Ren'Py Why do some games have huge revenue on Patreon?

[LongJumpingLion369]

For example Radiant, Guilty Pleasure... the quality is... mehh but has a large number of supporters.
Meanwhile, some of my favorite games like Hot Sand of Antarctica, Void's Calling... looked like they took a lot of effort to make but didn't make that much and were even abandoned.
Is this due to Marketing or some other reason?

 

[Brosewood]

It can be a combination of things. Marketing, Saturated Market, Quality, Mass Appeal, First Impressions, and as much as it's used as a crutch, Luck. It's pretty hard to build a solid audience and sometimes things just 'click'. For example, on CHYOA, my story 'Aphrodite BnB' was one of my worst-received stories. I followed it with 'Taming the Dom', which is the 3rd most liked BDSM story on the site (and at one point was the 2nd most liked), even my next BDSM-themed story, 'Roxy's New Roommate' didn't catch on anywhere near as much as TtD did.

Of course, there are things you can do to stack the deck in your favor. Good writing, mass appeal with fetishes, good renders/art, posting everywhere and anywhere you can etc. None of those guarantee success financially, but they do help.

Hell, the first game you listed there is doing alright considering most adult games make less than $200 US in the first two years on Patreon. Anyone thinking of entering the Adult Game 'industry' should do it because they're passionate. You're not likely to even make decent side-hustle money unless you are very determined and even then, there are no guarantees.

 

[Living In A Lewd World]

For example Radiant, Guilty Pleasure... the quality is... mehh but has a large number of supporters.
Meanwhile, some of my favorite games like Hot Sand of Antarctica, Void's Calling... looked like they took a lot of effort to make but didn't make that much and were even abandoned.
Is this due to Marketing or some other reason?

Regarding Radiant. It started as far as I remember quite high, because the graphics were quite good (not often seen to this time), and it teased with the idea of you fucking your own triplet-daughters. I didn‘t read the story, but from what I saw with the images, it looked quite promising and interesting and teased with quite diverse branching. Thus it had lots of pull factors. Thus I really don‘t wonder, that this got lots of support.

 

[DawnCry]

Simple, effort doesn't mean success, many good developers can end up just not finding their public or with a clear lack of promotion, it's very normal to find a game that you feel "Hmm, this feels like a hidden gem!", but well, reputation and past projects have an effect too, for example one game I feel is overvalued is Legend of queen opala and be aware that I liked the story of the first game, the second started to just be too many places for little content then the third I just gave up playing, but I can understand why people support it, 2 previous games that were reasonably good (albeit I never understood the multiple art options compared to more content).

In fact Legend of queen opala is kinda what I tend to recommend to new developers, first start something not too big and show what you can do then keep expanding the concept in future games, being overly ambitious can make games die really fast.

 

[woody554]

the usual reasons are luck, lack of non-divisive kinks, and persistence over time which creates trust towards devs. but mostly luck. if you try to copy the game it rarely works because you can't copy luck.

 

[Living In A Lewd World]

One also loses the novelty value.
One would to have at least some differences to the original to get some audience. Else, one could just play the original.
The only possibility I see, a copy can be even more successful than the original would be, if the original idea is interesting, but the execution not enticing for whatever reason and the "copy" can overwind those shortcomings.
But it would then of course questionable, if one could still call it a "copy".

 

[anne O'nymous]

For example Radiant, Guilty Pleasure... the quality is... mehh but has a large number of supporters.
Meanwhile, some of my favorite games like Hot Sand of Antarctica, Void's Calling... looked like they took a lot of effort to make but didn't make that much and were even abandoned.

Well, everything is a question of personal perception and taste.

By example, you say that Hot Sand of Antarctica and Void's Calling looks like they took more effort than Radiant and Guilty Pleasure, when it's more the opposite. Radiant renders are way better than the out of the box "click to render" ones from Hot Sand of Antarctica by example. And while Guilty Pleasure have really small updates and there not really efforts on the rendering side, the scene building is still better than in Hot Sand of Antarctica. As for Void's Calling, it's the whole realization that was the problem ; coupled to the dev inconstancy.
The stories are better for the first twos, that's their only positive point. Yet, better story do not mean better writing, and from this point of view, all four games are relatively cheap.

But, of course, all this is just my personal perception, based on my own taste.