Good question. My point about the income statistics of sole projects vs teams is that solo projects generally mean less money. It is better to begin a project as a duo than a solo; it will generally improve the amount of income potential you can get individual and collectively.
Consider distinct scenarios: you get say 500$/month on Patreon and you remain solo vs you get the same 500$/month and you begin commissioning or contracting people.
Greedy or short sighted types will see these two alternatives and choose the former. I don't blame people taking the former who absolutely need that full 500$/month because it is their only or primary or a necessary source of income. Do what you need to survive. However, in the long run, the latter is more beneficial than the former. Whether we're talking about hobbyists or professionals or whatever divisions of labor you want to define.
If you're a programmer and you spend 50$ on an art commission rather than scratching out something yourself with no training or tools then you get a lot more for that 50$ than just a picture. Best case scenario, you create a lasting relationship with an artist and help them to get more secure and professional, and they end up bringing an audience to your project. Fenoxo and company are a really good model for all this.
There is a vice versa for artists.
There's a reason that every Hollywood movie has a credits section that is relatively speaking comprehensive. Unions and studios fought hard to make sure that everyone that participated in the creation of a movie was promoted in the materials for the movie.
If a project is viable and properly managed then it will accumulate revenue. At different stages of a project it may be prudent to be a solo project for that part of the project. But it will not generally be prudent for it to be solely and primarily a solo project. At the very least you will be contracting and commissioning people. The larger the scope of the project the more you should expect to bring other people onboard and give them creative control and operational power over the project. If your plans exclude that then you have likely failed from the start.
The ideal is that everyone on the team gets paid what they're worth. The reality for a cottage industry or hobbyist community like the adult game developers here is that everyone is likely to need a day job for most or all of the project. That's fine. But it is still better to have 1K$/month split between two devs than 1K$/month going to a solitary dev. It may not seem like it, but it is. If you have to bet on the lone genius vs a dedicated team of six people, it is generally best to bet on the dedicated team. They have more hours in the day to get things done. If y'all manage things right then you don't remain at 1K$/month indefinitely; generally speaking the team will grow the income faster and to a higher maximum than a solitary dev would in the same span.
People bring other people with them. When you get a person on your team or when you join someone's team, you are collecting your respective social circles and influence together. This means larger opportunities for word of mouth. More opportunities for talent finding. More networking. Success in business terms is not about what you know but who you know. A certain number of the Patreon projects where they have like 10K$/month is because they got a patron that shoves 1K$/month in their direction and has other people with similar disposable income. Rich people can and do pay 100K$ to be able to have their own waifu or
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My assumptions here are actually less about people becoming professional game developers; it is more about people not paying people to bankrupt them. I assume people don't want their adult game developing hobby to destroy them or the people they love or the project that I assume they do out of love.
I don't preclude the possibility that someone reading all this might actually want to do a Kickstarter campaign, run a Patreon, and seek investment from various sources like adult media producers or publishers. Those are options that should be considered for even moderate scale game development.
There's this thing in game development where if you go to a publisher with an idea then you'll generally be laughed out. In very rare cases with some documented planning and a moderately good presentation that they might take you seriously, but the deal they'll negotiate with you puts you at a severe disadvantage where you basically agree to sell your whole IP to the publisher and retain near to zero control over it. However, this changes quite dramatically the moment you have something playable. A playable alpha plus a game design document and a business plan puts you on considerably stronger negotiation terms and generally allows for a more favorable negotiation for royalties and advances. Having a practically finished game with a solid team, game design document, game development studio, and business plan allows you to largely retain control over the IP and get the lion's share of the royalties. This is one of the things that informs my views on what can be done or should be done depending on the objectives and values of the people involved with a hypothetical project.
If your dream is to work alone on your fetish playground for decades while working a more lucrative 18K$/year McJob then more power to you. This all isn't for you.
This is for helping to understand the financial frameworks and realities of game development in such a way that you can show a good faith effort for other people such that you get good faith investment from them whether they're team members or sponsors investors or patrons or people buying your finished product.
