Paradigm Shift (Patreon)

I feel that I need to put forth a mandate, in particular for those who financially back me, though it is also relevant for my followers who regularly ask me for updates.

Recently my Patreon has dropped, and there's no surprise that I've had to devote a large portion of my time to a day job to support myself. The simple truth is I cannot keep my pace with this current situation. Based on my available hours and my past progress, we are looking at almost two decades of time to finish everything there is in Hyrule: Total War. Assuming my Patreon does not improve, there's the added salt to the wound that the mod itself does not provide a continued source of support once it’s complete, because it’s technically some else’s intellectual property. Therefore, so long as my income from Patreon does not meet my living costs, I have to divert my focus to my other projects that are my IP, so I can legally make a continued living from them once they’re released to market. I have utterly and completely failed to become part of the video game industry. Every company I have worked for has gone under. Most studios simply ignore my attempts to contact them. My education and life goal is crumbling and falling apart, and now it seems like the only way I'm ever going to have a career doing what I love is to put my own game with my own name on the market, therefore that will have to be my focus.

So Here's the Rundown:

Less than $700 a month via Patreon - Sigma will be my focus, seeing as it's my only real hope of making a career designing games (instead of mods, no matter how awesome), and my only long-term hope of such a career helping me in my goal to not starve to death. I will continue to work on Hyrule: Total War whenever I have seven seconds of free time to do so, but it can’t be a priority.

$700 a month - I will make Hyrule: Total War a priority. I will most likely be able to release a level and its associated cinematics every month, with regular patches to the game.

$1,400 a month - I will be able to work on these projects full time, and I no longer have to worry about a day job getting in the way. At this point, all of you are more than welcome to hound me for updates.

If any of my Patrons find this unfair or unsatisfactory, or have any ideas, please contact me about the matter.

I sincerely apologize to all of the people who follow me solely for Hyrule: Total War. It absolutely kills me inside to think that I will never see the final ending scene rendered and in motion for the world to witness, but I am not a machine and I unfortunately have to do what I must to pay the bills. I am a single person doing the work of an entire dev team for huge and massive, massive games, and despite my best efforts, I have failed at every turn to recruit others to (reliably) work as a team. If you want to speed up the process, the only way to do so is to legitimately have the same skills I have and insane devotion to finishing these projects, or to support my Patreon and spread word of my work as far and wide as possible, preferably to others who might be able to join my team or support my Patreon. That or I win the lottery.

To end on a more positive note, a few Patrons that did not know I existed could discover me and turn this around and make it no big deal at all, so it's possible this decline could suddenly reverse and go back to normal. However, I just cannot logically justify hoping and waiting for that to happen.