Patreon Announcement ~ Changes are coming (Patreon)

Hi patrons!

Today I want to talk to you about my Patreon that you are all generously supporting. (and I'm extremely thankful for that)

I created this Patreon in the middle of last January, as a group of other creators had done a few days before me. The idea of doing it had been in my head for very long and in fact I believe you can find traces of it in the earliest of my weekly recaps! What had me not do it up to January was that I didn't have a very big audience and I thought no one would take any interest in supporting me. In January, I had 2k followers of Twitter and a few other creators were launching their Patreon pages around me, one or two of my followers asked why I wasn't doing the same, and so I did the same.

The idea was to eventually be able to live off my free creations, mostly the Pico-8 Doodles, but also free games, articles, tutorials, etc. Before that, my only source of income was the donations I received through Itch.io and I lived mostly on savings, with the generous sheltering of my family. I knew the Patreon wouldn't instantly become a full salary but I was hoping for about 200$ on the first month and then go up from there.

The rewards I set to encourage larger pledges included the source code for the Pico-8 Doodles, because that was something I was already producing anyway, the Doodle Insights which were supposed to be short articles about techniques I use in my Pico-8 Doodles, a monthly commission deal and "your name in the credits of my games". (that last one was supposed to be for bigger games with credit sections, but so far no game of this kind were made)

And here we are, three months later!

The first month went really well and we hit the 200$ mark, just as hoped! Most people took the Doodle Insights 3$ tier and a few took the Source Codes 8$ tier. I was also lucky enough to get a 100$ patron who kept his pledge up for both January and February. Thank you so much Adam M. Smith, your support was and still is very very helpful.

The second month went quite well too, as we went just over the 250$ mark. I believe most of the new patrons were convinced by the Pico-8 Doodles I post on Twitter. The production of content was fairly stable and the Doodle Insights turned out to be this series of articles way longer (and better) than I previously thought. The response to them here on Patreon has been very motivating and has led me to keep up the level of quality and length of these articles.

The third month was a bit more difficult. While more patrons did get onto the boat, the super generous 100$ pledge dropped to a still super generous 20$ pledge. In the end, the processed pledges for March came super close to the ones for January, which is OK. The production of Pico-8 Doodles and Doodle Insights stayed steady, with a growing response from you guys, which also felt very good!

Let's be honest and admit that over all this time, some of the rewards were not actually delivered. The Pico-8 Doodle polls from the 1$ tier did not happen, as I generally just did the idea I had at the moment. The exclusive WIP gifs from the 3$ tier did not happen, as I post all my WIP gifs on Twitter anyway. The name in credits thing did not happen, as I did not take the time to implement credits in any of the game I made in the last three months. Finally, the commission deal did not happen, because no one actually pledged to that tier.

If you feel I have wronged you with any of these unkept promises, I can only for you my deepest apologies... and change!

If you've been paying attention, you may already know that I wish to change a few things around here! I'd like to make the Doodle Insights public for example. They really are of more value than I thought when I created the reward and I would like them to reach a broader audience, in the hope to help more people and also to have more people come to support me here on Patreon.

So I've been thinking the rewards over and here is the new set of rewards that I wish to remplace the old ones with:

• 1$+: request subjects for the doodle insights, get access to Patreon exclusive posts
• 3$+: your name goes at the end of the Doodle Insights, as official supporter of the series!
• 5$+: Pico-8 Doodle source files (previously at 8$+)
• 8$+: Short snippets for Pico-8 Doodles EXPLAINED!  (new weekly series)  Short posts, super code-oriented, about one particular snippet each time.
• 16$+: Your name in the credits of One Room Dungeon++! (still not the definitive name but you get it)
• 48$+: The monthly Pico-8 Doodle commission deal (previously at 64$+)
• 100$+: "Let's talk about it", possibility of a bigger commission deal (remains the same as before)

When the time comes, a DRM-free-only access to the alpha versions of One Room Dungeon will be added in the rewards somewhere (probably at 3$ or 5$).  And that is it! Please let me know what you think of those rewards, do you feel they're fair? Are they interesting enough? Would you see yourself or other patrons up or down their pledge? Do you have other suggestions?? Do tell me in the comments, I am genuinely interested in your answers!

This post is already quite long, so let's just conclude here.

During these past three months, the Patreon has been doing quite well, but maybe not well-enough. So let's make it better! I made mistakes in setting the rewards and I wish to correct those. The Doodle Insights will go full public, with a special mention to my patrons at the end of them. The rewards are going to get all changed up.

If no (or little) modification is made to these plans, they could go up on Saturday, the 15th.

Thank you for reading, I hope this wasn't too boring! I can't wait to read your thoughts!

Have a very nice day/evening/night and thank you so much for your support!

TRASEVOL_DOG

PS: Tomorrow's Doodle Insights will be public and have the 3$+ patrons' names at the end of it, as a preview of new format! Also, on Thursday there will be a first "snippet EXPLAINED" which will also be free, so you can see what it's gonna be like!