I removed the $200 goal for the new art set. (Patreon)

I've removed the $200 goal for hiring an artist. There are a few reasons, the biggest is that I think that dollar amount and the wording of the goal were both a bit problematic. I initially intended, and tried to word it to suggest, that at $200 I would start seeking an artist to join the project, but by the time I successfully secured an artist and work on new art actually began, who knows how long that could take. The issue is that at that point, if it's months and months before the art even makes it into the game, what's the point of having that tied to a goal anyway? It's going to look like I missed it by a mile even in the best case scenario.

On top of that, the current art style is not free, I do spend money on assets, and while it's cheaper for me by an order of magnitude than hiring an artist, the $100 goal will probably up my production costs significantly on its own. I'll also be giving up another significant portion of income at $150. By the time we hit $200, hiring an artist will probably actually wind up costing me significantly more than I'd be making. I am okay with spending money out of pocket on this project, to an extent. I'm also okay with using most or even all of the money from this Patreon directly on the project. I don't expect to make a living off of this. Any money I take home will be used to increase the time I can spend on the project, and the rest will be going to things like art, assets, and content.

But I wasn't thinking clearly about the costs of the $100 and $150 dollar goals when I arrived at the $200 figure, and the $200 figure was always intended to be a starting point for hiring an artist. There are 35 CGs in the game right now, plus portraits and status images and I have plans for 10-20 more CGs over the next several updates. Plus at that point we'll have the extra character portraits from the $100 goal. At the $200 figure, the art would need to be commissioned over a very long period (probably several months) of time for me to be able to afford it, or I would have to save up over that period. Then, once I could afford the art, the amount of time it would take an artist to create enough content that the art pack could be used in the game (let alone completing it), it could take another few months.

So the logical question is probably: "Do you still intend to fund a second default art set?" and the answer is yes, I still intend to hire an artist to create more traditional anime-style 2D visuals at some point in development, and when I have news on that, I'll certainly mention it. But I think the $200 goal was a bad idea. I think it muddies the water and I'm setting myself up to at least look like I made a promise I couldn't keep. When the campaign reaches a certain stable dollar amount higher than, but not a lot higher than, $200, I will still start the process of saving up and looking into artists.

If the second art set was a major thing for you, and a significant reason you joined this Patreon, and you were under the impression that it'd be hitting the game when we crossed the $200 mark, I'm sorry. We were, frankly, very far from reaching $200 and still are, but I hope you don't feel misled and I hope you can forgive me. Like I said, it's still a long-term goal for this project. Making it tied to a funding goal at this stage was foolish of me, though. 

I'm making this change now because we tend to see a lot of traffic to the game and this page around the release of updates to the free edition, as you'd probably expect, so I wanted to remove the goal before the 13th, and honestly, I didn't have time to write up this long explanation of why I was doing that until literally right now.