I think that it ultimately comes down to how patrons are treated.
Option1: Treat them like a customer and sell them a product/service. You provide a demo and hold back a few things to make 'em hungry for more. and hopefully, you get another customer.
Locking content with a confirmation of a Patreon account ensures that only the patrons can see that in-game content and try before you buy folks like us, only jet a small taste.
Option2: Treat them like semi Producers of film or stage. They are the Money backers that make these films and Plays possible. The money gathered frees the creatives to focus on making the product to the best of their ability.
More money doesn't always translate to more quality, but it can. The final product can be sold outside or in many cases, it seems they are offered up for free. the patrons-only get earlier access to builds and secondary content like peeks at shots of upcoming content and content that only they can see on the platform which they pay.
Yes, there are hybrids of this and have varying levels of success. but it comes down to are they Customers or are they, partners?
For this game, it's pretty freaking clear that Luna in the Tavern Dev sees it's patrons as Customers, and they are not wrong. It's honestly not all that anti-consumer.
Let's think about it a second. We're on a site where games are offered to us for free, and often full release of an otherwise commercial product. some of these offerings are even the full patron-only release versions of these titles.
if this was a game from Bioware, CD project Red, EA or any number of the Trip-A world, We would have our asses handed to us for piracy if they find us.
I am sure that many of the games listed here have their devs very aware that their hard work is being offered here for free and can do nothing about it. They simply don't have enough money to fight that battle.
But as a platform, this exposes people to these games and even near the top of the description bit show where you can goe to toss a coin or two to you pervert dev if you like what you got for free.
Luna's dev has found a way to sort of balance this while saving something back to get you to become a patron. My concern is what happens when you support them for one month but due to things outside of your control can't support it for a second or third month. What happens then?
I don't know, I'm just a perverted lurker trying to make his own game. and I've spent way too much time rambling on about this.
