Fallout 4 and Upcoming Pledge Rewards

Hey everyone. As you can tell from the title of this post I have two big things to talk about. Before that though I want to say a huge thank you. The total amount of pledges has reached above 800 dollars. Usually there's some fluctuation, and I'm expecting the number might dip a bit after Christmas, but it's more or less a given at this point that we'll reach 1,000 dollars a month in early 2017. At this point I've already made a commitment to the channel for it to be my job, but at that level it's a lot more secure. 1,000 USD covers rent and a good chunk of utility costs for my family. 

It hasn't stopped being surreal that this Youtube thing is a full-time job. It's been more life-changing for my wife and me than any of you could know. One day I might write something about that. Today I just want to say thank you. 

Related to that, I think that I should take Patreon a bit more seriously. A few months back I brought up the idea of pledge rewards. I've narrowed down some ideas that I'm going to move forward with in January unless one of you spots a potential issue and wants to let me know about it. I'm open for discussion about this and it's important I do it right. The tiers would be as follows: 

1 Dollar or more – You get to watch any new videos a day early. 

3 Dollars or more – Participation in a Q&A post done on Patreon once a month. I'll answer any questions anyone posts with as much thought as I can. As well as viewing scripts for videos and any articles I write for my blog early. The Last Guardian review I just wrote as an example. 

5 Dollars or more – Your name in a credits-like scroll at the end of every video. 

10 Dollars or more – No reward, only an acknowledgement tier for those who are pledging about as much as a Netflix subscription. 

I came to these rewards by reading the responses on my previous post asking for suggestions, and by looking at a lot of other content creators—Game Maker's Toolkit, Noclip, Ahoy, Hamish Black (Writing On Games), and Noah Caldwell-Gervais. Danny O'Dwyer does more with his rewards than any video game channel I've seen and that level of commitment is something that isn't possible for a lone guy like me. I admire how much effort he puts into it, but I would probably lose half of my work time to just making that sort of thing happen. Which helped me conclude that any rewards I do need to be something that doesn't cut into the reason that pledges come in at all: making the videos. 

It was also really important to me that nothing is behind a permanent paywall. I know that it's not the most exciting thing in the world to get to watch the video early, or to read the script or a written review before anyone else, but it's meant to be a way to show some appreciation at least for making this content be created at all. 

For 5 dollars—I know that some people must enjoy seeing their name connected to something they fund since this sort of reward was pretty popular on other channels. I hope that my read on that is right and, of course, this will have to be something people opt-in for because some supporters might NOT want their name displayed publically like that. From how I understand it, pledge rewards function that way so it shouldn't be an issue to confirm with everyone. 

And lastly, the 10 dollar tier serves two functions: a token thank you for people who want to pledge what is a crazy amount of money for a Youtube channel every month. And to mark a line for what I think should be the absolute maximum someone should pledge unless they are really, REALLY financially secure. I know some people love my content and I am deeply humbled by the handful of you that have pledged far above 10 dollars, but I have to admit it also makes me mildly uncomfortable. I always hope it's from someone who is successful enough that it isn't a large sum of money to them. Like I said in the list, if you're giving me more than Netflix you must really love what I do. And I hope that you're not sacrificing anything to give it. 

I think the Q&A session could be a lot of fun. My thoughts are to post a prompt for questions around the 15th of every month and then close it a few days later. Then I would take the time to answer everything over a week or so, depending on how many questions I get. I will answer almost anything that anyone asks, but I reserve the right to decline questions about things like my family or obvious stuff like my street address or phone number. I think that goes without saying but I will answer pretty much anything. Penis size is 8 on the ruler before anyone asks. Depends on which side of the ruler you use though. 

Please let me know if there are any concerns about these rewards. I thought about doing live chat sessions, or being able to add me on steam—stuff like that. But I'm worried that could get out of hand and I'll end up so swamped that I won't be able to get work done. It's no fun to add me to steam and then I never answer because I have too many people. What would be the point of it, right? 

These should go into effect sometime in January. Or, more specifically, with the video that comes after Fallout 4. So probably The Last Guardian. The first Q&A post would be on January 15th as well. 

Moving on from that: Fallout 4 took me a lot longer to play than I planned. I thought up some strong talking points as I played and I realized I had to visit every location and find almost every side quest if I was going to make them for the video. I've played the game for about 250 hours now—more than double what I played it for the first video in November 2015 (100 hours). 

Most of the script is complete. It's already at 20,000 words and I have two major sections still to write. I should be finished sometime tomorrow, and then I'll sink a lot of hours into recording and putting the video together. It should be about two hours long when it's finished, unless I have to cut some parts if I can't match them well to visuals from the game. 

A lot of this length is coming from about an hour-long examination of how I think gameplay works in Fallout 4, and why so many people love the game when others strongly hate it. It's the deepest I've ever gone into analyzing gameplay in a series, save for some parts of Souls, and right now I'm really pleased with how it turned out. It's been an extraordinarily difficult script to write. Usually I can crank out about 5,000 words a day. This one has been slower at around 1-2,000. Hopefully I'm just as happy with it when it's finished. 

I know that most of you prefer longer videos. It's good to have another big project for the channel since it's been a while since Dark Souls 3. Unfortunately it does mean a wider gap between videos and, with Christmas, there's a chance this might not be done until the end of next week. I know that's not great but I literally could not be working more than I am right now. If you follow me on twitter then you know that my wife lost her job last month. So even more of my time is going into this now. And it's such a long video (and game!) that it's still taking this long. 

I think you all understand that already, especially since a lot of you are also fans of other content creators with similar release schedules. Even so, you deserve updates and that's what's going on. Lately I've been waiting on releasing the script until the video is uploading. Since this is taking so long I'll post it early—sometime this week—so that people have something from me at least if they enjoy reading my stuff along with watching it. 

And I think that's everything. Thank you all once again. Please do not hesitate to leave feedback about those rewards or any problems I might not have seen about them. And have a happy Christmas if your family celebrates it.