New additions to the 10$+ tier (Patreon)

Hey everyone!

Hope you are all doing well?

I wanted to take a moment before the next update drops in a few days to sit down and talk a little bit about some more changes to, in particular, the 10$ tier.

I've felt for a little while that the 10$ tier was left out a bit high and dry between them, as I simply struggled to find the right perks for it since switching over to Conway work. Mind you, the old perks of course still exist: access to PSD files, feedback videos, 25% print discounts, and votes about which characters to pain/rework first. People still got some neat stuff with it, but it just felt a tad barren for my own liking.

It worked fine back when this was purely an art-related Patreon. The idea behind the progression back then was:
-2$ gets you better versions of what is already public
-5$ gets you a view behind the scenes, sketches, step-by-step, some drawings, and so on.
-10$ gets you a full view behind the scenes, including things like the PSD files, videos, and 3D files for the projects I made some for.

It was, I think, a pretty logically delineated setup where, hopefully, it was pretty easy for people to tell just which tier was best for them.

Though in the transition to have this Patreon be more Conway-focused the 10$ tier just lost a bit of it's identity. Which also showed in the statistics.
You got early access and extra bits and pieces at 5$, you got to potentially get your character included at 25$, but what did you get at 10$? (The fuzzy feeling of knowing that I appreciate you supporting the project aside. <3)

So that is why, going forward I want the identity of the 10$+ tier to be one where those subscribed to it can influence the direction of development to some degree.

What will that mean?
Naturally, this is first and foremost still a project led by me, following the direction I have in mind for it. Fundamentally that won't change, and anything else would just be ridiculous. In the end, it needs a direction behind the scenes to aim for what the goals of the project are.
So no reason to be afraid of some kind of anarchy taking over, and that we'll have spaceships abducting the crew in two months' time or something.

But I want to expand the possibilities where possible for you (as in people subbed to 10$+ tiers) to be able to have some degree of influence over things.
The polls for the character illustrations are already one part of that. Voting on which characters get illustrated first.

But going forward with the 2-month dev schedule for each release we hope that there'll be options for us to be flexible.

• For example, maybe we have two sketches for a scene, and we'll have a vote on which one will be the one that'll be illustrated.
• We might have votes on which scenes to work on first if we're at a place where there are several paths to take.
• I'll also open a suggestion box, where you can suggest ideas for scenes/scenarios you'd like to see.
• Potentially even things like vote on character pairings for a scene where possible. ( Scenes do usually follow a specific goal, but if there are instances where a character's presence isn't vital to a scene then it could certainly be up for a vote. E.g. Maybe a scene is about Samuel, and having either Arthur or Rajeeyah along as a second character would work. This one is certainly more touch-and-go if it'll be possible or not given how much characters influence the scenes they are in, so we'll have to see once we actually get to it.)

Stuff like that basically! Going with the naval theme it'd be called the Navigator tier, I suppose.
In the end, again, there's just no way past me having the last call to make sure it's going in the intended direction. So I can't guarantee (and in all fairness, it is probably rather unlikely that any one idea will make it due to the potential volume of them.) that an idea will make it in, but if it is an idea that fits what we want to do, sounds fun, and ticks all those boxes then it'd be stupid not to include it.

So yeah, I hope this sounds like a fun change!
We'll be starting with it right next month to see how it goes :)