I wrote this up in the other thread, but I figured some of you here may not follow it but would be interested.
I want to address something about the size of L&P's Patreon. I see it often suggested that he has too many patrons, and that his success has insulated him from criticism and pressure. I too have made this argument, but I wanted to look at it more closely because I've been wondering if 2000 patrons really is anything to celebrate for a game like AWAM. So I decided to take a look at a couple other creators and compare the growth since 2018 (L&P's first year) and over the last 12 months.
I decided to look at three other creators, DPC, ICSTOR, and Caribdis. DPC is one of the biggest creators of AVGs, while L&P is often compared to ICSTOR. Caribdis makes a game called Eternum that I'm not too familiar with. I chose them because they are the 49th biggest creator of AVGs on Patreon (L&P ranks #76 for reference), so I chose them at random just to get a feel for a "smaller" dev.
Starting with L&P, let's get something out of the way: his growth has been really good. I've included the table below, but you can see that from 2018 to 2019 his patreon grew by 137%, growth in the next three years was 31%; 35%; and 41%. In total, since March, 2018, his Patreon has grown by 1,697 patrons (495%).
But how does that stack up to some of his contemporaries?
DPC's growth is off the charts. In April 2018 (the earliest date available for DPC) they had
1 (ONE!) patron. A year later they had 940. Ok, crazy, but when you have 1 patron there's nowhere to go but up. But it's worth noting that DPC overtook L&P in less than a year, even though L&P had joined Patreon four months earlier than DPC. But DPC wasn't done, from 2019 to 2020 their Patreon grew by 3,791, to a total of 4,732 Patrons, a growth of 403%. From 2020 to 2021 they again doubled by 133% to 11,046 patrons. Growth leveled off in 2022, and they grew by 38% to 15,223. Putting aside their first year, if we look at their Patreon from 2019 to 2022, they've
grown by 14,282 a staggering 1,518% increase. Today, DPC has more than 7X as many patrons as L&P. Look, I love BADIK, but do we really think BADIK is seven times better than AWAM?
Ok, so let's look everyone's favorite scumbag: ICSTOR!
This guy predates L&P on Patreon by quite a while, but to keep the numbers comparable I started with March 26th, 2018 when ICSTOR had 1,209 patrons. A year later his Patreon had boomed to 5,423 patrons, a growth of 349%. After that the wheels came off as patrons (slowly) woke up to his scam. But he still saw year-over-year growth in both 2020 and 2021. FINALLY, the year-over-year in 2021 showed the deserved declines, but only of 1,706 patrons (-26%). Today, he still has more than 2X as many patrons as L&P.
Ok, so finally let's look at the new guy, Caribdis. His Patreon page only goes back to April 2020 when he had 33 patrons. By March 31, 2021 he had 742- a growth of 2,148%. He followed this up over the last year with a net gain of 2,096 patrons (282%) to 2,838 total patrons. In two years this dev overtook L&P and has 1.4X as many patrons.
Look, this is only a simple analysis that I spent 30 minutes on, so it isn't complete, but it's enough to get us thinking. Looking at the numbers, I'm left with two thoughts:
- L&P has left a lot of money on the table and we shouldn't consider 2,000 patrons necessarily good. While I don't want to diminish his success, and I admit that if I ever had a Patreon reach 2,000 members I would be ecstatic. But AWAM is an excellent game and when we compare it to a couple other devs it feels like the game is massively under-performing considering the quality put into it.
- L&P did not experience either the surge in growth of the other devs, and maintained a lower level of growth. From 2018 to 2019, he grew by 137%, but compared to DPC, ICSTOR, and Caribdis that's paltry growth. From 2019 to 2020, L&P's growth leveled off at 31%, or a net of 255 patrons. In that same time DPC grew by 403%, a net of 3,791 patrons. Even ICSTOR manged to net a gain of 956 new patrons, even if that was "only" 18%. But ok, those guys are huge household names, but even Caribdis manged 282% growth in their second year, a net gain of 2,096 patrons. Perhaps most alarming is that, from 2020 to 2021, when EVERYONE knew that ICSTOR was a scam, he still managed to gain a net of 278 new patrons...only 100 fewer patrons than L&P gained over the same time.
I'm not trying to shit on L&P, but these numbers do tell a story. While L&P is successful, and is making boatloads of money, I think we need to reevaluate how we frame the argument that his Patreon is uber successful and insulates him from criticism. If these numbers are representative of broader trends, what I see is a dev who has choked off and constrained his own success. His peers, even outright scam artists, have continually outperformed him in terms of growth. There's no reason that L&P shouldn't be in the top 50 biggest creators of adult games on Patreon, AWAM is too good to be relegated to 72. To me, this suggests that word of L&P's development practices is either well known, or quickly becomes apparent to new patrons. He neither attracts a huge number of new patrons, nor holds on to them for very long. While there's no way to truly know the rate of turnover for any of these devs, L&P's growth could be considered anemic when compared to his peers.
TL: DR- If this is all a scam, then L&P is leaving a lot of money on the table and isn't maximizing his profits like others devs. A game like AWAM should not be struggling to exceed 2,000 patrons, and that suggests to me that L&P's reputation is hampering the game's success.
