When you look at the amount of money that we’re paying for adult games per month, you would be stupid if you didn’t ask yourself, “Am I paying too much?”.
If I support a game developer from the start, for 12 months. I would have spent an average of €5 per month, amounting to €60 for the entire year.
But what have I gotten for that money?
I spent €20 on the non-adult game The Long Dark about 2 or 3 years ago; I have 271 hours play time in that game.
If I’ve supported a game developer this past 12 months and spent €60. I might have gotten 8 – 10 updates to a story in that time. As the story is still early, there isn’t much replayability in it.
Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of games that I adore, and when a new update comes out, I might start from scratch just because I love the story and characters that much. But that is rare.
And ,of course, what we all find entertaining about games is heavily subjective. From what genres we like to the mechanics we enjoy, it’s a mixed bag.
Some like the story, some like incest, some like adventure, and some just want the sex.
But I have to ask the question, are you getting value for money in the games you support? I would love to hear your opinions in the comments below.
I have loved some of these games I’ve been sampling on itch.io and sadly I have run into a great many of them that are abandoned. My biggest hesitance to subscription support is dev burning out or going broke and abandoning a project I have spent significant money supporting. Perhaps this becomes a ‘chicken or the egg’ problem for indie devs. People don’t want to take a chance on abandonment and devs need money to survive. It is a bit easier if the dev has at least one completed project under his belt, but many of the projects I have been most excited about died before the halfway mark.
For my part, I tend to take the plunge when a project becomes available for Early Access on Steam. I’d rather pay full price up front than pay double spread out over the course of a year with a half-finished game to show for it.
For me, support on a platform like Patreon is more about the artist/developer than the game. Sure, the game is a nice thing to have, but it’s a way of letting the person behind the game know that I appreciate their time, effort, and vision, and hope to see them continue.
Buying a complete game 3 years after release (The Long Dark was a 2017 title, even if that might have been Early Access) vs. choosing to support a developer’s time and ability to make their product when you know you could just find it on F95Zone is a different money value proposition, it’s supporting production over just purchasing a product.