Housekeeping & Transparency (Patreon)

I've been thinking about writing this post for a while, so tonight I'm gonna sit down and just do it.  When I started this Patreon however many years ago I designed a lot of its goals and text stuff with a split between comics and gamedev in mind. I'd also adjusted some of the tier names to account for a time in Patreon's history where they were limiting small donation amounts, and I wanted to make sure my posts were open to all people.  It's been a while and I think a lot of the info on my front page is a bit dated, so in the near future I'd like to update my information and my objectives to better reflect the kind of work I'm doing.  I didn't want to just do this out of the blue, I wanted to be transparent with my current patrons so you guys know what's going on before I make any changes, and in a way I'm asking for approval or feedback on what changes I'd like to make.

-- Goals

Right now I have three small goals, with one where I would write a little side-comic about some old work stories I had from a prior job.  I don't think that's a very compelling goal to reach for, so I'd like to frame the goals in terms of our game work.  I'd like to set goals that can comfortably support my continued work on this project, with an end goal of having enough income to hire assistants to help speed up some of my sprite-making processes, since that takes the longest time for me, if I had an inker and a flatter to help with the future process of finalizing our game sprites it would speed up production tremendously, so I'd like to pivot towards being able to pursue hired help as my Patreon's ultimate goals.

-- Body Text

As we get closer to releasing more complete game builds I'd like to try to generate more interest and support for our dev work, so I'd like to rewrite my body text at the front of this page.  My comic work is always at the heart of this whole project, since nothing else would exist without that, but I would like to present this Patreon more as the current game work we're doing.  The current body text describes a lot of inspiration and a lot of the vision we had at the start of the project, but we're knee-deep in production so I'd like to rewrite that to better reflect the direction our current momentum is moving in.

-- Tiers

This is probably the biggest change I want to make, and one which I explicitly want to seek approval for.  As mentioned above, Patreon has adjusted their revenue model between the start of this project and today, and I never really updated to reflect that.  Patreon themselves recommends setting the base tier at $2 instead of $1, because processing fees eat up the majority of a $1 pledge a lot of that money just vanishes.  What I'd like to do is set the current $1 tier as an unlisted Day Ones tier list, so anyone currently pledging at $1 still stays exactly as they are now, but new comic-only patrons would come in at $2.  The $5 games tier and above would all be unchanged, this is specifically for the foundational tier.  I will still post all of my comic write-ups with full patron access so no one is excluded from those, but I'd lose less of new comic patron income to processing fees.  Anyone who would want to could move up to the $2 comic tier, but no one will be kicked off of where they are now.  I always end my posts with a little sentence about how grateful I am for your support, and that is very sincere, which is why I wanted to type up this post today to be upfront and transparent and get feedback from you about these changes.

Those are the changes I'd like to make.  Rather than jump right in I'm going to let it sit for a bit so you know what to expect from this Patreon.  If there's something you like that I don't do enough of, or if there's something else you'd like to see, let me know in the comments here.  Thank you as always for your continued support of my work.  I want to do the best job I can for you, thanks for taking the time to read this.