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Re:“It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed” by dragontamer on Wednesday August 12, 2015 @11:17AM (#10048162)
It was probably enough for a loan however. Which is probably why the company folded at this time, because they ran out of funding and couldn't make it.

With that said, I've been following Patreon and the financial models at Patreon just make more sense than Kickstarter.

Various game development groups have constantly slipped their schedule, and backers respond typically by keeping the donations steady. As long as the game developer releases a demo demonstrating progress, backers are more than eager to continue their $5/month or so funding.

The main issue is the slow pace of early Patreon funding. A lot of games have to bootstrap with $500 / month or $1000/month for two or three months. Even "successful" Patreons only get $3000/month to $5000/month, and those are few and far between. (Patreon doesn't seem to have the reach of Kickstarter or Indiegogo quite yet. Perhaps if Patreon expanded and grew it'd be better?).

The Patreon model is also better for "subscription" stuffs. Podcasts, youtube videos and the like are more popular there. I can't find too many games on Patreon by searching, but I've seen them advertized on various forums.

In any case, even with $5000/month, it'd be hard to run a team of 6 on such meager money. I've been following a team of 3 and they're barely making it on that.

But Patreon does strike me as more plausible than Kickstarter.

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On the other hand, Kickstarter is extremely good at measuring "hype". So perhaps the Kickstarter model is better if you're trying to prove to outside funding groups that your team is worth investing into.

Re:“It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed” by chx on Wednesday August 12, 2015 @12:42PM (#10048843)
Patreon seems awesome for one person teams: musicians, cartoonists etc. One of my favorites, Peter Hollens is above $7k/month now.
Re:“It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed” by dragontamer on Wednesday August 12, 2015 @01:04PM (#10049009)
I don't think Destin (Smarter Every Day) is a single-person team, but he's making $6.8k/video, with two videos per month.

Patreon seems to work out for smaller-scale projects, like youtube videos or podcasts. Its a bit harder to map it to a video game, but I still think the Patreon model for video games is superior to Kickstarter.

Everything is crap though, some real innovation should happen in this space. Unfortunately, I'm out of ideas...