I agree, but some can argue against that by posing the argument that the dev's gotta make a living somehow.
Anyways, yes $10's a lot for a VN but there's not much we can do about it, the dev's are gonna loose popularity with this anyways and have to delay release etc to keep their fanbase and cashflow at a steady pace, so in reality its futile for both ends.
It's a poor argument. All you have to do is look around and see how many VN's are abandoned/unfinished. It's a plague. Donations for unfinished works, only incentivates devs to abandon their work and start a new one.
The racional is simple: If 90% of the people who are interested and willing to pay for the full game, already did pay for 50% of the work, why should I bother to do the other 50%?
Might as well start a new one from scratch, with just enough to entice people to once again dish out their money, and keep on rince and repeat going forward.
No donations for unfinished works. That's my policy.
That rationale is absolutely braindead.
There are two problems I see with that.
1) Premise is often extremely important in getting people to take an interest if your work. There's a number of authors who had one great premise and none of the rest of their works really compare - even later ones. J.K. Rowling is a good example of that.
If you've got a decent premise, you'd have to be a fool to give up on it. Who knows how good your next one will be?
2) You're going to get a reputation for unfinished works.
Besides, what do you mean "already did pay"? Patreon supporters donate on a monthly basis, or with every release. Sure, there are some people who subscribe, download all the works, and then unsubscribe, but you would still get their money again when you finish the product, if not every few releases. Devs are not incentivised to stop working on the game halfway through.
Besides, PhillyGames already have a finished game under their belt. If that isn't proof of their commitment to their products, I don't know what is.
The main reason there are so many unfinished games is probably the same reason there are so many unfinished fanfics. That shit is hard. It takes commitment. People lose interest in their work.
It's not because they're scamming people, they just don't have what it takes to stick with their project and see it through to the end.
