2016: End of Year Retrospective (Patreon)

As 2016 wraps up and I look back on my 3rd year of the adventure that is Tabletop Audio I thought I’d look back on some of the things we did together. As a creative type I’m constantly battling the notion that you will only be appreciated for the last good thing you produced. I’m sure many of you can relate to that. I’m old enough now to realize that it’s this sense of burning inadequacy that fuels the creative process and keeps us from stagnating. It doesn’t make the feeling suck any less though. To that end, I  find that writing these end-of-year pieces really helps me to climb out of that hole and recognize that I did, maybe, create a halfway decent body of work in the previous 365 days. Most importantly, I couldn’t have done it without your support and encouragement.

There were 18 new 10 minute ambiences created 2016 and back in September, I released the milestone 100th ambience. To date there are 104 ambiences (17.3 hours of audio!) over 6 categories. Looking at my request list, I’ve got a healthy work schedule ahead of me.

I released 5 new SoundPads in 2016, with 152 new layerable sounds. Also, probably the most requested item,  the release of Custom SoundPad which allows users to select sounds from any of the 300+ SoundPad sounds and combine them in new and creative ways. Additionally, thanks to the patient assistance of Merten Popp, a German programmer and DM we released SoundPad Broadcast which allows users to connect across the internet to include sounds in their games and stories. Recently, improvements were made to Custom SoundPad to include better drag and drop sorting of sounds and removal of sounds from the main interface window.

There were 2.5 million combined plays and downloads of the 10 minute ambiences in 2016, up from 1.5 million in 2015. Of course, this meant increased server bills for me, which I’ve written about a little...but the fact that more people are enjoying and using the site is gratifying. Writers have been especially kind in emailing me. I’m looking forward to reading a handful books this year whose authors have said that Tabletop Audio was a constant writing partner. Teachers were another group who contacted me this year. A teacher in Ohio shared a story about using Tabletop Audio in his 7th grade science classroom to help them concentrate. A popular teacher’s blog wrote an article about using Tabletop Audio in the classroom and I got a few nice emails from teachers in the UK about using the site for their writing classes.  

There were of course challenges in 2016. Server costs due to increased traffic being one. I spent a few painful weeks configuring a CDN to take care of some of the heavy lifting by aggressively caching the site’s audio content. This of course led to lots of problems with some people not having access to some of the audio. It was very confusing and hard to track down. Ever tried to troubleshoot an issue that you yourself aren’t having and can’t replicate? Thankfully I had a few patient people who put up with constant back and forth emailing and texting, and within a week the problem was about 99% solved. If you have issues playing a sound please let me know in an email and I’ll try and resolve it. It’s almost always a cache issue.

Like many of you, there’s a lot about 2016 which I can’t wait to see in the rear view mirror. For me it would have been a crushing year just with the losses of Bowie and Prince. Everyone else was insult to injury. So let’s bring on 2017. Let’s start it off by celebrating the positive. I’m looking forward to creating new sounds, exploring new sonic territories, fiddling with new gadgets and reaching more people. 

I’ll end this by saying thank you to each and every one of you who has offered your support to the site and to me. I hope that over the next year we can continue to expand content, develop new features and make Tabletop Audio even better. 

Thank you for your continued support,

Tim

TL;DR - I made some stuff in 2016. I’m looking forward to 2017. THANK YOU!!