Q&A Session - 2022 - Part 1/2

Thank you for all of your questions; there were a lot of them this year. So many that I had to split the Q&A into two parts.

I've read them and compiled the ones I wish to answer. Many questions would require me to spoil the game's future, so I haven't answered those. My about section Patreon page answers some questions, so I didn't answer those. As expected, there were also repeat questions from earlier Q&As, and I'll address some of these shortly.

In part 1, I will answer the questions divided into the categories: Repeat questions and Being a DIK. In part 2, which I will post at another time, I will answer questions about Game development.

Repeat questions

With the game's release in Steam and GOG, the load and stress increased. Will you hire more staff to help work on the game?

This is a popular question, and my answer has been the same from day one, and it won't change. This setup I have right now with being independent is just how I like it.

Many want me to hire more people because they want the game faster. But getting the game made faster doesn't mean it's the same product. The way I see it, if it were released faster, it wouldn't be the same game that I would create on my own. I know the game would suffer because I wouldn't enjoy making it that way. The reason why many enjoy my games is that I enjoy making them.

As for the load increase with Steam and GOG, the workload increase is now minuscule after setting everything up. After the Season 2 release, the workload has decreased back to normal, and I can focus on game development again.

Increased workload comes from increased popularity; more players means more time for customer support. Luckily, I have awesome mods/admins/testers and a whole community helping out with that.

I am confident I will be making games this way until I stop making games altogether. Expanding is not on the map for me.

Will you add voice acting to the game?

Adding voice acting to the game has become a monumental task due to the number of characters and the game's size. Originally, I wanted to do it, but it felt weird having partial voice acting at first, so I removed it altogether. I don't see myself adding it to the game at the moment. I haven't closed the door on it completely, but it's more shut than open right now.

Are you going to upload the macOS version to Steam/GOG?

No. It's not a signed application, and thus it's not accepted by either vendor. Patreon will remain the source of distribution for the macOS version. I hope there will be a way to change this in the future, but Apple is working against developers with their policy changes.

Has the outcome of the fandom altered the development of any of the characters in any way?

No. Aside from the polls on Patreon, fans don't have any say in what happens in the game. I do consider feedback in terms of gameplay and QoL improvements. Other than that, my rule is that: Players play the game, and the creator creates the game.

Being a DIK

Now onto mostly new questions.

Can I use my Steam/GOG saves in the new launcher with the Patreon version?

Yes. You can use the transfer saves as an entry point in the Patreon version, but not the other way around for technical and legal reasons.

So, if you don't have the Patreon Season 1 and 2 version and own Steam/GOG Season 1 and 2, you can continue playing Patreon Season 3 version when it drops.

Is Season 3 also going to be four episodes long?

My current plan is that Season 3 will consist of the Interlude and episodes 9,10,11, and 12.

The publishing period between episodes varies, with an inclination to extend. Should we expect it to grow even more, or was it situational, and we should expect the next episode sooner?

It certainly has increased, as have the included content. Episode 8 was a big one. Being the season finale, I wanted to squeeze in what I had planned for it, so I didn't let the episode size bother me during development, but I get that it was a long wait for it.

When it comes to faster releases, you're damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't. Waiting time and included content goes hand in hand. You cannot expect a short development time without being disappointed by the lack of content, vice versa.

I don't want the episode size to grow more, but I won't stop myself if it has to for some reason. The Interlude being a small episode, is very good for me. I think it will help me dial it back a notch in time for episode 9. Either that or you can use this quote in the future to laugh at me.

What is the time difference between uploading future patches and seasons to Patreon versus Steam/GOG?

Steam and GOG get finished products, Patreon gets in-development builds where each episode is released as it's completed. Patreon is the sole reason game development has worked, and that's why supporters get access to early in-development builds.

I have mainly a technical question, as I still can't imagine how the interaction between Season 2 and Season 3 will work. Can you elaborate on how I manage my saves and how they interact between seasons?

Season 1 & 2 and Season 3 communicate through the save transfer system. In Season 1 & 2, you save your game to one of the 20 available slots at the end of episode 8. As soon as you do this, you can import that save in Season 3.

This is the main menu of Season 3. If you click" Import", you will see all your saved transfer files and choose which one to load and continue your adventure with. The" Continue" button loads any normal save made within Season 3.

While playing Season 3, you save your game as usual in a save menu like this.

Saves from Season 1 & 2 won't show up here. Just like Season 3 saves won't show up in Season 1 & 2. They have separate save folders and won't affect each other.

If you could add copyrighted music to the game, which one would you choose?

I know what you mean with your question, but first, to clarify, every song in the game is copyrighted, but artists have different ways to license their music.

As per your question, I assume I could choose among all songs ever made without worrying about record labels saying no. And that is a very hard question.

I paused writing this answer for a few days, and I came back with "Sum 41 - Rhythms" as my first pick and as a close runner up "Millencolin - Farewell My Hell".

I really enjoyed the mansion and job management. Do you plan to continue this, and does our gained experience count for future episodes?

I'm thrilled that many players like that mini-game. It is the mini-game I'm most proud of to date. I believe in moving on and evolving when something has played its part, and for this mini-game, its purpose was to restore the mansion - the general theme of Season 2. It won't return in Season 3.

The mansion mini-game gave me plenty of meat when it comes to coding smarter, and I've been working on new mini-games for Season 3. One of which, I hope, tickles the same spot that the mansion mini-game did.

What was the most difficult scene/animation you made until now?

It's a tough question. Scenes with many characters are always tricky since you need to be meticulous about more details than in scenes with fewer characters.

I think that in episode 5, the free roam at the prep's mansion was a particularly tricky environment to work with. It's poorly optimized for geometry and textures, so it eats up RAM like few other environments. It also had many characters and cramped rooms, making the camera work and lighting harder.

When it comes to animations, I don't remember any animation as extra difficult. Maybe the cum animations would be my pick for difficulty. I do, however, remember the time it took for me to pose the 30-second blowjob Quinn gives MC in episode 4 on the rooftop. Sometimes, when making longer animations, I can feel "what did I just start?" as this will require a lot of work, but the result is almost always worth it.

One of the animations I'm most proud of to date is during the lewd morning scene with Bella in episode 8. The doggy style has a sideways motion which caused me to learn how to make circular sideways jiggle look good - it wasn't easy.

Are you open to adjusting - even slightly - a character's role/fate in the main story due to the way a character has naturally evolved?

Yes, for a very specific reason. I've seen a perfect example of the trainwreck if you don't respect the journey and how characters naturally evolve.

A TV series I loved threw away all character development and reverted characters to what they used to be at the start of the series because they had an idea that they didn't write perfectly towards. The ending didn't fit the journey and character evolvement, and it would be foolish if I didn't put my ego aside and take that into account when the end game is upon us.

A famous quote among writers says: "Kill your darlings", which teaches us just that. Don't love an idea and keep it alive if it doesn't fit the overall story. That said, at the moment, I can't pinpoint any large deviations from the planned story.

What character has been the most difficult to write?

The main character, because he's several characters at once. All other characters are pretty easy to write. They have their way of acting, motivations, language, and personalities.

When writing the main character, I must remember and account for possible differences in behavior due to affinities/DIK status/choices while also predicting what such player is feeling.

It's impossible to write a main character that's a copy of every player when it comes to thoughts, likes/dislikes, etc., and that's not a goal either. The blank slate character quickly feels detached from the story, so the main character needed to come with baggage, his values, and life experience. At times, I know many players lose track of this and feel that they are the main character, resulting in disagreement with some choices. This adds to the difficulty of writing him.

Of the general responses/feedback to the main love interests, what were some things you didn't expect or went way differently than you thought they would?

In general, I can predict how players will receive events; a lot of my planning goes into creating a roller coaster of emotions, and it's not that hard to guess what actions will be met with cheers or groans. However, everyone doesn't react in the same way to some events, which can be surprising at times. Sometimes, when a player group feels miserable about a story event, other players laugh at their misfortune. I find that behavior surprising and odd.

For many, topics like cheating and lying hit pretty close to home, and I was surprised by some responses. I expected more introspection, open-mindedness, and forgiveness in general.

Now that we are invested in the characters, would you be willing to forgo some of the lewd content to add more depth to the relationships?

Some players play for the story, and others play for the lewd scenes. We all have different preferences when it comes to that. Simply cutting the lewd content from the game wouldn't translate into more wholesome scenes; it doesn't work like that.

I like the current balance between story and lewd, and as characters grow closer new opportunities to write lewd scenes emerge, where I can add depths in relationships to the lewd scenes. A good example is Jill's lewd scene in episode 8, which offers both lewd content and a deeper connection.

In Season 1, especially Episode 1, there was a lot of good fast-paced rock/punk rock music. However, this has given way to more melancholy tracks and/or instrumental tracks. Will we see punk rock and, more generally, music with vocals/lyrics making a comeback?

I'm adding as many tracks with lyrics as possible, provided they fit. It's tricky because listening to songs with lyrics can make it hard to read the dialogue, so I'm being very careful when I add a song with lyrics to a scene.

As for more punk rock songs, I'd love to add more, but the selection is pretty poor in this area. There are next to no punk songs with good production values and correct license that I can use, which makes this more difficult.

Was there a thought process to giving MC a huge dick instead of a more average-sized one?

Coming from Acting Lessons, I wanted to work with a bigger one because animations become easier to work with if the member is bigger. Mainly, it allows for better camera angles and motions if it's bigger. In retrospect, it could have worked well with a smaller one, but I like how it's been added as a story element as a result. I would choose a tad smaller size if I made another game after this.

Some of the game's protagonists have more depth and character than those of other adult games. Especially the women. I wonder how many different people are working on the project, how many people are "DrPinkCake", how many of them are women, and how many of the game characters represent (partially) real people (with a few added erotic fantasies).

Thank you. It's just one borderline schizophrenic developer writing all of them. Joking aside, I grew up having many females as friends and relationships. While no character is based on real-life people, I have drawn inspiration from women in my life. I've learned a lot by listening to them and asking them why they think and feel certain ways when I can't relate.

Some girls in the game serve the purpose of comic relief and can be exaggerated, but even so, I like adding depth to as many as I can without going overboard. It's all about pacing when you have this big of a cast and slowly introduce more and more layers to them, and also about caring about them as if they were real.

So, when Tybalt ate melon on the balcony with Jill... Was it *the* melon?

Would you eat your spunk-filled lover? Maybe...

How do you get your inspiration to write someone like Derek? His jokes are always on point.

I practice jokes on my wife. The harder she punches me, the better the joke.

In real life, Derek's humor is pretty much my humor, so I often write my natural response for his dialogue lines. I practice a lot on it. When watching TV and the news, and there's a question being asked, I think of a funny response and say it out loud as fast as possible. It's a type of reaction comedy that helps me write funny jokes. My main source of inspiration for this comedy style is Anthony Cumia, who’s, in my opinion, the world’s greatest reaction comedian. Most of my biggest laughs ever have come from listening to his content.

Has much been cut from Being A DIK because it didn't work with the overall project?

Surprisingly little has been cut. I rarely start working on something I know won't make the cut. When I polish the episode, I remove dialogue here and there to make scenes tighter, but it’s not a lot of content being removed.

Do you think Lynette's (MC mother) scenes have lowered the main story's pace and need some action or make these scenes less frequent?

Not at all. I think her scenes serve an excellent purpose of altering the pace or making the episode feel fresh in the middle of it. During Season 2, her diary scenes have been one of my favorite types of scenes to create. Liking this part of the game comes down to personal preference, and I hope that players who play for the story appreciate these scenes as much as I do.

I know you've said in the past that you don't let feedback from players dictate the story you want to tell. But have you seen or heard a player theory contrary to your plans that made you wish you'd thought of it? How does it feel when someone figures out a major future spoiler?

I hear player theories contrary to my plans every day. Some make me go, "how the hell did you even think of that?", and others make me go, "that's another way of looking at it". As a collective community, players are way smarter than what I possibly can be, but that's just something I have to accept. After episode 1/2, many recent big spoilers were already guessed, and I wondered if I had made it too obvious, cliché or if the guess was shot off-the-hip.

Often, players aren't completely sure they have the right answer, and there are always players arguing that someone, who can be spot on, is dead wrong. Sometimes there's arrogance when people think they know the answer and aren't open to any persuasion. Haha, I look forward to the episodes when they get surprised.

I love this duality of the community. Some will be surprised, and others will feel proud that they figured something out ahead of time. It doesn't hurt if they have figured something out; in a way, it makes me feel good that the writing makes sense, even though I, of course, want some spoilers to be surprises. The only way that could happen is if there weren’t any time to reflect on the game between episodes.

As a whole, it's not the big spoilers that will make people remember the game. It won't be the start or the ending, either. It most certainly will be the journey.

Do you have a canon route/girl for the history on your mind for Being a DIK? I feel that Megan is the canon route in Acting Lessons, am I correct?

What would be canon for me wouldn't be canon for someone else, and thus it's not canon. I think it's bad practice to design a branching game with a canon main girl in mind.

With Acting Lessons, Megan was the glue for the story, and the forced attraction to her was necessary for the story to pan out the way it did. I wouldn't call her the canon main girl, though. I feel the options held weight too. I felt the Ana route had a symbolism I liked, with the MC understanding her better from becoming what she was to him. But I'd never call that route canon.

Do you agree that as a concept, a freshman going into a college and having a majority of the older girls available for him to date is a little weird? I know it's common in the genre and makes for great gameplay because it's like a power fantasy even though it seems unrealistic. I feel like Bella, Jill, and Sage would be unattainable to a teenager in the real world.

It's a dream scenario to have women saying yes left and right like that, but since your choices shape the story, you have the option to make it more realistic by choosing who you're going for. Often, this translates into players choosing as many girls as possible, but it doesn't have to be that way. So, you're pretty much setting the bar for realism yourself.

It's not unheard of that older women like younger men. My biggest age difference when I was a teenager was 18+ years, so it's about daring to go for it. In the end, it's a game for entertainment value, and even though I love to put details in the game and research areas of it to make it more relatable, it naturally won't be 100% realistic. That would make the game a bit boring, too, I think.

How much research goes into the development of the characters, their relationships, and the story? Would you say a psychologist would deem the personas realistic, or is it more your imagination and intuition?

Plenty of research goes into many areas of the game, especially areas where I'm not an expert. I don't research characters as much as other details; I often write them based on personal experience and feelings. I know their likes/dislikes, motivations, personalities, and where they are headed, so I don't need to research that a lot. Only if there is some obscure detail I want to add that I'm not 100% sure of, I will look it up.

I have no clue what a psychologist would say, but life is stranger than fiction, and in life, there are characters you could never write because they wouldn't feel believable on paper.

You said in a previous Q&A that you had planned the main story since day one. How long and how did you carry out the first phases of research and outline the story between the time you finished working on Acting Lessons and the start of the actual work on BaDIK?

It's tricky to answer this because the work of those two games overlapped. I started planning and writing Being a DIK around episodes 5-6 of Acting Lessons. Because of the overlapping work, it took me roughly six months to develop the first episode of Being a DIK.

The general story outline is what I planned at first. I see it as a living document in the sense that it can be updated throughout development if needed - only to become more detailed with time. I started mapping out all the big events for the game and then filled in gaps with time.

Was the "turtle" an Austin Powers reference?

No. I have some nods to movies and TV series here and there, but this wasn't one of them.

Thanks for reading part 1 of the Q&A session. Stay tuned for the second part, where I'll answer your game development questions.

Love

Dr PinkCake