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The Future of Free Content
8 years ago
HTH STUDIOS
A personal and direct message from HTH Studios LLC:
We as a company have given up our lives to provide content for this game, to move this project forward and keep it running. As of now the studio employs a total of three people: One that advertises and networks, one that promotes and does our PR, and one that by himself writes thousands of lines of code, draws and animates this game into existence with his bare hands. As of right now we don't have any free time as our employees work an average of 72 to 78 hours a week.
We pay thousands of dollars to our technicians and to people who run our servers, to fix code that's messed up and broken, and make repairs on our system, on top of advertising, to run this project and keep it going. Over the years we've had some of the most ridiculous things said to us, demands made, and how dare we charge money to keep this project alive. We've been near the verge of bankruptcy several times since starting this business, and we struggling to the extremes to keep our heads above water.
We can no longer tolerate the demands that people are making. We can't continue to give away content and expect to keep this alive. But still we persist. We will not give up quietly, and will continue to release updates.
To keep the content flowing to you, we've reached a limit on our servers as to how many free members we can actually maintain. We have over 200,000 Free Members with only 4% who are Gold members. As it stands we can no longer maintain this load. We cannot constantly produce free content, host it and pay for it out of our pockets. So as a company we have come together and say that yes we will still offer free content, but we are sad to say that we have to reduce the amount of free content we provide and we are eliminating the Free Member updates. We have to reduce Free content in order to keep this game alive and available on-line.
We would like to stress, we are not eliminating Free content entirely, we are simply reducing the amount of Free content available and will not be adding to Free content aside from sporadic updates. These changes are going into effect immediately. Doing so will allow us to focus more time on Gold Updates providing more and better product for those who pay for Gold content. This will give Gold Members up to 4 scenes a month (including continuing to revise and update scenes), an increase from from the previous 1-3 scenes per month.
If you are upset about us having to reduce Free content, please stand by our game and support us by purchasing a subscription for $5.00 so we can continue to expand this project. Subscriptions cost less than a meal at McDonalds. We beseech you, if you do not like us pulling back free content, by all means go gold, because that content will be instantly available to you. If not, then we won't hold you back from walking away from our studio. As much as we love our fans and what we do, if you have to walk away from us because we want to keep this alive, then do so. We will remain and continue to produce content for Gold members.
Again these changes will go into effect immediately.
With the utmost respect and sincerity,
HTH Studios LLC
We as a company have given up our lives to provide content for this game, to move this project forward and keep it running. As of now the studio employs a total of three people: One that advertises and networks, one that promotes and does our PR, and one that by himself writes thousands of lines of code, draws and animates this game into existence with his bare hands. As of right now we don't have any free time as our employees work an average of 72 to 78 hours a week.
We pay thousands of dollars to our technicians and to people who run our servers, to fix code that's messed up and broken, and make repairs on our system, on top of advertising, to run this project and keep it going. Over the years we've had some of the most ridiculous things said to us, demands made, and how dare we charge money to keep this project alive. We've been near the verge of bankruptcy several times since starting this business, and we struggling to the extremes to keep our heads above water.
We can no longer tolerate the demands that people are making. We can't continue to give away content and expect to keep this alive. But still we persist. We will not give up quietly, and will continue to release updates.
To keep the content flowing to you, we've reached a limit on our servers as to how many free members we can actually maintain. We have over 200,000 Free Members with only 4% who are Gold members. As it stands we can no longer maintain this load. We cannot constantly produce free content, host it and pay for it out of our pockets. So as a company we have come together and say that yes we will still offer free content, but we are sad to say that we have to reduce the amount of free content we provide and we are eliminating the Free Member updates. We have to reduce Free content in order to keep this game alive and available on-line.
We would like to stress, we are not eliminating Free content entirely, we are simply reducing the amount of Free content available and will not be adding to Free content aside from sporadic updates. These changes are going into effect immediately. Doing so will allow us to focus more time on Gold Updates providing more and better product for those who pay for Gold content. This will give Gold Members up to 4 scenes a month (including continuing to revise and update scenes), an increase from from the previous 1-3 scenes per month.
If you are upset about us having to reduce Free content, please stand by our game and support us by purchasing a subscription for $5.00 so we can continue to expand this project. Subscriptions cost less than a meal at McDonalds. We beseech you, if you do not like us pulling back free content, by all means go gold, because that content will be instantly available to you. If not, then we won't hold you back from walking away from our studio. As much as we love our fans and what we do, if you have to walk away from us because we want to keep this alive, then do so. We will remain and continue to produce content for Gold members.
Again these changes will go into effect immediately.
With the utmost respect and sincerity,
HTH Studios LLC
Comment posting has been disabled by the journal owner.
Get money~
Do whatcha gotta do to get that pay, guys. You do work, you get pay, business at its most basic. You're an LLC, not a non-profit.
Now you have no reason to listen to anything that I have to say but my suggestion would be to cut off free access entirely but introduce a kind of lifetime pass so people don't have to worry about keeping up with subscriptions fees ontop of their already existing financial issues. As for how much I'll leave up to you but I doubt many of your more devoted followers would gladly pay $100+ for it (In fact I'd imagine many of them have already sunk in over $1000 already.)
Also I feel as though HTH currently has a limited future due to the limits of Flash. Now I'm no expert but I know that you can only cram so much stuff into it before it gives up so you may wanna look towards other game engines such as Unity or Unreal. Again I'm no expert so I could be completely wrong but I'm pretty sure the reason Madness: Project Nexus 2 is on Unity is because they couldn't add anymore to the first game due to flash.
Anywho that's my thoughts on the matter, take it for what it is.
Lifetime passes would not help us maintain content in the long run because that is a finite amount of money that will eventually run out unless we continually pulled in new lifetime members. That's why we do subscription content.
I break Flash to make HTH as big as it is. I am very aware of the cap on flash, I hit that barrier with HTH 1 and have long since surpassed that. Furthermore we have been working with unity, Many of the backgrounds have already been updated to incorporate Unity backgrounds. Moving the entire game to Unity is an extensive process one that requires we pay someone to help us with it, something we can't do currently, nor can we do that if we had lifetime memberships.
Good luck with everything, but put me on the list of people who won't pay for garbage and won't suck up to you either.
Because our game is still in Beta we are working to improve the interface. I don't need suck ups, they don't help make a better product.
Just understand that not everyone is a free member by choice, maybe they are just scrapping by on their bills, maybe they aren't of age as you said because who can really be sure? Or they just don't see HTH as being worth the investment. Are all of those 200.000 free members active members? I joined the forums and made an account a while ago but I pretty much never log in now. Never really saw the point really as I'm more for POV stuff and I've pretty much gone though all of that stuff already in HTH.
That's just my opinion though so don't get mad at me if I said something you don't agree with.
By keeping the free content, You're advertising your wared to a Vastly Huge group of people while Still promoting your "pay for" product.
The fact that you continue to run/work with so little funding is Truly Quite Impressive to me!
If people want to see the Good Stuff, Then $5.00 is not That Hard to scratch up! I have Gladly paid for gold Many Time's and can say it is Well worth Far more than five buck's! I would be subscribed now, but I know longer have a functioning computer and my phone doesn't do well with one your sight....
November: 1 new scene, 1 revision, 1 transfer from gold to free.
October 1 new, 1 transfer.
September, 2 new, 1 transfer.
August: 1 new, 1 transfer
July, 2 transfers, 1 new.
June 1 new
May, 1 new, 2 transfers.
April, 1 new.
March; 1 new, 1 transfer
Febuary: 2 new, 1 transfer
January: 1 new, 1 transfer.
It's funny that you talk about me not knowing, but I can literally go back through the archive for 2016, thats 15 new scenes, 2 revisions, and 11 transfers. Thirteen of those things are not new content, I remember crows original promise, but really no ones going to hold him up to making 3/2, hell most were willing to ignore 2/1. This isn't a ton, this is a small portion of users who are converting. Most who haven't or wont have already left. For doing "Four" new scenes, I've not seen a single month breach four, so, where are you getting THAT from? So far you've gotten three this year out, 2 new, one revision. So wheres that fourth scene?
You say its amazing, I can point to games like Rack where its one guy doing a ton of work, I get it, theirs a ton of work going into this, and to that I give respect. But the Amount of content coming out on a monthly basis is not enough, maybe it'll go up now that the freebies arent there, who knows, I doubt it. 2015 wasn't too much better, I can go back and catalogue those too if you'd like? I'm willing to look past the end of 2015/start of 2016 given their court and legal issues, that stuff takes time, I get that, but my point stands. The amount of content coming out is not satisfactory to most users to buy gold, or they would.
Also yes, I recall the original pricing was going to be 10 dollars a month for gold, not 5, but at the rate content is going now 10 dollars would have all but ensured that no one subbed on a monthly basis. Again, yes, perhaps they're going to ramp up production, perhaps, that's the promise so far. And we'll see if they can actually stick to that this time, but track records tell a Lot. And this track record, well, its got a couple of black spots. So I'll sit, wait, and watch, just like always. I'll either be right, or wrong, no two ways about that. Time will always judge in the end.
I've played Rack, it's a fun game, Ty is a huge fan, but it's still different from what I'm doing.
We're not going under, we're just not able to support the overload of free users and giving away over half our game for free. We've already seen an increase in users and subscribers with many people excited for the 4 scene releases a month. The fourth scene is the Rio missionary scene that Patreon members voted for a revision.
Yes, the rack is a fun game, yes its a fundamentally different game, but the core ground work is the same, its one guy doing a ton of work on a single game, by themselves, but this is also why i didn't bring up projects like Cat-house tails and whatever that other animated 3d multiple person project is, you can't be expected to keep up with the progress of a team, but when you look at Feks work which is all 3d, some would argue which is harder then 2d, and couple that with the fact that he is also doing all the codework, its not too hard to compare the two games and the progress they make.
Yes, your subrates may have risen for now, but will they retain that rise in rates? Thats the huge question here, how long before the new content rate is not enough and falters. I'm not saying it will fail, I'm not saying it will succeed. It might get more subs, it might drive more people to more questionable means of getting their hands on. In the end, the market will show weather this was the right move, or weather it will doom the studio.
I'm not going to question the monetary value of the whole thing, or the quality, quite frankly, it was fap material, as long as it "worked" it didn't need to look super pretty for me {And it runs like arse on my rig anyways if I leave it on high graphics so "Super pretty looking" was a moot point anyways to me}, quality and artistic aesthetics is simply a matter of taste, so one cannot say a game is failing just because the art "hasn't improved", I've personally seen, and appreciated some improvements, while feeling others detracted from the value of the game, and thats the nature of art.
A few puzzles dose not make your game go anything beyond fap material. At the core you're a porn looping video show. Your interactivity is clicking buttons and hot zones on charters. You don't keep things on model, most annoyingly the player model. You can't even keep deadlines which is why many gold members left.
You went from this promise of such and so many updates then slowly tapered them off so now you're delivering the least amount of effort for the cost you are asking. 5 dollars from one person a month is not a big deal, but when it comes from a lot of people giving what you are churning out.. it's not worth it.
And the funnest part? People can't even say they have anything to SHOW for the purchases. I'll just mention your 'movie' here and be done with that particular example. But, I mean lets compare an art sight like 'fur after dark', or another game out there 'Yiffalicious'. After someone has paid they have the program or the art to keep making content or enjoy the content after. You? Moment you stop there nothing to show for it. I mean paying for entertainment is nothing new. But paying someone a constant fee for basically a couple of seconds of content each month is silly. I'm fairly certain you mentioned an offline version, what ever happened to that? Or any touch to the RLD?
The reason your viewer-base/subscriber base is failing is because of this 'mightier then thou' you and your team have. Where criticisms are looked at like, well... how you handled that. "If you don't like it don't play it." and "well that's your opinion." That's a child's answer, more so for a business that literately just said we're losing people because people aren't buying into it. You do not want to tell people you want money from to STOP PLAYING YOUR GAME! You want to ask them, 'Ok, what do you want that will make you KEEP playing." And no lie? If your membership is so small that's the opinion of a lot of other people to.
It's not the free content killing your game. And this from someone that did pay for it. It's the fact you waste to much time revising things rather then putting new things on the table, and I don't mean new characters because they are interchangeable pose in most cases, and giving people value for there hard earned dollars, then dismissing criticisms because you think your gods gift to this kind of content. That's the reason 'I' stopped paying after buying a year and basically not getting my dollars worth from such things. Cause no lie? I think a lot of your stuff was leagues better and worked better before you started going back and making 'revisions' like Candy and Anne come to mind. Honestly this comes off as you trying to leach more money from people for even less work, not a honest attempt to improve your output.
Actually you put it best yourself about less then a meal from McDonald's. That's the prefect encapsulation for HTH. It's fast food. There is nothing really substantial there, you have it once, and its done and after you've had it, you can't ever have it again cause there's nothing to have unlike other more robust things out there.
If you really, really, REALLY want HTH to improve and grow in membership, get your head out your ass. Stop dismissing honest criticisms about your work, work habits, promises and such and give people value for the product they are buying. Cause if you don't, even your hardest of hardcore fans and protectors will turn there back on you if you keep up the rigamarole you are currently.
I've nothing left to say, nor will I be responding to anything.
I 'hope' you take what I said to heart and improve and I wish you all the best of luck.
You may not think the scenes need to be fixed, but I and others who consistently pay for the game do. This is my game and I want things to look the way I envision them, and I'll work at it until I see the end result I want. IF that means I have to tackle it in chunks then I'll tackle it in pieces like I have been.
I'll say this outright; nothing of value of lost with this move.
"I honestly have no response to this other than laughter." - Typical fanboy reaction. If an opinion doesn't coincide with yours, it's not valid and the only thing to do is laugh at it.
"I don't know how some people can be that out of touch with something and then proceed to blindly comment on it." - Perfectly applies to you.
"There has been a crap ton of updates, at least one new scene a month." - Yeah, we went from 3/4 updates a month to 1 update a month with a semi-update of an already existing scene made available for free members. Yeah, truly a crapton of updates.
"...the company is obviously growing." - Is this why they've nearly gone bankrupt several times with only 3 main people on board? Correct me if I'm wrong but growth implies there is money to spend on it. If they are/were struggling with financials, cleary they don't have the funds to grow.
"Everyone I've talked to says..." - Because clearly everyone is right. You talked with everyone in the fandom, everyone on planet Earth or everyone in your own little clique? Huge difference.
"...the quality has improved..." - Subjective. To me, there is basically no improvement since the game released years ago. Player characters are still missing for the most part, the EXP window is there but hasn't been used for anything and the majority of player character choices are still unavailable.
"...nothing of value is lost, lots of value is gained." - If you like paying for barely any improvements (if any), that's your prerogative. It won't change my opinion.
Addendum: they haven't fleshed out the Gold Members Area and yet there is a third island allegedly in the making.
All you did with your little dissection of my comment is misconstrue everything I said while taking it out of context the entire way though.
You are entitled to you comments
As am I
You don't need to be a rude prick because in turn that causes people to react in turn
......As far as it goes it seems that crow has been keeping up with his promises. I'd like to see a break down of what he hasn't kept up with.. Provide some sort of foundation for these accusations if you would.
Seems the only thing you're here to do is troll this post to be honest.
"made you look like a fucking dick"
"Perhaps you're jaded"
"misconstrue everything I said while taking it out of context"
"You don't need to be a rude prick"
"troll"
I'm sorry I hurt your fragile ego, please forgive me for saying something bad about your Lord and Master. By all means, keep defending him if you want but the above quotes simply prove that instead of offering any sort of discussion, you resorted to petty insults from the get go, starting by considering my first comment to be 'laughable'.
Oh, and renadyne above broke down the updates for last year and even a portion of 2015 but of course, you simply threw that out the window with that typical "don't like it leave" excuse. Here's a fact: just because it's not your opinion or it comes from someone who isn't a professional doesn't immediately invalidate their opinion but you don't care. You cannot be argued with because you start with insults. I WILL give you, however, that I HAVE gotten a bit jaded over the years. ;)