Letter from the Producer 2022 (Patreon)

Happy New Year, everyone!

Matt DeWinkeleer here. Titanic: Honor and Glory Executive Producer and head of Vintage Digital Revival — the company we threw together to oversee THG's creation. I wish you blessings for a brand new year and want to give you a summary of our 2022 fiscal year for THG. I'll also talk about the behind-the-scenes things that go on to keep you informed. I hope this post (and the past year's worth of visual updates) allows Patrons to see the bigger picture and let them decide how they want to support us going into another year!

Below is a rundown of THG's main money streams in and out and a recap of why making this game has been stressful. Please forgive any run-on sentences.

Patreon Facts and Figures

For the entire year, you all supported us by giving $90,172. Patreon's platform fees were: $7,342. Payment fees were: $12,360. 

It is incredible how many of you still support us, given all our baloney (excuse my language.) We started the year with 550 Patrons, and we ended with seven hundred! We hope you find joy in what we do — this project of love and insanity. If you ever need to remove your sponsorship of us, please do so with no need to explain yourselves. We often get apology messages when someone must downgrade their patronage or leave. Please, there is no need! There is never a need to explain if you want to cancel outright.

A special shout-out to the Officers who work side-by-side with Derek, Kyle, and the researchers/volunteers to help with the project — especially the QA testers! You are keeping us alive and moving forward! If you want more visual progress updates and don't care about all this, look around Patreon (or in a month or so when the early access posts are unlocked.)

We recently adjusted the tiers to reflect more of what we have been doing. Old perks from the beginning of 2021 needed to be withdrawn, combined or altered. We removed the early-access YouTube videos and the Alpha access as perks. But the Alpha has been removed because it is not ready yet. It will come back for the Deckhands tiers and up when we know we are getting close.

Discord perks, such as crew communication, were adjusted. The Core crew (Derek, Kyle, James, Matt) communicates most frequently on the Officers' "Snowball" Discord. You'll get Kyle and James messaging now and then on the main Discord, but it's the Officers' Discord for most streams and the most direct form of communication with the team. This communication style is reflective of other video game projects and developments.

Other perks, such as postcards/posters, were listed as something we did when they were what Patreon was creating and sending out as merch. That made it seem like two different perks when it was one. The only physical merch we send out comes from Patreon (except Officer year merch TBD.)

On that note, we sent $12,336 worth of merch from Patreon. I hope to find an alternative to Patreon merch in 2023, but I am still looking for something to solve our logistical fulfillment problems. The message we have gotten the most regarding their merch is a need for more quality. Sometimes the image on the poster needs to be sharper. While Patreon makes it quite easy to integrate merch, they give little variety nor the ability to perfect your quality (yet.)

Crew and Team

The following Core crew members were paid $33,650 for their outstanding work in 2022: Derek, Kyle, James, Andy, Luke, Tino, Gio, Nico, Chris, and Georg. I will not break down into detail who got how much. You might not know what some of these guys do behind the scenes, but it's all super important! Modeling, website scripts, textures, graphic design, and even giving us general advice. I want to thank them for everything they have done, their support, and just being them! They put up with a lot of flak, deal with a lot of stress, and are under a lot of pressure.

I need to point out that I am not included in the list of paid crew members. True, I sell my Titanic Plans (www.titanicdeckplan.com). While my contributions to THG have been more considerable in the past, many others are now working much harder at present. There have been times when the Core have gone months without pay, continued to toil on THG, labored at their real-world jobs, and signed in to the 7:00 am Discord meetings. These guys come first.

Some other volunteers were paid, and some had PC hardware sent. It is only possible to keep working on THG with the assistance and support of these volunteers. Two volunteers I want to give attention to are Jason Chester and Jack Gibson. They deserve big gold stars for their help on the project. It is remarkable how brilliant they are and especially how enthusiastic they are about what they do. Not to mention their love for Titanic!

As a result of some dramatic team shake-ups in early 2022, we admittedly dropped the ball with most of our volunteers. With a smaller team size, no one person could dedicate the needed time to what is essentially a full-time job of guiding the volunteers, assigning models, checking their work, and keeping up with the communication across all needed parties. Our two main game guys, Derek and Kyle, are already busy enough with their work. The job requires knowledge that the rest of us can’t really step up to handle (optimizing 3D modeling, workflow for final assets, and general knowledge of the ship.) The job requirements have made finding someone to fill the role tough, and we've discovered an outside pro is expensive.

But don't fret! This hasn't stopped Kyle's Alpha progress. We've discovered how important the ship's structure is to the game — so please read his updates with an excellent explanation of that process here on Patreon.

We have a talented team of dozens of researchers and historians on our Discord. Indeed, we have yet to pay most of them. But at the same token, I have not heard from any of them that they are upset about being part of this project. Some are regularly active on our VDR Discord. They trade photos and questions, trying their best to research Titanic and her sisters.

The goal I always had was to bring researchers together to create a think-tank space where we could openly share information. Yet another struggle that has been! But it has genuinely benefited and pushed forward THG. Instead of just Kyle, Chris, Nico, Gio, and myself researching Titanic like before, we have much more help. Without these researchers, we would have a crappy Titanic.

It's tough not to be defensive, but I wish to remind our toughest fans of a few things about this team. Those working on the project we can pay are getting much less than a professional in their position would be. A technical director on a video game who works as hard as Derek (who has his own job/business during the day and works on THG in his free time) would be paid ten times what he is getting now (and three times the entire crew's pay.)

True! we're not professionals! (See above, dropping the ball.) But most of us have been doing this as a labor of love for years and have learned many skills in the process. While it might seem like it has taken too long, this big boat has come a long way. We'll continue our passion project and openly accept your support. I hope that the recreated Titanic we continue to build is enough!

GmbH's Costs

I have discussed this before in a few posts. I'll try not to talk about it too much (famous last words.)

We announced in April of 2021 a partnership with a German GmbH that the LLC created and financed. The LLC was told that the Alpha, which ended up being primarily managed and worked on by the Euro-based team, could be out by the end of 2021 or even the end of that summer.

Simultaneously, on the GmbH’s advice and my approval, we rebranded: a new logo, sounds & music, an intro video for YouTube, and a new website, to name a few. This ended up being more expensive than we would have liked and, in the long run, cost us far more than we could have imagined.

The GmbH hired talented modelers, took up managing volunteers, and teamed up with a university for a time. Due largely to the intense new standards set up by the GmbH, much of the original core team was also left somewhat idle aside from research.

Around $30k was needed to create the GmbH. The money invested was then used to run the company. Along with the pay of the GmbH's employees for several months in 2021, the $30k came from the United States — my personal savings (still Matt talking.) I decided to invest directly in THG: the only solution I thought would get this project moving after years of stagnation and problems.

Everything done with the GmbH was with the belief it would be both more efficient and cost-effective while giving us faster progress. Unfortunately, the promises and advice we received failed to materialize or benefit us as the expenses induced and the advice we received only hurt us and led to further delay. But we gave it a chance — a year’s worth — until we cut ties without an Alpha (a different story.) Trying not to leave the GmbH up a creek, we continued to pay their expenses to an agreed point.

In 2022 $29,698 went to these GmbH expenses paying for their various bookkeeping, lawyer, and misc. costs. We are now done paying the GmbH fees.

Reflecting on this history, I laugh when people accuse us of being scammers and embezzlers. If that were truly our goal, we'd be the world's worst con artists — spending huge portions of our lives actively making an old boat to get so little out of it. If anything, I could be a better business owner.

Model Ship Refunds

Another considerable controversy has been the hand-painted model ships. There has been around a two-year wait for some orders, and we have finally been able to start resolving this. Unfortunately, it's not in a way that will make everyone happy.

To summarize the situation, the store went offline in early 2021 when we started the new THG direction. Fixing the website, ensuring the store was working fine with EU laws and regulations, and improving its look and feel. What we should have realized would happen during that time, besides a lack of sales of all products, was the destruction of our SEO. SEO stands for "search engine optimization." It helps drive traffic to a site. Once we took our long-standing website offline, the SEO was reset — and if someone afterward searched for "model Titanic," we were no longer on the top page of Google.

It was a double-whammy — and even more challenging for Zeno. He worked from home (pre-pandemic), and the store was his primary income. So now the store was offline with zero sales, and the pandemic hitting hard, his income stream dried up. He had to find another source to support his family. Something had to give. Zeno could not dedicate time to paint the ships, and only his wife (who also had to take care of their daughter at home during the lockdown) would painstakingly solo paint part of the ships. The orders slowed even more. Customers became understandably more frustrated.

So now, more than a year and a half later, we have decided to refund everyone outstanding. It was a tough decision — but many on the team were having ethical dilemmas over the timeframe of order fulfillment (no one is suing us, nor have I ever been sued, sorry.)

But Zeno cannot get back into painting with his new job. He and I have decided to face the situation and work through all refunds as best we can. We have always refunded anyone who has contacted us asking for one.

Five hundred thirty-six people who have an order for any hand-painted ship have been emailed a detailed explanation of the process. I will sum it up.

We can only refund some people at a time. That's quite a lot of money, and we didn't get approved for a small business loan, so we hope everyone understands that we are refunding from the oldest to the newest fifty a month (for now.)

We are also offering customers exchanges for other store items. If someone takes a store credit, they get a thank-you bonus of 20% added to their refund. They can choose grey ships, deck plans, THG merch, Steam Keys, and other goodies.

We need to give a round of applause to James, Andy, and Luke for their hard work in resolving this situation as best they could. From emailing and corresponding with customers to helping get the site and system up and running. They're making this process run smoothly. With their help, Zeno and I have refunded or resolved 52 orders so far since November.

The big question: Are patrons paying for all these refunds? Technically no. Two points!

◉ Three parties divided the distribution of the hand-painted ship revenue. THG took its cut for game production. Zeno for printing, painting, and shipping. And finally, Tino Thoss took a portion because they were his design and 3D files. Zeno has the largest slice of the pie because it is the most labor-intensive, followed by THG. Neither Zeno nor THG can afford to refund everyone all at once. But as the refunds are sent out, we keep a running tab of what Zeno and Tino will also refund to THG (that we covered.)

◉ YouTube Ad revenue for the year totals $16,767. With D/P401 on the horizon, we hope more content will be released on our YouTube in 2023 to increase ad revenue. The combined ad revenue should continue to cover the portion required by THG for the refunds before Zeno's cut is contributed back.

BTW Zeno is still on the team. Our store will be open again with grey ships and other 3D-printed items to help offset the costs of the refunds. Only items already made and in stock will be for sale to prevent massive delays or flashbacks to past disasters. And all that revenue will go to refunds until they are fulfilled.

Final Rundown

Finally, here is a quick breakdown of the remaining expenditures:

Advertisements (on Facebook and Google): $1,963. Overhead costs (business filings, trademarks, a PO box): $1,017. Subscriptions (storage, Google, email services, modeling licenses): $2,892. Shipping and postage: $2,978. [Titanic Deck Plans share the same shipping account (ShipStation) as THG, and those orders are credited when they come in, so this explains why shipping is so high.] Miscellaneous expenses (research & tech purchases): $2,363. THG Sales and donations: $2,989.

As our primary funding source from 2021 onwards has been from you all at Patreon, we will keep those numbers and info open here! Your support is helping bring Titanic back to life for millions to explore. But please: if you feel your financial assistance could be better used on something other than this project, suspend it. This post isn't intended to persuade but to inform. The visual posts that Derek and Kyle give us are to persuade! Many more essential things in life require money than our video game project. So please prioritize!

Yet no matter how long it takes us and how hard it gets, THG will keep going. Passion projects have that black-hole appeal. We are brainstorming for things to come in April and getting Demo 401 sorted while continuing work on the Alpha. 

I guarantee you — After more than ten years of working on Titanic, from my spare time to full-time, I want it done more than anybody else.

Thank you all. Full speed ahead and eyes forward.