- Jan 10, 2018
- 445
- 624
I'm not the person you're talking to, but it occurs to me that the funding structures are so different as to be meaningless.And in your opinion it worked for them or not?
With a patreon, you have a comparatively consistent funding source that gives you immediate feedback as to whether your project's direction is appreciated by your most important supporters - you can make your project vast in scope, and so long as you have the organizational skill to keep it from becoming a muddled mess, you can just keep adding to it in perpetuity, and know that people like what you're doing enough to make it worthwile. Or, alternately, cut back and reassess your priorities when you notice nobody actually wanted the fifty CGs of lesbian catgirls you commissioned for an event chain only two percent of your backers went through, and you're only getting a third as much money per month as you once did. Furthermore, one can start a patreon as a relative unknown, and grow over time through the strength of your work - you don't need much advertising or anything to get started.
With Kickstarter, you have a fixed budget and the only people paying attention to your updates (should you even offer an early-access model as opposed to waiting until its polished) are a small cross-section that may or may not just be a vocal minority. You have to have a rigidly defined scope from the beginning, and possibly be prepared to pare things back if any part of the development process ends up troubled. Complicating things further, for a project in this field, you can expect relatively few sales after the game is finished - you'll be reliant on a kickstarter for your next project as well, with no guarantee of future funding. Especially if you wanted your next project to be fairly different from your last. You're also much more heavily constrained by your reputation at the start of your project - an unknown developer will struggle to get anyone to even notice them, while an established presence is given a lot of trust regardless of what they're promising. The first time, at least.
Going from one funding model to the other isn't that easy, as it usually involves fundamentally restructuring your project - at least, if you were taking proper advantage of both. Both can, and have, seen many creative ventures succeed - but the challenges facing either tend to be quite different.
(Personally, I think Patreon makes more sense for things like games, books, and comics, as it gives the developer more freedom to adjust to demand, and patrons to withdraw support if what they're getting doesn't match what they imagined, but that's a bit beside the point.)
(Uh, just to be clear, though... I've never actually done either, just known people who have.)
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