Patron Perk: The Mayhem poster
The small image above is pretty similar to the poster that Marc spent so much time staring at in Redemption for Jessika. (The actual poster had an important difference that brought in more sales...)
I'll be sending out two larger versions of the poster to our "Partner" level ($10) patrons tonight. After what happened with the January pledges, we've decided that this is how we're going to handle the Partner perks.
Whenever we finish a new Partner perk, I'll send a link to it in email to people who are paid up for month. I'll also send a link to a collection of the previous perks. So, if you become a partner down the road, you'll still be able to get the perks that came out before you joined.
I recognize that this means you can wait a year, pay $10 once, and get all the perks over the year. I'm not crazy about that, but I also don't want people who learn about our games in the future to miss out on perks we do now. At least this way people won't be able to sign up to be a patron, gather the perks, and cancel before paying anything (as happened in January). I'm hoping this is the right balance, but will adjust in the future if I need to.
Speaking of the future, in March we'll be sending our first short story to our Partner level patrons. It's called "Dreaming with Elsa: Learning to Fly" and should go out early in the month (after the February pledges clear).
Thank you for being Patrons. We hope you enjoy these small tokens of our appreciation.
--Tlaero
Comments (11)
Possibly. Sometimes a credit card expires. When that happens Patreon notifies the patron and gives them a chance to update it. We'll give it a few days to be sure. --Tlaero
again like 20 people avoided to pay
I think that a big number of the 25k downloads are teenagers that can't pay.
This whole Patreon thing is definitely a work in progress for us. We're not sure what the best path is, nor are we REALLY sure what "best" means. I'm not 100% sure which is more important, maximizing revenue, maximizing fans, or something in between. We'll go this way for a while and adjust if we need to. I'm certainly aware that $120 a year is significant for a large number of people. And I recognize that we've had over 25,000 downloads of RfJ but have around 150 patrons. Would reducing the cost of the rewards bring in more patrons? Maybe, maybe not. I'm a little uncomfortable with getting into a "value" concept though. In my mind, patrons are paying to encourage us to keep making the games, not to get rewards. We're giving rewards to show our appreciation. It's a distinction, probably a naïve one on my part, but a distinction. --Tlaero
Is that like a former president telling us that it depends on "what the definition of 'is' is?"
After the february pledge we'll get the poster?
But wouldn't that defeat the purpose of having higher support levels? If you make everything available to the $1 or $5 levels, why would anyone pledge at a higher level? I did but that is, as you suggest, because I specifically like their work and wish to see it continue. I pledge support for that purpose but I see your point that some may only make donations JUST to get the goodies, not out of a desire to encourage and support. That is a little sad in the patreon model but human nature is what it is. I can see offering something tangible for the lower levels but still like the idea that my $10/month gets more reward that $1. And that is what it is after all, reward. The pledges are not purchase price for all the goodies, they are rewards for loyal supporters. I think the guys (sorry Tlaero, I know you are not a guy) are on the right track with the new idea of sending the perks out to supporters by e-mail after each month's donations are in. It really isn't fair to the loyal folks who actually contribute for the perks to be scooped up by some who have no intention of honoring their pledge. If the team choose to institute discrete levels of perks for the various levels of support, more power to them. The down side, of course, would be the increased amount of housekeeping to keep the various levels separate when the time comes to send out the e-mails. I think T&M have better things to do with the time.
I never said they should give everything to the $1 tier, I said other Patreons were giving access to equivalent of this campaign's $10 perks for $1 and $5. They do other things for their higher tiers, like one sends out invites for livestreams to show themselves creating art, or offering higher resolution portable zips of their browser games. Some offer custom scene requests for their high rollers, some offer up raffle tickets for personal input into upcoming games to all tiers (weighted, of course). Several offer cheat codes /exploits for their games for both monthly and total contributions over time. I'm not going to mention names because this isn't about advertising other creators. I don't point this out because I'm cheap, I'm not, and nor is anyone on the $1 tier. They're all technically donating $12 a year because they want to support their work with nothing more expected in return, and in the way are the most generous, and that's the point. These are the people who stay with you when you offer them nothing. They want you to succeed. The people at $5 and $10 feel the same way. I point it out because the majority of people aren't wired that way and need to be incentivized in order to part with their money. This Patreon would likely make significantly more money and reach significantly more people by consistently offering something to even the smallest contributions. Ask ebook writers how much they make and how many books they sell when selling their books for $10 vs how much they make when it's available for $1. As Brad said, even though it's to support creators, people still have limited funds and still will still do the math in their heads and ask if the next Tora game is worth $60-120 a year for them (and most probably decide it isn't). I have to imagine a wide majority of people who enjoy these types of games would be willing to give the creators $6-12 annually to receive updates on the process, even if they wouldn't feel the same amount of generosity at ten times that amount. I've been contributing since December and have received 4 messages from this Patreon, and half of them were complaining about how people are taking advantage of them and discussing how best to safeguard the $5 and $10 perks. That's a random dose of negativity coming into my mailbox that's been making me question if I really need to be donating at all, and that's not good. If instead it was weekly or biweekly updates with fun new images, giving people a peek on how the sausages are made, I honestly think more people would sign up, get excited, and let other people know. It would keep the studio and game alive in the minds of patrons on a monthly and weekly (even daily) basis and spread the word, increasing the potential audience, and also increasing revenue. That's just my two cents (plus my other 98 cents). At the end of the day, you guys are great, and there are far, far more than 155 people out there (at the time of this writing) that enjoy your work. The question shouldn't be how to keep them from jumping on and off again when there's a release, it should be how to convince them to stay while they're here.
If you're concerned about people jumping on the $10 for short periods, it makes more sense to just start bringing tangible monthly perks down to the $5 and $1 tiers. Honestly, most other creators are sending out a ton of images, and if they're making games, even sending alphas and betas out to the $1 and $5 tiers. The vast majority of people on Patreon who are looking for unique and exclusive perks from creators they like, and weighing their total contribution to all creators they support based on that. The fact that a significant number of people jumped in to get the last game early and then left before being billed speaks to that. Your current monthly structure pretty much guarantees the only people supporting you are those who actually want to support you, because there's no tangible month-to-month benefit of being a supporter, and there isn't one until you get to the $10 tier, which is a high buy-in for casual fans. The only creators that I've seen that have significant "thank you" tier membership are the ones who are incredibly prolific (youtube personalities, podcasters), and even a newsletter at that point notifying people of new content has value for their Patrons. (More than that, I think it might be guilt that people get as much as they do from them for free and want to contribute.) I wish you guys luck with this, but you're leaving a significant amount of money on the table. Give people a reason to stick with you month after month beyond just that they've liked the work you've done, and I think you'll see that.
I tend to agree with onan. $10 pledge levels make sense to me on a per-game release basis (as WolfeSchadowe is doing), but a $10 monthly pledge means $120/year which is a lot of money for the number of games one is likely to see released in that timeframe (~2?) compared to what you could buy for the same amount of money by conventional means (and if you support 3 or 4 such sites at that level, you're talking about a pretty hefty chunk of change). Now I realize that being a "patron" means more than simply purchasing something -- it means supporting the creator, but many of us can't afford $500/year to support our 4 favorite creators at $10/month, sadly. Regarding alphas and betas, personally, I like the types of perks that TLaero and Mortze have been offering more -- art, short stories, etc. I find usually barely have time to play a game all the way through when it's released let alone to struggle through potentially buggy versions, so getting access to a game before it's ready doesn't feel like a perk to me -- it feels more like a QA job that I should be getting compensated for. I particularly liked the Mayhem poster perk idea because of the tie-in to the story. That said, given the number of images in any game and the small amount of time I spend looking at any one of them (and the fact that I can't really hang this poster up anywhere without getting asked some embarrassing questions), it's not something I'm going to be willing to spend $10 on. But it is something I'd be very happy to find in my mailbox as a thanks for being a long-term patron (not that the Tora account has been up long enough for anything to be considered all *that* long-term).
I'm curious: Have you considered making perks be based either on instantaneous membership levels or on accumulated donations over time? That would be a way of rewarding both those who give big(ger) in one fell swoop and those who stick with you at a lower level over a longer period of time (the model I'm trying to use for simplicity and long-term consistency while not breaking my budget).