Anniversary: Page and Development Plans 2021!

Hello once more, beWildernauts and public fans too. Time for our third and last post in our anniversary series, this one to look at our Page and our Production both, specifically for the year ahead. It’s another quite long one, but again, it’s a conversation worth having and a plan worth sharing. Let’s go on and get in there…

Ah, but first! Remember, our beWildernauts, there is a space available to you all to chat any of this out, say your piece and have your voice heard on this and the Game Goals too. It’s on our Discord, so if you’ve got something to add to the conversation, head on over and let us know.

Alrighty then, let’s get started on a firm footing. Some tangible goals we can set for ourselves and have the most control over as the developers. Our Page Goals and Finances.

Our 2021 Page Goals

---

So, the last time we tackled these, it was about 18 months ago, wasn’t it? Some things have changed since then, we’ll get to that below, but in many ways, we’ve stayed the same. We’re keeping to the philosophy we set ourselves last time: Keep them simple, keep them to a minimum, and keep focused maximizing production possibilities.

So, to that end we’re pretty much keeping the two we have. We feel they suit us the best. Our biggest goal in life, not just this page, is being 100% beWilderverse, 100% of the time, at least when it comes to our work lives (play is important too after all!). Since that’s our biggest goal, it’s our first goal. After that, we believe it is great to have something to aim for as a community, something to pump us up and to give us hopes for even more of what we want. If we can only do one thing to improve ourselves, it’s got to be investments in the best hardware we can get, so we can cut through the difficulties to render more and more, and so that’s our second goal still. 

Here’s the details:

Goal #1… This one is pretty straightforward, and we’ve covered it almost entirely above, right? It’s the plain and simple truth of all things, as much as we all wish it weren’t so. What we want to highlight though is that this is where our heart is. If we can achieve but one thing, it’s the freedom to dedicate all we have to our passion projects as if they were our jobs, because they are, and we want them to be. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and we’ve gotta create, we do. So that’s where the support goes, to cover the most basic necessities, letting our full selves be in our work.

As for Goal #2… We’ve pretty much said it all above in our screenshot too, but it’s an important goal to us, for sure. We know the thing that limits us the most overall, that causes the most stress in our lives, is how much we are held back by our ability to create CGs per month. It’s what gives us the text-to-image ratios we run, what caps our scenes per version and hence our pace per version, even the variety/extent/depth of the sex(y) per x-rated scene. It’s where we want to improve the most, because it’ll be where you all feel the most extra heat, and the best way to do it is saving enough to invest in serious GFX cards, a second dedicated rendering computer set-up, etc. You already know we can make stunning art without all that power, it’s just a matter of turning the up the system to 11 with it!

Alright, that’s our Page Goals covered. What about our Practices? What have we got instore there? Well, let’s see!

Our 2021 Process and Dev Cycles

---

Again, this is another section where there isn’t a lot of change, so instead let us reaffirm the efforts instead. As mentioned earlier in the month via our Handover post, we’ve undertaken a ‘Hard Reset’ for February, which simply means we’re regrouping and aiming to get ourselves back on track as best as possible in the month ahead (see section below for more details). Aside from that, we’re set to be our same ol’ selves, with aims to be releasing our games in a leapfrog style, starting again with Noemi in February. We’ll be keeping this up until at least AoH is ready to call complete (see Game Plans 2021 post for details), which we expect will be most of the year in the making under this plan, so we’ll save any serious discussion on changes beyond this until closer to the time it’s relevant. We know you’re curious, since some have been asking privately, but that’s our plan. Same as we’re all used to and as steady as she goes! We aim to have something for our fans every month, as is only right, we believe.

Simply Put:

February – Noemi’s v0.14, March – Agents of Heels v0.21, April – Noemi’s v0.15, May – Agents of Heels v0.22… And so on, and so forth. Simple, right?

Ok then, that’s the easy stuff. Now comes the tricker bit, as we cover the whys behind our need for that reset above. Let’s get into it then, afterwards we can think about some tastier things to spice up the page before we wrap the post. Sounds good, huh?

Our Recent Delays and What We’re Doing About Them

---

Alrighty then, a slightly sore topic, but then again, it needn’t be. We promised we’d do this, so let’s.

The last few months we’ve had some spill overs and we’ve been cryptically vague about it at times. Honestly, the reason we’ve not been as upfront about this as we normally are with things is because we didn’t want to be perceived as one of “those Devs who whine and cry ‘insert personal issue here’”. However, we’ve not yet worked out the problem, so it’s best we start discussing it openly, and this is the most relevant post we’ll have to kickstart the dialogue. Here it goes.

Some long-time fans may vaguely remember Early September 2019, right after we released Lara’s Mini-VN, that there were a few days then where Unshi was taken away by personal business. Well, that business was a close death in the family. It’s was sad news, but it happened, he mourned, now it’s been awhile and we’ve moved on. We didn’t want to put that kind of thing on the fans, so we kept it to ourselves, we carried on and got September 2019’s release out like normal. So why is it relevant? Well, with that loss, Unshi’s living situation was forced to change dramatically, his cost of living rose dramatically, and a part of his support structure was taken away all at once. We’re still dealing with that end of things.

For the year after, we decided the best path forward would be to carry on like we do, let our page grow and eventually make up the difference in our expenses naturally. We have indeed grown over that time and we’re thrilled about it, but unfortunately, we didn’t grow as much as needed. So, for the last few months Unshi has had to turn Semi-Pro instead of Full Time to cover his bills, or at least Three-Quarters-Pro. It’s a situation we aimed to make come and go quickly so that it wouldn’t warrant us worrying you all with, that with some personal changes and some luck it’d be over almost before it started. 

To that end, we opened up to take on more Commissions from fans where possible, which is the most immediate way to boost our income while still contributing directly to the beWilderverse, plus while taking the least amount of time away from the games. We can only take on so many though, and there were only so many interested, so after we reached as far as that could get us, Unshi has had to do some freelance days (photoshopping/coding/etc) for outside commercial projects… As you can tell, the required time needed to do that, and with the added recovery time needed for a bigger workload… Well, that’s been what’s behind the delays in large part. You can also tell it’s not something we’re proud of, but we do it because it means we can do beWilder as much as we do.

So what’s our plans going forward to combat this? Quite frankly, the situation is largely out of our hands. We do what we need to keep the lights on and the render machine running. We’re going to be more open about it though. Also, to avoid delays as much as possible we’re going to tailor our monthly schedules and versions to account for a few days of freelance until we don’t have to do it at all anymore. Where we can, we aim to revert those freelance days to commissions as much as possible, as we get back to that goal of Fully-Full Pro again with our Patreon support alone. We’re also putting some contingency plans into place for Spook2099 to be able pick up more slack in the writing department if it comes to that, but we hope it won’t.

On the upside, the extreme upside, there is some great news on this front to share too. This January alone we’ve had a banner month of support… Honestly, it’s been more than we could have imagined. We’re ecstatic about it, truly. Our audience is still growing, we’re appealing to more people, with our community on the rise day by day. If this trend continues, if we push on more with what we do have a say on and keep our quality up as the games flow, this could all be a moot point in the rear-view mirror in a few months. We dare to hope it is. Even if not completely done away with either, with every little bit we do earn, it does make a difference, helping us reign in that stray time bit-by-bit. We’re most definitely on the right track going forward like this.

So that’s the backstory, and that’s what we’re going to do about it. We didn’t want to burden the fans with this, but it’s for the best it’s in the open and we pay attention to the honest challenges in front of us. We’ll be stronger for it in then end. So then, let’s wrap up this post with some additional news and page items, shall we? Yes, let’s. There’re a couple of things we would like to hear from you on in fact!

Additional Page Details

---

Now for a few better things that have been in the news and behind the scenes recently:

- Patreon has been up to some stuff of their own of late, adding features to the platform to make the place better. That’s one move we like, for sure. One such feature is a new Annual Subscription method so fans can join for a year all at once. It’s something we’ve considered adding to our own page here, so our fans would have more options open to them. More power to the player is always good. However, with the stuff above to deal with, discuss and digest, instead of adding that potential shakeup to the mix at the same time, we’ve decided to mention it now and get the ball rolling on a chat with the fans, after which we can look to taking it on if the interest is there.

So how about it? Is Annual Membership something y’all are interested in having available? Or is it a nonplussed issue right off the bat? Let us know in Patreon messages, or better yet on the Discord channel, won’t you?

- Another area we’re interested in testing the waters, is possibly starting off a Streaming effort as a part of our work, our outreach and our attempts to appeal to fans. By that we mean opening up a window to allow folks to watch Unshi work on our art. Come see how things get made… If you’re an artist possibly pick up some tips or tricks, and if you’re not, simply enjoy seeing a piece of sexy or a cool concept come into being from scratch. The exact form and frequency is something we’ll discuss more if it’s a popular enough idea. For example, we may take on an NTR gameplay CG and show it being made as we discuss the game around it, or we might post polls in advance for a fan decided concept idea to make before your eyes. We might do it once a month, or maybe twice. Could be both of us there, chatting and interacting, could be just be all about the art. All things to consider if we take this on, so the question simply is…

What do y’all think? Anyone for Art Streaming?

---

There we have it. That’s our post about our page, what’s on our minds for the year, what we want to know from you fans in terms of improvements, and where we see our best ways forward into a whole new level of adult gaming, aka our goals.

It’s been a long post, with a lot in it, so we’re going to leave it here. Take some time to let it settle in, and we’ll take this big opening statement as the start of the conversation that’ll run all year, here on the page as it’s warranted and direct on our Discord as well.

Thanks for taking the time to read all this, to help us think and talk through ways to be better at what we do, and to reach the goals we want for ourselves and our beWilderverse. All that’s left to say is we hope the year ahead is substantially better for us all in our community, because we want to make some awesome, hot and kinky stuff, we really do! So until then…

Be a part of making this page perfect and beWilder!