New Experimental Patreon Tiers (To Go In Effect October 21) (Patreon)

Hello, everyone!

A few weeks ago, I made some posts about revising my Patreon tiers, and asking for input from both non-patrons and from patrons on how to manage the 1080p tier in particular. I come to you now with the results from those polls and other discussions I had on the issue.

The first thing of note is that both the non-patron and patron polls had a shockingly large convergence on two factors:

1.) No one seems to really care about the early-access (or at least, less so than the 1080p)

2.) Both non-patrons and patrons agreed that $10 was an ideal price-point for 1080p - most non-patrons who voted said they would pledge $10 for 1080p but not $15; and most current $15 patrons said they would downgrade to $10 for 1080p.

These two points left me in a bit of a conundrum: it's universally agreed upon that people think the 1080p should be dropped to $10, but the question then becomes how it will affect the finances that ultimately affect my ability to produce these videos. I could end up bringing in more funding due to new pledges; I could end up losing funding due to people downgrading pledges; or I could end up striking zero-sum with new pledges balancing out down-pledges.

But some additional discussions raised a few additional points, particularly about how the higher resolution is the real goal. Specifically, not 1080p itself, but rather the fact that 1080p is higher than 720p. A few people suggested 1440p or even 2160p, and after some consideration, I've decided that is what I will try.

I want to emphasize that last word: try. These new tiers are experimental, and might change come January. It all depends on the performance and feedback of the change.

With that out of the way, here is the proposed change:

$1 - Awesome Patron. No reward

$2 - Misc Bin. Biweekly dumps of everything I've worked on for practice, in whatever state they're in; HQ watermarked versions of loops as they're made; 2160p photosets as they're made; and screenplays as they're made.

$5 - Progress Reports. Weekly posts detailing the efforts made over the last week when working on a Short, and milestone-based posts detailing the efforts made when working on a Long (which is currently Hiveship; expect a post about this next month, by the way!) Includes exclusive WIP pictures and occasionally animations.

$10 - 1080p Releases of Videos at 5-day Early Access. This is the current $15 tier, being dropped down to $10. Rather than splitting it between 1080p and early access, I decided to drop the entire tier down, and replace it with the new $15, detailed below.

$15 - 2160p Releases on Videos On-Schedule. These are not early-access, but will release the same time as the 720p public release of the videos. These are not upscaled versions of the 1080p videos, but will be natively-rendered, crisp 2160p videos. No compromises on the render quality will be made.

$20 - Hyperawesome Patron. No reward.

$50 - Omegawesome Patron. No reward.

The goal with these changes is twofold: Firstly, I have way too many cheap tiers that just aren't being used. $3, $7, and $10 all go currently unused, and that's just too much chaff. So I am consolidating them all into the new $2 tier, and am making the $10 tier active again.

Secondly, people overwhelmingly voiced their opinion that $15 is too much for the 1080p early-access, and after discussing it with a good few people - both patrons and non-patrons, I've come to agree with them on it. So I decided to move the entire tier down, and instead go with a different tactic of encouraging people to provide more funding for the ultimate goal of getting a proper team of animators together to help me produce things more quickly.

The idea here is that, with the current system, $15 is the end of the line, and gets the best I have to offer before anyone else. The new system however, has a less steep "sample" tier at $10. This gives you 1080p, but more importantly it also gives 5-day early-access. Then, if people like what they see, when the video goes public, they can then throw in additional $5 to get the video in its native high resolution, and soak in every crisp 2160p pixel.

I have no idea if this scheme will work, but I am hoping that it will at least smooth out the volatile pump-and-dump that the current $15 early-access tier gets. By having a higher-quality tier above it that people need to wait for, I am hoping it incentivizes people to stick around.

At the same time, I am hoping that the bump to an image that's literally 4x the size of the previous $15 tier will be enough to justify the pledge to more people, and so whatever is lost between people dropping to $10 for the cheaper 1080p, and people getting the $10 early-access and deciding not to get the $15 2160p, can be made up by the people who find 2160p by itself worth the $15.

It's entirely possible that this will all backfire on me and cause a significant loss of funding. I'm willing to take that risk for the next two shorts (October's and December's), and see how things pan out. If things end up going poorly, then I can always just come back to the drawing board and come up with something else.

As a closing note, I want to just drop a quick word on the last two (empty) tiers: Experience has taught me that people who pledge simply to support creators rather than for rewards have a strong proclivity toward existing tiers. If they're simply offered to pledge whatever amount they want, they have a tendency to either just match an existing tier, or not pledge at all. These empty tiers are for those people, to give them a quick and easy option to pledge to, rather than have to come up with a number on their own. I don't expect many people to go for these empty tiers - but for those that do, I cannot overstate how much it means to me that you think my efforts are worth that kind of expense.

I'd love to hear what all you guys and gals think of this new plan, before I implement it next week. Please feel free to share your comments, thoughts, questions, and concerns in the comments below!