Lmao. Dwarf Fortress is basically the Crysis of hardcore gamers. With PCs it’s, “But can it run Crysis?” And with gamers it’s, “But have you played Dwarf Fortress?” Evidently the many, many of us who haven’t played that game are all plebs. 
It’s too much for me, personally.
They’re still minor in number in comparison to other stuff. I don’t really consider sci-fi works urban fantasy and, say, Whiskey-4 is still sci-fi despite using tropes that give me very heavy Warhammer 40K flashbacks.
Reminds me of Shadowrun.
I personally have no problems playing the whole beta and still buying and enjoying the game when it comes out, but I’m reasonably sure you aren’t alone. Weren’t there a lot of complaints when A Mage Reborn came out about it not having new content? Even though the author was really clear about it? I think most of that happened offsite though, so not sure if most people here saw it.
Fallen Hero 2 didn’t have the whole game for all to see. No way! You only had a few chapters as a demo.
If you don’t like to be spoiled, then don’t play a whole game.
I stopped playing the demo for Fallen Hero 2 as soon as I heard it was in Beta testing, so my brain can go senile and forget what I’ve seen till release.
Lmao. The ability to go senile at will. That is a rare superpower indeed.
Its probably because authors want to develop a following for their patreon. Plus, regular feedback and free playtesting while making a decent ammount from patreon is not that bad I suppose. Talented authors like paul wang deserve so much more anyways.
What I noticed in a fresh WiPs - bugs and glitches. Whenever there’s a new update, there’s always the possibility of bugs and glitches. These can be frustrating to deal with, especially if they’re game-breaking or prevent players from enjoying the new content.
I mean, a major reason (the biggest reason, arguably) to post WIPs is for playtesting. Uncovering bugs is a good thing! When people play WIPs, they should go in with the awareness that it isn’t a finished piece of work and there are likely to be glitches - it’s not equivalent to episodically releasing a finished and polished game.
Also its a requirement if they wanna be hosted…
In software terms, there has to be several more rounds of testing in before the game gets to gold master status. Nobody wants a buggy game, especially in HGs.
I almost always purchase the games that I test. For me, I am going to replay the crap out of a game that I like, regardless of whether or not i already played the crap out of it while testing…because if I really liked it, I want to own it and be able to revisit it over the years. I dont think I would continue playing a game that was released with a bunch of errors because it clearly hadn’t been tested thoroughly enough, though. I think readers find that more frustrating than (knowingly getting) spoilers from reading wips before they were released. That could just be me though.
Are you sure that’s correct? Without naming names since I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, I can think of several Hosted Games, both published and currently not, that have different builds/never released the same builds for Patreon and the public.
Anyway, on the topic of whether or not WIPs “spoil” us, I think so, but not actually in the way that OP means. Counting the years before I made an account on this forum, I have been involved in the ChoiceScript/interactive fiction community since 2010, long enough to see how the culture around WIPs has changed. What used to be something that was focused primarily on writing feedback evolved into something much bigger. I love to see how many WIPs now have quite strong internet presences before and after release, but I’ve noticed that it’s come with some concerning aspects (at least to me) as well:
All of this I feel like increases the possibility of author burnout, but it’s now unfortunately a pretty big part of the culture. It makes me wary of posting my own work online, and I hope it improves soon.
But in regards to whether or not publicly available WIPs make us less appreciative of a finished work, I think that’s difficult to say. There’s pros and cons that have already been discussed here, certainly, but much like early access games on Steam, it opens the possibility of growing a fanbase that’s invested in the release of this game at as high a quality as possible.
In my small way I can relate to the often-unspoken pressures around fandom engagement. I’m in no way as big a name as some but when I bit off more than I could chew with Patreon rewards it definitely contributed to burnout. It turned out that doing IF pieces was a big overreach for me because I needed to spend my creative energy on… y’know, writing the actual game, and on my day job at the time, and I didn’t have any left over. If I set up my Patreon to do more, it would likely bring in more money a month, and if I was able and canny I’d have done that while awaiting the Royal Affairs release - but it would be at the expense of my project and health.
I see WIPs getting a lot of attention which is wonderful but answering detailed questions and hypothetical scenarios takes a lot of time and most authors aren’t doing this full time. (Even if they are, it’s time not spent working on the project or -gasp!- doing something in your personal life.) It’s a given that most projects don’t get finished, but it would be a shame if unspoken pressure contributed to that.
Edit: I do keep vaguely thinking about a discord, but that’s a lot of work and I’m not a community management expert in any way 
so wouldnt it be better to finish say a game THEN setup a Patreon? Or do you lose…something if you do it that way?
I don’t know, people do it in different ways. I started mine because I’d already released a couple of games and needed to supplement income after a job change, so I put up an early access version of what I was working on for people to play before I put it up publicly. I think that’s the most common thing authors do - the idea is to support the writing progress before release - but everyone’s slightly different and offer different things. And obviously players/subscribers prioritise different things when subscribing too.
I’m definitely happy that I put up my CoG WIPs and I’m excited that more CoG people are doing it since I put up the Creme one. At that time Rebels was the only other one! I think it can be so helpful. I’m definitely considering putting a larger chunk of a new project up publicly as a result of reading this thread.
I think in an ideal world, yeah, but I do see why creatives will make the Patreon during development. It allows them to have extra to support medical bills, food costs, etc. I can’t tell you how many authors I’ve seen talk about using Patreon and Kofi to pay for important needs that they otherwise could barely afford. There’s also authors who hope to make enough off Patreon to work on writing full-time.
But unfortunately, unless you’re Wayhaven, or SHOH, or Fallen Hero, it’s very difficult and very rare to achieve running a Patreon for an IF that makes enough for you to wholly survive off of it, even if it’s still technically paycheck to paycheck. And sometimes, even spending a full week writing/working on your WIP may only result in a few hundred written or coded words.
I’ve also realized that Patreons tend to have a couple weeks early access to versions of their demos. I kind of view it as early access to a videogame. I wasn’t entirely sold on it being a reward when I opened mine up simply because I didn’t view it as a tangible thing that enhanced the reading experience at all. I personally opted for the character art, background art and podcasts explaining things about the story, writing process, RO’s, etc. I just really liked the idea of a podcast that could expand on everything from the writing process to the story and characters themselves, and I didn’t see a lot of people doing something like it so hey, mind as well try it out and give it a whirl! All that being said, like you said before, there is no wrong way of doing a patreon and everyone has their own preferences. If people are interested enough in the content, and are able, they simply just want to support the creator after all.
I think this spoils people because once the game is released and they pay money for it, there is almost no new content, if any at all.
I don’t think any author ever update their released titles, its the final form of their work and won’t be having any updates, release and forget.
That’s not entirely true. Some games have had significant updates, just not most after release.
As long as people understand this and don’t leave 1* reviews because the game is similar in content to the beta which has happened in not sure why it would be an issue? If a beta tester likely l liked the genre that can still buy it to replay in release, if not they can not buy it having seen it in advance.