My patreon problem, and my idea(s) to fix it. (Voting Poll) (Patreon)

this post is mostly about ways to help me be more flexible, which should allow the patreon to grow and allow me to make content more frequently and more targeted towards your specific interests. It's a lot of reading because i wanted to explain everything thoroughly, so please bear with me.


The problem:

I've been on patreon for about 5 years and 7-8 months, most of that with patreon as my primary income source, and I've noticed a few things about it. Or a least about my current means of managing it, are not working well, and instead just literally wearing me out. 

On average, whenever we go into a new month, right at the start the number of patrons for many creators (not just me) will decline by roughly 13% or so give or take. And that loss needs to be regained through the month to be back where you were again. So it can be just in time to drop again next month.

If you decide to skip doing that and just work on your game, you are digging a grave for yourself. And making in harder to recover from that. It's more than a bit stressful to say the least. Since I'd very much just like to make the games without having to worry about so much "not game development" stuff. 

I always find myself envious the patreons that are doing well by just drawing images, and/or making things like the sfm videos and such. Very short term and easy to produce material when in comparison to a game.

No coding, no several lines of dialogue to sort out, no bugs to rack your brain trying to fix, no constantly resizing and importing art and assets, no dealing with lag, no dealing with UI and buttons, no needs to learn the inner-workings of game engines, etc.

But most importantly,

there's no going month to month before something is complete. which means you can promote yourself with part of, or with censored versions of that material and boost your numbers back up more reliably.

I've have been trying to find ways to have these luxuries as a game developer. The problem I'm noticing is that everything i make is reserved to go into some future game. If i want material to market with, I need to make even more stuff as extra. 

And i'd rather not post unfinished versions of a game publicly outside of my website. Hell, even on my website. It's why High Stakes never got past version 2 on there before i posted the current public version.

I began the High Stakes game back on April and finished around the end of last month (October). And I'm about to go into the next month grinding to finish another game. I need another way to do this or I won't be able to at all soon.

I need to make about 7k a month to be able to pay ttrop and jccq, bills, website expenses, and to deal with self employment taxes. because currently, literally just the taxes and website alone take off about 2 months of pay out of the year.

So I wanted to first say thanks to everyone currently supporting~

And why I am pushing to get something onto Steam soon and hope that it can offset this issue.

After giving it some thought, I've come to the conclusion that one major problem is having content that is played in order of events from the beginning each month.

This means things needs to properly connect from the starting point of the game. A lot of times, the game is in a state where it's way out the way, and takes a while to get it working like this.

Another major issue is being locked into making specific content for however many months it takes to make it. Which some people may not enjoy the current content i am working on. And it don't really any anything to promote and bring awareness to my patreon.


The fix(?)

Ideally I'd like to:

have simple to make content that is chill to make, and equivalent or better than a game update is currently. Which can be produced easily and is enjoyable for everyone by targeting their specific wants.

This would happen while working on the 6+ month long game(s) on more stress free set of requirements for myself.

So when I'm working on mmd (the 3d dance videos) it's pretty chill and fun. I can be creative with effects and camera angles. I can finish on average 4 videos, with multiple versions and have it uploaded and ready to show in 3 days.

the game stuff takes literally all the rest of the month, and produces much less content overall. It feels like a stressful race against time dealing bugs, some of which i have to first just spend time thinking about how the best way to fix them before i even take time actually fixing it. And having no real idea when i might finish. While watching a dwindling patreon support count. Super depressing tbh. And I actually like making these games! that's the crazy part. just not this way.

my solution is two fold, I need marketing material, and I need a substitute and/or adjust how I post game updates.

marketing material:

I would like to take sections of the existing games and make a small mini scene with them. The will contain dialogue leading up to a sex scene that may have a branching path or two. 

For example, the scene in Senotryu where Carl first deals with Max as he tries to interview Stacy. Can be a standalone mini piece of sentoyu that follows connects together. You don't need to travel. Each scene connects to the next directly. And I could something like that "Umichan Sentoryu: Stacy interview" for example or Umichan Senotryu: Cockblocker" etc. 

This is will give me small samples of the game that i can post around the net to help spread awareness about my games and patreon.

a substitute:

I can also make a small mini story segment that is not found in games for patrons. For example, I have a animation with Phia and TT. Characters from The Rookie. Maybe I can take a small scene in the Rookie and have it end differently using this animation.

Same with Carl interview. i wanted to have a interview with Violet, and Joey, and show other girls he interviews without directly updating and recompiling the base game.  These would just be fictional hypothetical interviews Carl would have. And you would always understand the context if you played Umichan Sentoryu.

I can also a make small scenes based on High stakes, maybe Axel team scene with moiji or another job Zytra does with context based from Sorani. It can be anything. Again the current scenes can end differently aswell. This stuff doesn't have to be canon.

Think of it like the Yui game, Provocative Punishment (but with animations)  which is based directly off of existing scenes in The Rookie. Parody hentai of scenes in my own games taht may or may not have hentai scenes in them. or it can be totally something else like the game I'm working on currently, or something totally made up.

This allows me to quickly make something people are interested in. I can make content that is based on games i'm not actively working on and in a sense add separate but related content. Such as futa fantasy, or Jailbreak, two scoops, something about Jeni, something about Phia, etc. anything within the lore.

And I won't be just stuck to just making content for whatever the current game is all the time.

 It can be voted on through general topics (a Poll with the options: something with Carl, Lesbian stuff, Something with Phia, etc) or some other way to handle it. I might be able to do multiple each month maybe 2-3 a month. Depends on what it is and how long it takes or if i have a existing animation for it, etc. 

I used to do something like this when i was breaking down UMCH into chapters. It's in the patreon content section under "Mini Flash"

let me know if you are interested in this idea. I plan to try this really soon, just to see if it really can work for me and I can enjoy it. And so you can play an example to really see what I am talking about.

adjust how I post game updates:

I'd like update to the main project to be little more relaxed and be not always have a fire under my ass to get everything done at light speed. Ideally, the aforementioned "substitute" content would be the main entrée here with these voted on mini scenes giving you more specific scenes about character or fetishes you are interested in.  and i will post updates on the major projects when it is a good time to. ideally still monthly assuming all of this saves me some time.

Also any new scenes added to the major projects would not necessary need to be accessible through the story sequentially yet. maybe it's just button to get to it from title screen for now. etc.

That will save me a lot of time bug testing to make sure you can get there from the beginning of the game. 

All of this is just ideas the moment. Nothing is changing yet. But i'd like to know what you think.  

It's a lot to read. And thanks for your time reading it. 

If you have thoughts about this or some suggestions, feel free to post a comment. and/or just vote in the poll.