Is it somehow distasteful for (indie or small-time) devs who sell their products for money to also have a Patreon?
Or is this just the new way smaller/interesting games get made that can't compete with the banker+government backed AAA shitshow?
What do you guys think?
Why do you make these threads on Holla Forums when you know it's gonna be nothing but apes slinging shit at each other screaming incoherently?
But anyway, it's in poor taste.
Patreon should technically speaking be used by small content creators, youtubers, streamers, people that have an audience and put out a steady flow of content, giving their audience a vague reason to support them.
In the case of indie devs, they're already being fully supported by people paying for the games that they're making, the transaction is already happening for they work, so adding a patreon on top of that is a bit scummy.
Either way no one is pointing these people a gun to their head, so it's on them if they want to support these individuals or not.
I haven't posted on Holla Forums in ages, been too busy and trying to optimize my time (staying off chans in general). But this kinda came up, and wanted some opinions that's all.
Is distasteful.
An "indie dev" with no decent portfolio that wants to "quit his job and dedicate full time to videogames" is dumb faggot that deserves no money at all.
If you want to make your first game, get a job and work on the game in your spare time. There's no rush.
yes they should get cancer and die
Doesnt matter to me. If someone is stupid enough to donate his cash to a developer who's also making his money by selling his game on steam and other places, then good for him. Who am I to get in the way of darwinism.
I wouldn't actually advocate preventing them from doing both but I always felt Patreon should be more oriented towards being a source of support for people who intend to release their work to the public at large for free.
a good developer with the right mindset could use patreon/kickstarter/etc to escape publisher meddling. in theory it is not a bad idea, the issue is people donating on patreon/kickstarter/etc. are fucking imbeciles who think that throwing more money at the products development means it will become a better product. the other issue is that developers that are actually good probably have some standards and pride and don't beg for money like fucking urchins
I'd say yes.
You shouldn't get paid by your customers to sell something to them. If the games were free then it would be a different story altogether.
I personally believe Patreon should be used for things the user intends to release for free, such as artwork or music.
Anyone with a Patreon either is a SJW or is about to become one. Games from people like that would be Gone Home-tier trash.
they're usually the first to either die of hunger or sell out when a whiff of cash comes blowing their way
but then you get faggots who are paid thousands of dollars to release one shitty drawing/track per month.
I think Patreon is a great tool for people that make porn games and such.
That's it though.
If that's the value people get out of it, so be it.
What does a successful musician who releases one 12 track album in a year make, and how does that break down per track?
What is your problem with this?
That is exactly how the service is intended to work, a popular person gets a lot of money.
I'm cool with it if the dev isn't a faggot about it.
If your games already make money then treat it as a tip jar and not your main source of income.
If your game is free then sure go for it, Patreon made porn games much less rare and I'm totally up for more porn games, I'd like to make one someday, too.
Also, technically, it's not really bad if people give someone free money if it doesn't affect me. The system can and has been exploited, but I'd say it does more good than bad, with letting small creators make a living doing what they love provided they have the skill.
it just rubs me the wrong way. the free market is made up of retards who will throw their money into a hole. as the saying goes, a fool and his money are soon parted, there's a sucker born every minute, etc.
Would releasing the game for free be an exception to that?
Only faggot cucks and fat hamplanets on Tumblr use that piece of shit site.
no user YOU are the ape
Youtubers is fine imho
Some porn games existe because of it so i kinda like it.
haha really funny
Cancer.
keks
I think it depends.
Is it a guy making niche games who can't survive on sales of the game alone? Sure, makes sense to go on Patreon until you blow up or word of mouth makes your games financially sound.
Are you someone who's receiving funding for one game only, some kind of dream project? I'd rather they plan out the budget they'd need and go to Kickstarter, or try and get some publisher on board.
And really, if you can stay off of Patreon or Kickstarter, then do it. It's not worth it to change the balance of power in the buyer/seller relationship unless you KNOW you can make something worth it. If you stay off, you can make it whenever you want. If you jump on the money bandwagon, you're held to a higher standard.
As always, there are good examples and bad examples, but you should strive to be independent, and if you must go to Patreon, then strive to deliver something worthwhile every month.
Unless you switch it to every episode or game released, so you get the money all at once. Then it's just a preorder.
Actually, the greatest sin of Patreon is the lack of responsibility on the side of the creator. Meaning that Patreon in no way, shape or form reinforces the idea that the "creators" have to make something. "Promises" are taken in as legitimate currency.
Yeah I feel like it promotes e-celebism which is something I am morally opposed to. Because it's not about what you create, it's about who you are that gets funded. OTOH, fact is money is like oxygen, you need it to survive… and due to bank/government involvement in the industry the deck is already stacked against smaller developers.
It depends on how much content they put out.
I follow this japanese dev that puts out small action RPGs where you play as goat people. Patrons get shit like concept art and unused music.
Oh and the worst part is when I did post about this mark mcfuck ass bumplocked me because he thought it was undertale, fucking dickhead.
It's wrong because developers are usually "artistic" or autistic and very few are actually responsible. Responsibility is the one thing they fear. You can usually name one or two examples of good ones and then I can name hundreds who suck. Kikestarter is proof enough of this.
Developers need a taskmaster who whips them and keeps them in line and only rewards them when the job is well done.
Patreon has produced absolutely nothing worthwhile and the amount of finished products it has given us is slim to nil.
Its a retard subscription system where you pay monthly to be a gullible moron.
I don't blame people for taking advantage of it though, its free money with no strings attached and people will always be fucking stupid enough to pay. That said I will not respect them as a game developer at all because you have to actually develop shit and the vast, vast majority do jack shit while raking in big bucks and claiming to be "sick" or some garbage like that prevents them from coding.
What about Dwarf Fortress, Sleepycabin and Shindol?
Don't be a fucking faggot
Don't forget a few emulators are funded by patreon now
In theory it makes for a nice tip jar. In practice 99% of the people using it are giant retards who want to use that as their pay, on top of when, or if they even release something
Is there a single "developer" that's on patreon who's game isn't either SJW trash or a scam?
Yes. You finished your product and then sell it, not the other way around. That's assuming it's actually ever finished.
Toady.
I'm making a game all on my own dime cos i don't want to have to deal with the massive shitshow of crowdfunding
Werent there amateur game devs here that use Patreon? Did they ever make significant progress from their game thanks to it, or does it look exactly the same as if they were a no budget garage dev?
I think unless the game is pay-to-win and it is supported by the devs after release with tweaks/updates then it isnt much different from youtubers producing content in small bits over time
Patreon makes no sense for any game that should be "done" at some point. It incentivizes developers to keep working on the game because they'll keep getting money. So it will most likely never end because the devs will always think it could be better. Now that being said it's really good for a game that will be developed perpetually forever like multi-player games or MMOs. In fact is really like to see someone make a completely free game with no microtransactions just funded solely through patreon. Or developers who quickly make small games like the process trainer guy.
-t. Patreon user
No seriously.
We've already argued about this, you outed yourself as a user of patreon personally after citing those exact examples and posting that exact image.
While the idea isn't terrible. It's just very easily abused.
Game devs can basically stretch out their game's development time to milk more money. Like Yandev does with his piece of shit simulator game. Patreon rewards devs who keep their games in infinite hiatus more than Devs who actually finish their game fast and release it.
It's gotten to the point where fanfiction storyfags make patreons expecting sheckels. I have no clue if people actually give anything.
lol I remember you
yeah that was me
It's distasteful, sure.
It's also an incentive for the devs to string development along as long as possible and produce results as slowly as possible. Huge red flag.
That said, if I were a dev, I'd throw up a patreon immediately. I could sure use the insane money that patreons seem to generate.
Fuck it, I'd dev extra slowly, too, just to milk it.
Patreon is for money laundering and tax evasion.
Even then, Patreon is for the most part cancer that encourages quantity over quality. Just about every artist that started using it degraded in artistic merit.
...
What's the most ridiculous shit that has gotten ridiculous funding anyway? I'm talking mashed potatoes type shit here.
Yeah? What's your game
Patreon led to huge improvements in the hypnofag community: middle-aged bitches charging ridiculous prices for 20 minute audio recordings are being replaced with younger, generally friendlier hypnotists who offer Patreon as an "early access" model and release all their subscriber-exclusive files for free after a few months. Several of them also post on Holla Forums and openly assist pirates, seeing it as free advertising.
I still hate Patreon in general even if a couple people use it well.
Only acceptable if the game is free after relase. No freemium bullshit, early-access, or similar cash grabbing stunts.
If you can actually deliver updates on a weekly or monthly basis and don't come up with excuses like reading e-mails and shit I think Patreon is ok.
But we all know the reality of things and I think you do too, OP.
It could work as a milestone system, so long as the pledges don't default. But then they'd have to show all their cards to the whole audience, or the system risks being taken advantage of by interpretations of milestones. Basically, it requires human oversight by a neutral employee, and even there comes a dilemma.
Basically, it's one big slippery slope capable of great good and great bad.
Actually, yeah, sure.
If a developer is like "i'm going to make and release small games for free, and if you want to support me using this patreon it will allow me to survive off your cash but as a trade off i'll spend all my time making games", that should be pretty fair overall.
For example there was this dev that used to make small games by himself that were pretty good, completely for free, under the name Locomalito, i wouldn't have minded supporting him this way.
Unfortunately he's starting to sell them now.
Some of them are pretty damn good tho, especially Maldita Castilla.
Indie developers made games without Patreon and Kickstarter for years, but for some reason now it's necessary.
They are getting training-wheels handed to them for free.
Training wheels imply they eventually plan to take them off. Patreon is welfare for devs who can't make good games consistently.
The only dev on Patreon who actually deserves the money is Toady.
The only thing which is acceptable are games which can't be sold normally, such as porn games.
Other than that, game devs shouldn't be on Patreon, it's a system which is easily abused.
Why not just push for the destigmatization of pornographic media?
The idea that porn and porn games must be pushed behind a curtain is retarded and by using services that restrict what you can do/create you encourage the behavior. By using Patreon you bring a gatekeeper inside an area that already has several gatekeepers. (credit/debit cards have agreements that ALREADY allow them to not be used in certain things they believe are "damaging" to their brand which can literally be applied to anything)
Depends.
Okay yeah most of them are shitty devs riding on hype
But for games that are already playable and getting content additions, games that need the monthly influx (server costs, I guess?) and similar, I suppose it's justifiable. And if they offer other bonuses to patrons, I suppose that's also okay.
But 90 percent of the time, fuck it.