2022 in Review (Patreon)

Bright and early in the new year, but let's go!

It was an exceptionally strong year for me financially, but also unusually draining. Unlike some years where I simply report on the status of various projects, this year I have some longer reflections. Please read on if you want to influence my thinking on a couple issues or just hear about what's to come.

The Last Sovereign

In 2021, I didn't finish as much TLS as I'd wanted and I regretted that. My hope was to completely reverse that trend and have an explosive year ushering us close to the end. I did pretty well in the first half of the year, then unfortunately faltered. Still, this was the most TLS content I've put out in a year since 2018, by several measures!

At the beginning of the year, we were still in the middle of the Incubus War. Since then we've finished the prison and war, had a bunch of open world updates, multiple new harem members, the Philon quest line, and a whole bunch of harem quests.

Next week I'll be unveiling a roadmap with detailed information about exactly what quests/content remain to the end of the game. It's not as many as I've seen some theorize, but still a decent chunk of content. Anyway, with that you won't have to speculate and can just look at the progression toward the end. Please look forward to that!

Thoughts on Patreon as Economy-Dependent Work

Some of you may know about jobs that are "feast or famine" heavily dependent on overall economic conditions. The classic example is something like swimming pool installer: in good economic times they have more work than they can handle and make hefty six figure incomes, but then a recession hits and suddenly they have no work at all.

I have long suspected that Patreon, while not as extreme, is fundamentally similar. Giving a creator money every month is a luxury, one that many can't afford as the economy worsens. There are a lot of analytics available to me and they paint a clear picture that patron loss due to economic conditions has been steadily increasing over the past two years. I've managed some major influxes of new patrons, but they only stem the tide.

To be clear, this is not a complaint. I've always told patrons that they should prioritize their own lives first and I'm saddened to read the apologies from people going through hard times. Everyone who has contributed has given me a career and I have not wasted your generosity.

I do feel that the evidence confirms some of my intuitions, however: you can't focus on creative work and believe that your product will sell itself. Indeed, this year I experimented with reducing promotion to focus on creating more content and this was sadly counter-productive in terms of the bottom line. (This may not be true for people who are better than promotion or have a less niche product.) If you don't reach new people, the attrition of life will whittle down your audience.

More positively, I feel my overall strategy has been validated. I haven't put all my eggs in one basket or lived large while times were good. I can promise the completion of major projects like TLS even if I get hit with a much larger consequence than a recession (such as complete banning from a platform).

There's no particular conclusion here, but I hope it helps people understand how I see the industry and my work. This is my dream career and I want to keep doing it forever.

Once Ever After

Instead of writing a lot about this, I'll just link my previous analysis post. Anyway, this project is done after many years! Yay. ^-^

Don't Save the Princess

So... this again. A year ago, I asked Santy (the artist) if he really had time for the project. Not an ultimatum, but close. He said that he did and would put more effort into it. And he has - all the art has been finished for six out of eight worlds. That said, he's completed very few pieces for an entire year of work, frequently delayed with family issues and AWOL periods.

Given this performance, I am seriously considering whether or not I should cancel the project. In theory I could also try switching to another artist, but that would require finding available artists with a similar style and negotiations, which is draining enough for me that I don't think it's practical. This leaves me with a tangle of motivations.

Reasons to persist with DStP:

Players continue to enjoy the Newgrounds demo, far out of proportion with my other online games. I think I was getting close to a nice gameplay loop for a casual game, which would be a new audience for me.

I've sunk a moderate amount of money into the project, especially due to all the programming expenses. Maybe this is ego talking, but I feel good about having turned a profit on everything I've attempted and a cancelation would break that streak.

Work building Steam wishlists would be wasted, plus my Valve fees would be forfeit.

I like to finish what I start and feel bad not fulfilling promises I've made.

Reason to cancel DStP:

I don't want to fall into the grip of the sunk cost fallacy.

With OEA complete, canceling DStP would render my schedule instantly clear in a way it hasn't been seen my previous wave of side projects years circa 2018.

No need to endure another release period from general hentai fans.

I'm not sure what to think and I'm honestly open to input from anyone who cares. That's how I see the issue, anyway.

Genre-Savvy Apocalypse

Though speaking of canceling things, I've removed GSA. I dislike not finishing something I've started, but I took a hard look at the numbers and myself and decided this was for the best. I've already gathered all the new patrons (modest) and data (important) from it that I think I would. Finishing it would be a substantial investment of my time and energy for a relatively small benefit, even if I think the result might make good money on Amazon.

Poor Devin and Alice. Maybe one day I'll finally finish their story. T-T

Thoughts on Opportunity Cost

Some creators of long term projects talk about growing to hate their work due to the unrelieved familiarity. This has never been the case for me: I still love TLS and I'll be sad when the work finally concludes.

This year, however, I did begin to accumulate some regrets. About 1.5 years ago, I received an offer for an unrelated project, an ongoing webcomic where I would have been paid for the creative rights instead of having to pay for art. I turned it down because I thought it was likely this would add too much month-to-month work, plus I hoped I might be able to get an even better deal later.

Now, it seems, the acquisitions department that made the offer has dissolved. Had I taken the deal earlier, the project would still have gone through, and even if it had ended after one book, at worst it would have been good money for what would essentially be free promotion. Declining was still probably the right decision overall, but... there is a sense of loss.

I've been thinking more about opportunity costs lately. There was a time when I was desperately working to see if I could manage to buy food via creative work, but as my career has grown more stable, time is increasingly becoming my scarcest resource.

The unfortunate fact is that I only have so much time, both on a daily basis and overall. Each project I choose to pursue effectively kills off other ideas that will never come into existence. It couldn't really be otherwise, but it leaves me with a sense of melancholy as I move toward the end of a project that has been a primary focus for almost ten years of my life. Not a regret, just a sense that I want to do things right to justify what I've chosen.

Misc Other Updates 

Writing: I wrapped up a trilogy this year, leaving only my most popular ongoing series (The Weirkey Chronicles). The plan is to write a couple more, but these are short books and easy to write.

Audiobooks: Travis Baldree will continue narrating them, in theory, without much involvement from me. If he gets to four books narrated, then I'll put out a combined edition of the first three that would theoretically be a much stronger starting point. On that note, while I haven't quite surpassed the substantial advance I was offered by a publisher, I've more than made up my costs and the comparison is closer than you might think.

Crimson Gray Yandere Maker: No guarantee I put any work into it this year. Only if inspiration really strikes or there's a moment when I can't be productive on anything else.

This is less booked than I have been in years. Usually there's an ebb and flow: I wrap up several side projects, then begin spinning up new ones. In this case, I'm not really sure how I'll invest my time. Instead of starting anything new, I might put excess creativity toward thinking about post-TLS projects.

Alright, this has been yet another long post. I hope everyone has a good 2023, and I will do my part to contribute a little fun to the year via my work. ^-^