Let's do a hypothetical. Your goal is just to make as money out of patreon. You don't care about ethics, artistic integrity, and all that abstract nonesense. You bake some half assed Daz Renders, give them big boobs. Make sure the landlady really has big boobs. You slap on incest/harem and whatever what's popular on f95 in a halfbake story.
Would you be able to entice people enough to live off patreon?
People are pretty good at recognizing whether a creator has passion for their own project or not.
You might fool people at first, but it would become quickly apparent. You wouldn't only have to "half-ass" the renders and game, you'd also have to "half-ass" the social media posts you'd HAVE to use to attract attention to your Patreon, then you'd have to "half-ass" the Patreon posts.
It would be harder than you think to even "half-ass" it.
If money is your goal, you're likely to make much more by "half-assing" a part-time job.
The short answer is no if you live in the USA or Northern/Western Europe -- unless you are lucky.
....
50% of adult game creators on Patreon are bringing in $13 USD or less per month and have 17 patrons.
This is the big one right here. This should be plastered all over the site.
You'd better be PASSIONATE about your game and love working on it regardless of what you make off of it, because chances are you won't make much of anything off of it.
And it can be very much luck as to whether or not your game becomes a breakout hit - but that's going to take passion in addition to luck. Passion to stick it out during all the months when you may not be making ANYTHING.
I listened to an interview with Darkcookie (of Summertime Saga fame), and he went months on Patreon when he started with ZERO Patreons. He was almost ready to quit, then he got ONE Patreon, and felt guilty, so he continued. Then the Patreon count started to snowball. But if I recall, he said he was so demotivated by the lack of attention that he was a day away from quitting.
Here is something else important about "luck".
"Luck is opportunity meeting preparedness."
You have to have a good game you are passionately working on to get "lucky" when the opportunity of the right people stumbling onto it happens. (The one Patreon who found Darkcookie's game happened to be an avid social media user, and bragged on the game across several forums and sites.)
TLDR;
Doing a "half-ass" job is going to be almost as hard as doing it right, and you are unlikely to find success regardless. Better to do what you are passionate about.
