting this to be a job replacement. I'm just not expecting to be treated like an employee.
With that in mind, I'm going to continue writing an event thingy now. I don't suppose there's any possibility of not having to enter it in the programming system?
Comments
When people "just write" and have someone else input it, they have no idea what can actually be done with their writing. They're just guessing, and hoping. And generally those guesses are going to be a big undershoot of what can actually be done that could be a lot more interesting.
When people actually make things work themselves, they can see more of what makes it tick and it opens up far more possibilities on different ways to drive and encompass a narrative. LEWD is not just a simple game where you occasionally make some choices. It's not supposed to just be a repository of a few characters to woe through linear individual storylines. I want something where people can make their own story, and that's difficult to make when people don't understand how the content really works.
In addition to that, it's not really programming. The tools take 95%+ of "programming" out for you. It's just fairly simple logic. It's not something that takes a comp sci course to understand. Most people that actually take a deep breath and read the tutorial thoroughly instead of throwing their hands up in the air and saying "I can't program" seem to get it fine. Could it be written and presented better? Definitely, but it's good enough.
So to really answer your question, no I'm not looking to make it easy. This is work. You say there is no gaurantee they'll get paid, I say... whao, what? What other chance is there to work with a good programmer on an adult game and to have 50% of a Patreon shared to the others? None of these other games creators are giving 50%. That's insanely generous and I expect someone to work at least 1% as hard as I have been in return for that. Good writers plus myself should make plenty for those writers efforts to be worthwhile. If you aren't confident that your work is good enough to make this into something great that will earn you what you're worth, you definitely shouldn't try. I'm not looking to make things easy for people so every writer and artist on the internet can get in on a share of something with how hard I've worked. I don't need a mob of writers when if I can just get a dozen, and each adds an average of 20k words of content per month, that'd be almost 3 million words of content after a year. A few people working hard will make something much better than a lot of people contributing a little.
I WILL be making many aspects of the tool easier for sure, but just having people write and me put it in myself would waste tons of time that I could be spending improving the tools/engine/game.
People can "just write" and submit it on the forums.
There is a line between contributor and dev. That is not something people are getting paid for unless a dev themselves wants to commission it. Ideas are certainly helpful, but casually writing isn't the same as work.
Devs still have to input it properly, edit it and possibly even rewrite it to make sure it's up to spec and standard, and so on. It is much easier to simply write something and that's it, without actually helping really help build the world and without making interesting mechanics and overarching storylines that make use of them, which just does not warrant a share.
For those that that's too hard for, I completely understand. I have not made any promises or tried to tell someone they'll definitely make "so much money", because I'm looking for people who want to make something great and not people looking for hand outs.
I do apologize for how long this is taking by the way. This is the busy season at my job and it's a killer year.
I imagine it probably is too late to enter something as a legitimate entry to be included as a writer, but I was thinking I'd probably just write and wasn't expecting to get paid anyway.
I still like the idea of contributing to the project since it's cool, so hopefully you'll still see something from me in the nearish future.
I have the tryout still up for the next few days, but it'd have to be really great. Particularly looking for people that can just write nice characters.