Plan for the Month/Future Changes (Patreon)

Okay folks, I had intended to put this up on the evening of the 5th. But then I discovered something that was sort of 'The Straw that Broke the Camel's Back' as it were. Specifically, when I went to start doing my rounds promoting the game release, I discovered that a Patron here had leaked Build 16 over on F95Zone. Within bare hours of it's release, at that.

Normally, that particular bit of betrayal would have been a little depressing, but I would have understood that there are always bad actors. Dealing with F95Zone at all has always been a gamble, though one I've been very lucky on over the years. For the most part my Patrons have been amazing and the worst that has happened was the cheats leaking a few times. Previously, the only time any of my games had their full Patron build leaked was actually a genuine accident by someone trying to be helpful. This time...not so much. It was a fully intentional and malicious leak of the current Patreon Build.

Like I said, normally, I'd have moved on fairly quickly. Unfortunately, I was already at an extreme low point. Two months of financial crisis, last month's damaged hardware, spending most of a week with the flu. And then some asshole decides that apparently it was okay to encourage piracy of a game I already provide for free (just at a little delay). I'm not a corporation. And this isn't a side-job anymore. As of January, this is literally my day job, where the majority of my income comes from. So stolen copies of the game are, literally in this case, basically someone deciding I don't have a right to eat or buy medicine.

Unfortunately, this all hit me at that aforementioned low point and I sort of just had to stop for a day and try desperately to put my failing mental health back together with silly putty and scotch tape, having long sense run out of super glue and duct tape. I needed to take a step back and try to see what was needed to get things on track. The following are the conclusions I've come to:

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1) Everything I am doing is flat out not sustainable. I'm trying to do too much every month and it's burning me out.

2) Right now, things are backlogged because of this.

3) There's no way to fix it unless I just lay down the law this month (to myself, not you all), and stop trying to overload myself.

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After that, I took a long, hard look at my current output. Most of it I won't alter. Obviously, Left Hand Magic is the primary focus of this Patreon at the moment. While I might set myself slightly more realistic goals, I won't be seriously cutting back on or slowing it down. Likewise, the Mixed Media Shorts are a major draw. A lot of people are here for them in the first place, and even more of those who choose the higher support tiers do so because of that reward. Obviously, it has to stay. That means that the Short Stories and Wallpapers are the only two places I can look to. So...

1) The Wallpapers are going away. Period. So far as I know, no one actually cares about them. I don't think a single person has ever commented about them, mentioned them, or even bothered to hit Link on their posts. They cost me 2-3 days of time a month and are mostly pointless. A reward I made up essentially just because I needed something to give the Royalty Reward tier in the early days, before the Mixed Media Stories became a fairly big draw. This month, I'll convert a couple of the best looking renders from the latest build into Wallpapers to fulfil the role. I discovered when I was testing the build that I had accidently rendered a smattering of content at 4K, so I can use some of those. But I will be removing the reward from the Royalty Tier by the end of the month.

2) I am no longer making two short stories per month. I am permanently striking down the 'bonus' story and will only be making whichever story wins the Short Story Poll. This month specifically, I will not be running that poll. I still owe all of you The Starship Promise from last month. And I'm intent on delivering it. I will also try to update one other story this month. But it will be low priority, might be something new, and will essentially be 'whichever/whatever story I have the inspiration to write.' In future months, I will return to the poll format, with the winner being the story that will get updated.

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I hope/believe that the combination of removing one short story, along with eliminating the Wallpapers, will ease the pressure enough that a single thing going wrong won't start the whole train wrecking every time. By me best estimates, I'll be freeing most of 3-4 days worth of time each month by making those changes, which should help stabilize the development of the game and the writing of the MMS/Remaining short story.

I apologize if the reduction in rewards is frustrating. The truth is that I failed to realize just how much greater the extra pressure of doing monthly Left Hand Magic releases would be. Haven's Port was, for all it's complexity, actually by far the easier game to work on. Meaning that every-other-month was lower-pressure for me when I was cycling between the two game. That allowed me to 'catch up' during the easy months, then buckle down for the harder ones. With only Left Hand Magic, every month is one of those 'harder' months. And there has been no breathing room to catch up to anything that slipped through the cracks.

Deep Breath

Okay, that's all for now. I will put the Focus Poll and Mixed Media Short Poll up later today.