Patreon. A website where creators can earn ongoing revenue from their fans directly. What’s not to love? Being connected with your fan base directly seems to be the way to go in order to flourish these days. Enter the Patreon project Breeding Season, a sex game dubbed as “Harvest Moon meets hentai”. For those who may not be familiar with Harvest Moon it is a farm simulation game. Your main objective is to rebuild a run-down old farm and turn it into a successful one. Now imagine the objective of Harvest Moon and add Catgirls, Harpies and Dickwolves as your “livestock.” That’s Breeding Season.
It became one of the biggest funded projects on Patreon. Pulling in $42.3k a month, all seemed to be well underway. Unfortunately good things come to an end. Breeding Season vanished without a trace leaving fans confused about what happened. Having such a large fan base and the financial backing it is hard to NOT wonder what went wrong.
Same Book Different Pages
Nothing was in black and white regarding the sudden collapse of Breeding Season. A blog post surfaced from one of the developers, HBomb. Upon explaining the cause for the collapse, he pointed his finger to Vladimir Sandler (also known as S-Purple and Shwig), the now former art director of the project.
According to the blog post, Sandler received quite the contract.
“He was entitled to half the remaining revenue after all other business expenses (including labor, etc) had been paid. I also allowed him to retain the rights to his artwork, under the assumption that if either of us ever chose to leave the project that they would be able to then sell their portion of the product to the other, or negotiate for royalties.”
The post goes on to state that Sandler wasn’t a team player and his duties eventually fell upon the shoulders of the other members of the team. It also argued that there was lack of direction within the art department. Duties kept piling up; however, Sandler continued to diminish his responsibilities. Despite everything stated, HBomb noted that,
He also noted that the developers were to strip Sandlers assets from the game or face legal action. For a project that gained attention and steadily grew to vanish so suddenly due to a contract’s wording and lack of cooperation would make anyone feel upset and now empty-handed.
Shortly after the statement was made, Sandler came forth online. He went to Tumblr to discuss his side regarding issues with the team and ultimately leaving. He states that he wasn’t the only one in the process of leaving the Breeding Season team. Sandler points out that,
He proceeds to state that before he became part of the team, Breeding Season was “dead in the water” as a project. He went on to say that he was brought onto the team to “revitalize it with better art and actual consistent updates” through his art. Sandler said that HBomb disrespected him and wasn’t fulfilling his role as project manager for Breeding Season. Both parties have discussed their issues with one another so there may be something more going on but will never see.
Taking A Look at The Alphas
Before the collapse of Breeding Season, the developers released a number of alphas. I reviewed a few of them.
Alpha 5.9 & 7.5
Alpha 5.9 came out over a year ago. Upon opening the game, it jumps right into asking whether your character will be male or female and what name their name will have. You have the option to pick a name as well. After you made your choices a lady named Margo greets you. She greets and applauds you for taking on your parents’ farm and to take on what they left behind. Animation and design is solid. It’s full of color and the characters have personality. When you go to pick your monsters you can purchase any breed whether or not you have a ‘home’ for that specific breed. (Until you get the home they need you cannot do anything until then)
Alpha 7.5 was the last big alpha. It was released 3 months ago. You now have an introductory cutscene of your character on a train heading towards the farm. You can tell the game received a lot of changes over the year. The lines are a lot cleaner. The characters you interact with have movement in their mouth when they speak. They’re given more life. Purchasing monsters are different. The stockades that you have currently are only for the monsters you can purchase at the start, dickwolves and catgirls. The premise of the game and jobs available to you are still the same. Nothing is different aside from the updated graphics and movement of the characters in 7.5.
Alpha 7.6 & 7.7.1
Nothing has changed from 7.5. The opening sequence is the same, as is the cutscene, the animation and characters. Developer notes said both alphas had improvements as far as gameplay and interaction; however, I didn’t notice such changes.
Was Breeding Season “dead in the water” like Sandler claimed? I wouldn’t say that; however, there was a mass improvement between 5.9 and 7.5. The changes are upfront. There was definite progress between those two alphas as well as changing up which monsters you could purchase immediately. Still, I feel like the game lacked more…interaction. You purchase monsters, breed them and have a chance of birthing another one. In addition, you can purchase different homes so you can obtain different species. You have jobs which were having a monster of a certain level and stats to sell for money.
That’s it though. You breed, level your monsters up, sell them if they fit the bill and continue. If there was anything else planned for the game, the developers never hinted on it. Not to say that the game itself was bland or not enjoyable. The game was enjoyable, very much so.
However, I expected more. The process gets monotonous quickly. While I understand that these were only alphas, they left me with an empty feeling. It just seemed like there was more, but you could only work with what little was there. Based on the updates released on Patreon, I didn’t feel it progressed to a point where they could make a public release anytime soon. There were other areas on the map that you could look at. It gave the impression that there was more to come as far as different monsters and new characters that would offer you more jobs. If more recent releases of the alphas had shown different areas to explore it would have made for a better experience. It could have been closer to a public release as well.
Things That Could Have Been Different
Between the statements of both parties there is one thing that constantly comes up, the contract. But there’s more to it, particularly how everyone within the team ultimately got involved in this whole ordeal. Was there anything that could have changed?
Let’s look at the contract.
The statements surrounding the contract are certainly true. Sandler would receive half the monthly revenue after accounting for all business expenses. Sandler was an independent contractor and not an employee of HBomb (Alexander). And any concepts and designs created by HBomb are his exclusively. Any concepts and designs created by Sandler are his exclusively. And any concepts and designed created by BOTH are owned JOINTLY by HBomb and Sandler.
It looks as though there was no foul play. The terms of agreement were honored; however, HBomb states that aside from the team gave Sandler, “…he has been resolute in rejecting my offer to buy the assets from him, meaning he’s not even just trying to extort the project even further than he already has but he actively wants to fuck over the entire thing.”
He went on to say that, “He can’t even reasonably repurpose any of these assets for use in another project because anything that is either based on my design or was touched by any of the other artists or animators also jointly belongs to me”. And that’s true. Both of the artist jointly owned anything they made. Using any artwork without the other’s knowledge or permission is violating the contract. Sandler responded to this statement on his blog saying he “Could have sold those assets to HBomb” but feels that if he agreed to do so that there wouldn’t be any progress with Breeding Season. That “people would have been throwing money down a hole.”
It put Sandler in a sticky situation: He couldn’t use the assets because of the joint ownership, but felt selling them would be a waste because the team wouldn’t do anything with them. Nobody mentioned what will happen with the assets. No one may see them again. Only time will tell.
What could have been avoided through all of this? It’s hard to pinpoint. Both parties seem to have differences that go beyond Breeding Seasons. From expressing disrespect on both sides to lack of direction with the project as a whole one could suspect that it was a matter of clashing personalities.
Conclusion
Since the collapse of Breeding Season one may ask “Well, what happened to the rest of the team?” There hasn’t been any posts or updates from HBomb. The former lead animator Vanilly is currently at work on a new project, Faemiliar. Sandler himself has a new game, Cloud Meadow, which already has a strong and active Patreon. He stated in his personal blog that he created this concept to “save what I could of the Breeding Season Project, and deliver on the spirit of the promises made by the project”
While anyone is free to join someone’s Patreon project and can easily leave, seeing a project’s cancellation after receiving any kind of money from patrons is painful. It’s important to keep in mind that the people who create projects on Patreon aren’t the only ones involved. There are also the people who give money monthly to continue to see your work and see you progress.
With this in mind, it’s important to have a team that’s all on the same page as well as have good management skills. In speaking of terms of an adult Patreon project it is especially important due to all the time and effort that goes forth. Adult projects cannot go onto major platforms like Steam,etc. so having sites like Patreon is a good way to be able to create for those who are wanting to be able to get their hands on adult products.
Things don’t look as though they will calm down with the Breeding Season situation. In the end of HBomb’s post he encourages people to steal the game while Sandler is “shocked and dismayed” that someone he worked with is telling his fans to pirate Sandler’s work. It can only go up from here, right? Happy breeding.
Select images courtesy of the Breeding Season Wiki.
Richard
September 2, 2016“That’s it though. You breed, level your monsters up, sell them if they fit the bill and continue. If there was anything else planned for the game, the developers never hinted on it.”
True. Very True. I got the hint that they hadn’t really thought it out at the start, and were putting the game mechanics ahead of the plot/story line.
Not that there wasn’t a story line; you were supposed to be building up your farm to the point where you could pay off the totally unreasonable debts and fines being levied on your inheritance (you got ownership of the farm when your parents died). But what happened when you missed a payment? Nothing. Nothing at all…..
Your monsters had a “Happiness” stat which served no purpose in the game. Things were being tweaked that didn’t need to be, or were made less useful (the “consumables” selling and usage interface, for one).
The graphics and animations were very good, which makes it a shame that the game collapsed in the way it did. There were no problems *with the game itself* that were beyond salvaging.
Hopefully this will serve as an object lesson to semi-pro game designers.