[TWAB] Brief Reflection before Patreon Introspection-Blocked Me... (Patreon)

Monthly Dropbox Archive

I reflect on my career and plan for the upcoming year every December. I feel like this was an unremarkable year from me, but I don't have any large, sweeping changes in mind for 2026. I feel like things will stay mostly the same, but with minor tweaks to make it feel better.

I'm tired. Tired of desperately catering to a faceless audience of people who don't care. Tired of corporate censorship and navigating this career amidst its many challenges.

If I plan to care less about catering to the public, then I may, paradoxically, have to rely on taking commissions more often. Doing so risks further stress, however, so I would have to approach that very carefully... Perhaps I'll open 1-2 slots to patrons every month? I don't know.

Content Structure

The current arrangement of one weekly illustration (with occasional bonus content) feels fairly reasonable -- and has allowed us to create a Female Link Friday every single week of the year (only a few more left).

We still lack a good distribution system for comics. Patreon & SubscribeStar are not designed for the task -- and Beaumont is still a brand risk for Patreon. So, I don't know what to do about that, but I am that aware many of you were interested in comics.

If I were to start a comic, then it would likely be released in whole chapters, like a monthly comic. Though, maybe not every month... Especially when I can't focus exclusively on said comic project. I guess I'd have to release it via Dropbox until I can assemble an entire volume? There truly is no great solution here...

I like the overall calm atmosphere we've maintained throughout much of the year, but I would still like to make the experience a little more fun sometimes.

Game Development

Having finished the game dev project, I've updated GameMaker (v2022.5.0.8 to 2024.14.1.212) - resulting in some of my code breaking (minor). But my code was already problematic, so this is just another reason to recreate the engine -- but better.

Rather than waste time recreating the engine 1:1 as it currently stands, it may be wiser to work on smaller projects along the way as the engine evolves over time.

I don't yet know what my next project should be.

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Looking back on the consumer experience I offered, I think there were two main problems:

The wait between playable releases was very long.

The experience of waiting between actual updates was very boring.

Upon reflection, I think those are things I need to keep in mind for the future.

Other

These blog posts are so infrequent, I'm not sure it's appropriate to call them "This Week at Brellom..."

As an aside, I recently tried bringing a little activity back to the Dungeon Master patrons (by asking for their input to assist in the creation of bonus artwork this month). I may try to do so again, but I don't want the scope of this reward to be as overwhelming as it was in the past.

Patreon bugged out and accidentally released this post as I was in the middle of writing it, BEFORE I was even ready to release it -- I didn't even notice until 20 minutes later, when I saw email notifications of patron replies. I guess I'm cutting it short and just posting it now. Maybe I'll make another post to finish my thoughts at some point...

Don't forget to eat & sleep.