Re: I'm already sick of the +18 games
Well first of all im not trying to knock all the patreon dev outhere but im just going to say patreon or whatever that thinf called is easily abuse by evil game dev out there. Note : im talking about rpgmaker game.
Some of op said that are quite true, take an example if you pledge $10 for 1 year (i know you can cancel it anytime you want im just pointing the worse case scenario), and the game isnt even finish or it still further away from it to be finished, that game alone cost $120. You actually payed $120 for unfinished product, it cost way more from any dlsite rpgmaker game outhere.
So my point patreon game dev is lack of telling how long that game is going to be finished (and yes im aware too some dev or i must say most of patreon game dev are work alone but that doesnt make an excuse if you are planning to make a game that people are paying for, you should add atleast your own deadline. A year, 2 year or whatever so people can know and well inform how much money they would have thrown). I myself dont know approximately how long a game from the scratch to be finish, but from my experience in any job there should be a deadline if there isnt any we can just laid back and take our time to finish our job (this is what im afraid of from pledging since most of them dont say/know approximately how long that game is going to be finish. I rather buy a finish product that quite buggy, heck even if it buggy there will be a patch later on because its part of their job).
Before i got swarm by mad dev try to think what i said first.
I do agree.
Problem with estimation lies in dev not being able to tell how long it could take to do x and y. Though, after half or a year estimating should be possible with bigger/smaller error. No deadlines without any financial support from people is more or less fine, let him/her [dev] get a hang on it.
While on patreon or other form, try estimating using a backlog, compare with earlier months and such. With any form of project management it should be doable at some point, rest is error margin.
Price part is also weird. Depending how you look at this.
If it's a total price for a product in making, then yeah, it's not cheap.
But supporting isn't paying for a product, it's helping to... well, support it.
It may be a matter of semantics, but it does change point of view. But it's still a person to person.
What annoys me most is this way of thinking:
Hey, you are supporting with 1$? You can access newsfeed but not any releases.
Like... why? Does that mean this supporter is not good enough? There are simple ways of dealing with that, with lower support = wait week or two weeks longer. Anything but that middle finger.
So what, you think you will get more people that will pay 5$ to get latest release? Yeah, right.
More likely people will just say "fuck that" and grab pirated copy.
Investing in supporters/fanbase is always better than creating means for people finding cheaper ways.
Better to have 200 supporters giving 1$ rather than 40 giving 5$.