[Blog] Thoughts for July (Patreon)

So what's the plan for July? Well, I don't know yet... I'm still considering what to do. I think I'd like to get one strong Elayne Beaumont illustration, but my attention is also on game development. How cool would it be to have a demo out by October?

So these are the thoughts I'm entering the month with...

Game Development:

Although not every possible CV feature has been implemented (moving platforms, weapon drops, etc.), the basic engine is probably 90% done. That almost enough for a demo containing a single level or two.

My biggest issue right now are some annoying collision bugs in which players can sometimes, albeit rarely, end up inside a block, and then they can fall through the floor and die - not great. I completely redid my collision system last month...

That's been my general focus lately, which means things have been quite slow and uneventful for you guys here...

Twitter:

The Dev Team messed up, so now we're only allowed to view 600 posts each day.

We don't know how long it'll last, but the very act of limiting our ability to view stuff is potentially dangerous for every artist on the platform. So people are, once again, spreading themselves across alternative websites, but I don't know what I should do. Especially right now, with all the uncertainty that I've been feeling.

I don't like the idea of spreading myself across 5-6 platforms I don't care about and wasting everyone's time with signing up if I end up not focusing on it. It feels like it would be an entirely exhausting experience. Also, do I have enough value to post on those platforms? Should I even advertise Patreon when things are kinda "eh" here?

Community:

We've tried a variety of novel features over the years to form a sense of community: sketch suggestions, voting polls, concept art, live streams, a discord server, etc.

They're all cool ideas, but they all inevitably start slacking after a while. They take up a lot of time, especially when I have to balance multiple different kinds of rewards. But as my creative direction shifts towards a slower type of content production, such as game development, I'm not even sure how to maintain that feeling of community - or how to structure the Patreon experience around it.

I've kinda just been doing what I want for the last few months, meaning the rewards are less integral to the core experience... Which might make for a boring experience. I don't really know what to do about this, but I feel like something needs to be done to ensure the experience doesn't become mundane.

Don't forget to eat & sleep.