Once more, as before, when I click “games” category all I see here is youtube, podcasts and videos.
Games? Well, maybe one, or two.
Could you perhaps filter video creators out of this category to make room for actual game creators?
I suggested it over a year ago and well, here we are.
I find this annoying as well. I reckon they tag themselves as “Games” because they are reviewing, playing or talking about games. But it makes it really hard to find those actually creating games.
I think Patreon should be more clear what these categories are about, and make sure there is a category explicitly for game creators.
@mateuszskutnik and @bjorn, Thank you for this great feedback! Totally agree that categories could be better defined here. We’re constantly thinking of ways to improve the new Explore page, so I’ll make sure the team working on this knows about the filtering issue, especially around the gaming category.
Similar to this, I’ve talked to a few people that want to start a patreon but are doing software development. Perhaps not game development, just regular software. I suggested to them to join multiple categories because I’m pretty sure we used to be able to do that, but I think now checking my own profile we can’t do that. Was this a thing that changed when creator pages changed?
Either way, +1 for helping out the software and game developers.
Just had an idea, though. Perhaps supporting creators joining half of the categories was seen as too much, but how about something like a two category drill-down?
Example: With a single category a letsplayer would have to choose between Video+Film or Games. And different people are going to interpret that question differently. So be more specific in asking them: What kind of thing are you creating? (X=Video) What kind of [X=Video] are you creating? (Y=Games)
Then you can do stuff like “I am writing [X=]Software about [Y=]Games” for the software developers. Also, patrons could say “I like games.” and get recommendations from both X categories while honing in on games, or say they are interested in all software and get recommendations for all kinds of software to support.
Just a wild unrefined idea!
Ah yeah, you can no longer select multiple categories. We removed this ability because some creators were selecting all the categories, likely thinking that would increase the odds they’d show up in certain places across the site. This essentially made category browsing useless. I do like the idea of selecting two categories. 
The problem with adding a software dev category is that we would then need to add other niche categories, and we’re trying our best to keep things simplified as possible. Still, there’s always room for improvement here, both in the scope and accuracy of categories.
And why wouldn’t they? “Games” is a topic and everything related to games fits in there. As a Patreon user, I wouldn’t expect that a “games” category would list me nothing but “game creators”.
Yep, but why not? A typical category tree doesn’t mean that the simplicity of the current main categories would be replaced. It would just offer a way to dig deeper and actually find the creators you are looking for more easily, which should be in anyone’s interest, creators and users alike.
It depends on your interpretation, and I was just saying it could be better defined. As far as I understood, this is a category about what you are creating. So I think if you’re creating podcasts, then that should be your category, not Games if you happen to do podcasts about games.
I’m personally writing software for game development, so I’ve selected Games because it’s the closest match. I’d prefer if there was a Software category though.
In my opinion that’s unfair to game creators.
First of all - This category name is NOT a topic. Just as other categories, such as: music, comics, video, podcasts. When you click music - you see people CREATING music, not talking about it. Same goes for video, drawing, animation, etc. These are PRODUCTS of creativity.
Second of all - there are distinctive categories for videos and podcasts. They should be listed respectively.
For example - if you had a podcast talking about video games and had to choose one of two categories: podcast or games, which would you choose?
But hey, that’s just a theory.
That’s a separate issue, since “type” and “field of work” are mixed in the main categories. Following your logic, every musician posting music videos, would have to use the “video & film” category as the appropriate type of content. But they don’t. They go with their topic, which is music.
In the same way, people CREATING (any kind of) content related to games, probably use the games category. I understand why game creators might not be happy about that, but that doesn’t mean that the other creators in that category do anything wrong. That’s my only point.
Yes, I know the issue is more complex and there is truth on your side of the argument.
That’s why I said it’s unfair, not that you’re WRONG.
Let’s look at it this way: in each category you go to there’s a certain ratio of people creating versus people talking about the subject.
The “games” category is very heavy in favor of talking, not creating. It’s the only category that has this ratio so skewed.
When you go to comics - it’s all creators of comics.
When you go to music - it’s about 50/50.
When you go to games - it’s 95% people talking about games.
And sure, I’m not talking in absolutes, everyone should be able to tag their work in as many ways as they need.
Music videos should be tagged as music and videos.
However - those “explore” categories are hand-picked, and they should do better work of highlighting actual game developing creators.
If those categories are not hand-picked, but automated instead - then I don’t see an algorithm in it (it’s all over the place concerning earnings and patrons number).
Okay, we can leave it at that.
It’s unlikely that there would be two (or more) main categories for games, so sub-categories is the only way to go in my opinion.
And if the category system ever gets revamped, separating type and topic also wouldn’t hurt. I understand that mass-selection can be misused, but why not let users choose a few of each? I could choose one or two categories from a topic tree, but also choose things like “video”, “podcast”, “article” … from a type selection, independent from my field of work.
Agreed.
Bottom line is Patreon needs better curation of categories.
Maybe I’m biased (I am), but “games” especially. 
Be lucky you fit in a category. 
As my username shows, my field of work is “typography”. That doesn’t fit anywhere. A typical parent category for it would be graphic design or just “design”. But that doesn’t exist on Patreon. There is just “drawing and painting”, but typography doesn’t belong there at all.
So people interested in my field can’t find me at all through the categories. They would have to use the search with the proper term.
That’s true, but as far as I know most of my patrons come from direct contact with me (my facebook and twitter).
So I could be in “knitting” category and it wouldn’t make much difference.
Which is exactly the problem, which I assumed you wanted to address with your first post as well. There is an Explore button to allow people to find creators by other means than direct links from the creator’s other websites and channels. And so these categories need to be set up in a way so that users can find what they are interested in easily. And with over 50,000 creators stuck in just a couple of categories mixing topics and type, that’s not really easy yet.
Good idea.
Also most of the stuff in this category is filled with famous youtubers.
It would be great to give the non-known-game-creators (myself included) a chance!
Not to sound greedy but… You get my point ^^
That’s not being greedy, especially, as you said, famous youtubers are clogging the category.
@ellie did you guys do something about this?
I signed up about a month ago and had this same question. I make videos about games. The Games category seemed to be more about making them and the videos category seemed to be more about the videos. Neither really seemed to fit, so I looked around those categories and like you found that most of them chose Games, so I followed suit.
I too am likely to only get patrons from direct links, so it doesn’t really matter to me, but yeah, it’s not a great setup.