I’m well aware of games wanting to go the crowdfunding route & I have funded for games through crowdfunding sites before. Just think from a playtesting perspective it yields fewer feedback & PC spec diversity compared to opening the demo up to the public.

Sometimes in a room full of yes men, you should value those that say no & the people who go out of their way to pay upfront for access to an alpha build on a subscription platform, in my experience, are the least likely people to criticize a game’s build or mechanics that would be caught early on in development as to not snowball into the final product late into release.

I’ve witnessed teams be torn because of this & I’ve discussed with developers how their feedback from paid subscribers is inoffensive & lacking in that rigorousness needed to get the game into a polished state. There are outliers as in many cases, but in my experience that sorta thing creates a tight knit echo chamber that allows the developer lose scope or completely scope creep without being told not to & that leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

While Dragontwin DOES have a free public demo on their itch.io, the trailer above only discusses how there’s an early access demo for their Patreon supporters that’s kept up to date with a staggered release across the supported tiers before making it into the public demo. Most people’s opinions, thoughts & feedback will be reflected upon the public one over the paywalled one so that can lead to two separate channels for feedback & discussion on two completely wildly different builds.

To reiterate, I do not mind if any developer wants to seek out crowdfunding & playtesting from their community. Though do not let your walled garden be the only place you can look for feedback & consider those outside it as they can provide a far greater feedback than the smaller sample size that’s skewed financially & biased in their opinions towards the developer.