Week 85: Patreon Fucked-up

Is the year finished yet?

Let’s put it this way:

15 weeks ago I started working on Ninja Attack for The Frosty Pop Corps, the game seemed a little ambitious but doable in the development time we settled on, which was spread over 10 weeks. That was 15 weeks ago and I am still working on the game.

Over these 15 weeks, working on personal stuff proved to be very difficult, as I didn’t really want to do anything game related whenever I stopped working on Ninja Attack.

Yet, the game is almost finished (even if I’ve been saying that for at least 4 weeks) and The Frosty Pop Corps want to submit it for Apple to review on Friday. Will we make it? Let’s hope so.

Aside from that, the whole year has been a great source of stress through an incredible amount of world tensions and of political chaos in the US but also in Europe, and particularly in the UK and in France. Let me tell you something about our current situation in France: President Macron’s biggest difference with Trump is that he’s way more cunning. The people he put in charge, the actions he takes, the things he says, everything points toward the conclusion that he is hungry for power and wants rich people to like him. The thing is, the media likes him. And so a lot of people have no idea.

Let’s close the parenthesis, point is that simply looking at the news at anytime during this year was a stressful experience. Worse, most of the time you don’t even have to look at the news, as the worst news will show up in your Twitter feed anyway.

To top it all off, the current weather here in Le Havre is simply depressing. When it doesn’t rain, it hails and either way, it is ridiculously windy, which makes of going out for fun just a bad idea.

And here comes a mail from Patreon to announce that it is shooting itself in the foot.

In case you didn’t hear, Patreon creators used to pay the conversion and transfering fees from their supporters’ pledges, and now Patreon wants the supporters to pay those fees instead. (I’m simplifying, it is more complicated than that) So from then, the supporters will have to pay more than they intended to when they signed up for the pledge, unless of course they lower their pledge or remove it entirely.

Yet the worst part might just be that Patreon originally told in a way to make you think that it’s a win-win situation for everyone: creators get more of their supporters’ pledges, supporters know that more of their pledge will get to the creator (if you do not take the new fee in count, that is) and Patreon gets rid of an awkward problem it had.

Well, bad news, it’s actually a lose-lose situation for everyone! All the creators I’ve heard from on the subject are unhappy, myself included, as this is obviously disavantageous to the supporters and particularly to lower pledges that will get the same fees as everyone else; the supporters are unhappy for those very same reasons obviously; and the whole thing is terrible PR for Patreon, obviously, who posted their reasons for the change in a much more honest post AFTER the backlash happened.

 

I had pretty important plans for the start of 2018. Ninja Attack would finally be finished, I would finally be back to making the stuff I want to make, I would be writing articles again, I would release prototypes and unfinished things that have stayed in a corner for as much as 1.5 years… And a lot of all that depended pretty heavily on an overhaul of my Patreon. My intention was to make it a much clearer and more honest donation/subscription hybrid, with rewards I can actually deliver, among which the access to WiP and exclusive projects through itch.io’s support of the Patreon API.

Am I still going to do this? I do not know. I am doing my best to fight off the anxiety that has been creeping up my back for the past few months and this is a particularly delicate situation that I wish I didn’t have to deal with.

I still want to do what I planned. If itch.io reacts to the Patreon situation and proposes a subscription system to its creators, I will very probably go with that. If another platform proves to be an obvious alternative, then I may go with that one. Otherwise, I may or may not stay with Patreon. Or I’ll just try and release a new game every month and urge people to support me through these. For now it is still very hard to say but I think (/hope) I will have found something to rely on by the end of the month.

Either way, this situation is a major pain.

Despite everything, I still have big expectations for 2018 to be a much better year for me than 2017 has been. More on that in the last weekly recap of 2017 in two weeks.

 

I spent most of this last week working on Ninja Attack’s AR mode. I’m very much hoping to put the finishing touches on it before the Apple review submission date we set for next Friday.

But this week I also got to do a tweetcart, and then I made a stylized Snake fit into 485 characters.

Check out the source codes here and there!

And then I decided I would make a Snake clone with-a-twist, although I’m still not sure what the twist should be. I have ideas, like Snake-in-a-dungeon, or Snake can get cut up by traps and the tail parts become obstacles… I’m not sure what I’ll go with.

This is and will stay a tiny project and I do not intend to put a lot of time into it before I release it. (I’ll try and remember I wrote that)

 

This was a particularly stressful week. Although I have to say I’m getting some very positive feedback on Mushroom Délicieux which definitely brightens my days!

Next week I’m finishing Ninja Attack (gotta keep faith) and maybe I’ll find what I want to do with the Snake clone and release it.

Have a great week everyone!

Take care!

TRASEVOL_DOG