What’s Changing On Patreon?

Chances are you don’t look at my Patreon (because most people don’t, not because I’m judging you). It gives me a little bit of anxiety, because it keeps telling me ‘hey, this person stopped paying you money’ (which makes me afraid I did something wrong) or worse, ‘this person started paying you more money’ (which makes me wonder what I did to fool them).

Originally, I offered something like three tiers; give me money, give me money and get a micropodcast for it, or give me a huge pile of money for a specific project. I think I’ve transcended the point where that’s necessary. The micropodcast idea is a nice one and I like it, but I think that I need a better toolset for it than I currently had. While Patreon gave me great tools for it, it wasn’t something most people wanted, it wasn’t an incentive enough on its own, and honestly, the original gag was a lot more when I was focused on my comparison in my head of being a crappy Yahtzee, someone who has seemingly faded out of meaning in my general space.

Looking back on my original Patreon video, I have this much to say: I can do better with audio mixing, oh my god. It’s not a bad pitch, and I don’t think I’ve failed to work on the premise of the video. I talk about games, making games, and the processes for making games, and I still believe wholeheartedly in games that are inclusive, respectful, and indulgent. The new version of the video is still just covering those same ideas.

I also used to have ‘goal’ numbers which didn’t really make sense for the kind of thing I do at the moment. Back when I did it, I was basically unemployed — the purpose of the patreon was to hopefully parley into being a job for me, and the goal numbers represented ‘a rent cheque’ at the time and then ‘replacing unemployment money.’ Right now, thanks to my teaching experience, and the years of work, I wouldn’t be necessarily put in the same situation with unemployment if something fell through for me, so the Patreon doesn’t represent a desperation lifeline any more.

Right now I have a Most Important Project (the PhD) and paying me money for my hobby helps me do more things and have a bit more flexibility about it; I can buy game assets freely (and they do play into the PhD) and order prototypes with less of a financial sting. Patreon also is a platform that offers me a place where people can offer me feedback in a comment system that won’t get buoyed away and it’s a space that has the feeling of a ‘behind the scenes’ system position. You know, like if you care about the how of this blog, that’s probably where I should be posting stuff, right?

One of the other things that’s happened is that money has gotten tighter for me; not direly so, but thanks to work situations changing for my household, the patreon money is now going from ‘dick around with assets and prototyping’ to ‘help pay the rent.’

Still, I think it’s very important that the patreon represent the actual realities of what it’s supporting, and that’s why the remake:

Right now, the patreon has two tiers: A $5 tier for ‘hey, I like what you make and I want you to do more of it,’ and a $1 tier for ‘hey, I like what you make and I want you to do more of it but cheaper,’ and there’s no difference between what they give you access to. When bigger things become available, as systems become unlocked maybe there’ll be more! Patreon has upgraded a lot in the past five years since I started using it, and one of the thing it promises is physical fulfillment options. When I started, there was a fantasy for a tier where you could just sign up for a monthly game club, where every month I’d send you one of my games, but that didn’t work out.

Part of why it didn’t work out is fulfillment in location; if you’re in the united states, I should be able to just tell the printers to send a copy to your home, but if you’re in Australia I should send you one from my own physical stock; but if you’re somewhere else things get complicated, where I have to price two alternatives to work out the best way to get it to you.

What Patreon seems to be offering now is a way to do fulfillment directly, where I could set up a tier that (say) sent you a t-shirt, mug, hat, or mask every month, which has the added feeling of not feeling quite as much to me like I’m asking you to take on untested qualities. After all, games have highly variable effects; it’s not like I’m Button Shy, who are reliably making solo games, I’m sometimes making games for one, two, five, or more players, and it’s hard to make a plan for if you want them month to month!

I’m keeping an eye on that, though.

To answer then the question of ‘what’s changed’ the answer is not much of anything. From the perspective of most readers of the blog, nothing. If you were giving me money, the payments should be all the same, and I am grateful for it. If you were eyeing the $500 a month slot and imagining the time you’d have a chance to sit down with me and work on your game project, really, you could just ask, trust me, I’m okay with talking about that kind of thing.

The thing that’s going to change going forward is that I’m going to post on patreon every week, at least, in an attempt to try and fight back against the anxiety the site gives me. You give me this money as a gift and a gratuity, and I need to stop feeling like I’m doing some kind of tiny heist every time I get a payment notification from Patreon.

You might notice in the buttons over on the right, there’s now a ko-fi link and a General Give Me Money link, which are both there if you have some reason to want to avoid Patreon’s system, but still want to give me some money for the things I do. Also, if you like the idea of a comment system/way to give me feedback/talk to me semi-anonymously, there’s a Retrospring link you can use to ask me questions about what I’m doing.

Thank you so much for the support you’ve given me. There was a point this year where it represented a safety net I needed, and I thank you.

And yes, I mean ‘this year.’