- Oct 17, 2017
- 1,456
- 3,487
There is no denying that the current environment produces more bad games then one wherein the Patreon model would not exist. It also produces more GOOD games too.
See, what the Patreon model does effectively is lower the barrier of entry. If you can slap together a 0.1 then you have a shot of getting income and then converting it into a real game. Before, the only people who could realistically make porn games of note were folks with money. And they wouldnn't have done so because a market exists.
Did you need to have money lying around in order to make a shitty 0.1 quality demo? Not really, but you needed time. You couldn't do it if you had a job. And you would never expect to make any money. It was for hobbyists only.
But, Patreon means any game can potentially be a big earner, if you can market it right and show ability early. Suddenly, people can devote time and resources. Furthermore, it provides incentives for SOME income put in early. 5K might not make a great game on its own but you can make a pretty decent demo that way.
So, yes. If Patreon didn't exist, the proportion of good H-games to bad H-games would weigh higher. But, that's because there'd be less games, and the low budget low effort ones wold evaporate away. But, you'd also lose a massive number of good games too. And the survivors would be badly damaged by the loss in audience.
There is no mythical world where all the good game devs naturally would rise from the bottom through years of labor and the bad ones would fall off. Games take money. And if people without capital can't get money for their games, you get less games. Straight up.
