State of the lachevite

Here are a number of things that have been on my mind. I've summarized everything into a short list of points, but I would really appreciate if you took the time to read the whole post.

-I accidentally let the backlog of stuff to do grow way too large again

-I've grown tired of the theater format, and I want to go back to making finished standalone games

-I am unsure about how much I want to involve voting in future projects

-$10 idea submissions have always had very low participation, and I am unsure if I want to keep doing those at all

-I am thinking about changing the $10 benefits to something else, such as getting to see sketches I wouldn't otherwise post

-I am thinking about bumping up the $3 tier to $5 (very unsure about this)

These are all things I am still thinking about, and nothing is set in stone. I wanted to run all of this by you guys and hear what you think before making any kind of decision. If you've made it this far, please consider reading the entire post!

I initially started planning scenes in advance when I was doing them weekly, in order to give people more time for voting and submitting. When I started making scenes bigger, which made them take way longer to make, this became kinda redundant, but I never thought to change the whole advance thing. The result is that there's now the rest of scene 24, and the entirety of scene 25 and 26 in front of me. If I went through with all of that, I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up taking me the entire rest of the year. Even if I drastically cut down on the size/scope of everything, it would still be a pretty huge undertaking, and, unfortunately, I've reached a point where I don't really think I'm interested in going through with any of it at all.

The theater format made sense as a way to group a bunch of smaller things together, but over time a lot of the scenes have grown way larger and more ambitious. When I finish one of these big ones, it feels a bit anticlimactic to just sorta throw it in there to sit next to all of the other ones. They've grown in size to the point where the amount of stuff rivals or maybe even exceeds the amount of stuff in my older games. And when I'm putting so much time into what ends up as just another cookie cutter point and click thing next to the rest, I kinda start to wonder if I shouldn't just be making standalone games instead.

It dawned on me earlier this year that, excluding collaborations (and the failed patreon projects...), I haven't made a simple game with a start and finish since overstuffed overtime, almost four years ago. I'm not quite sure how it ended up this way... I think my plan was to go back to simple games after the scrapped patreon ones, but somewhere along the line I got wrapped up in the theater stuff and kinda just kept doing that.

...so, I want to start making regular games again. I want to keep releasing something small every week, like a drawing, animation, or something small that can go in the theater, and then every 1-3 months, release a standalone game. And then after releasing that, I can decide whether to work on it more, or start something new.

If I were to start doing this... right now, I wouldn't be discarding any work. Unlike when I scrapped the two other projects about a year ago, there isn't any unfinished stuff that I'd be throwing to the wayside. The partial scene I just released contains everything I've been working on, and the other endings only have very brief text outlines. So... I could get straight to work on new stuff without losing anything... if you wouldn't mind! I understand not getting the rest of the endings for scene 24 (...or the other scenes) would be a bummer for some, but... I also hope you'll agree that it's full of stuff even in its unfinished state (and if I changed the part where you select the screens to just take you to the existing choice, it would flow just fine as a finished scene...).

You might be thinking, why not just rework the remaining scenes into games instead? Well... those were kind of just ideas I came up with on the spot (months ago now) for you guys to have something to write submissions for, and I'd much prefer to sit down and figure out cool ideas for games rather than trying to fit existing stuff into a different mold. And in general... I'm not sure if I want patron contributions to be one of the main benefits at all anymore.

Thing is, they're already barely even part of the patreon as it is. The last voting/submissions were all the way back in november, and if I continued with the scenes, it would be ages until it was time again. The reason I'm tentatively bringing up the idea of axing the system entirely, is that despite how infrequent it has become... no one has ever complained about it or otherwise brought it up. I'm often a bit worried about how new patrons might see voting/submissions as a benefit, only to see that it almost never happens... but I've never seen anyone raise the issue. So, my question is: do you guys care about this at all? Would you guys mind if I just did away with the system?

The $10 tier idea submissions have always had very low participation. I don't think a single one of them has ever had even half of all active $10 subscribers as participants. This has always worried me a bit, as I obviously want people to get something they're interested in out of their purchase. Yet, despite the low participation, and despite how infrequent the submission opportunities have been, the amount of $10 subscribers has stayed pretty consistent. The only reason for this I could think of is that... you guys just feel like throwing that much money at me (which I am very, very, very grateful for). So, I kinda doubt doing away with submissions would be a huge blow to the $10 subscribers (if it would be, this is your opportunity to tell me!), and in its place, I have something else in mind that I think would interest people who like my stuff enough to throw that much money at me, and that would be much more actionable (more on that further down).

Since voting has been done exclusively on submissions for quite some time now, the options would be to either retool voting to be for something else, or to just do away with voting as well. I never liked doing votes for game content, because I had to come up with two things I wanted to do, and then... not do one of them. I don't want to introduce voting into the weekly stuff either, because part of the reason I can make that work is that I can be spontaneous and have fun with whatever I feel like doing that week, and having to come up with a bunch of stuff to run a poll for and make voting posts every week would sap a lot of enthusiasm from me. I actually do have a certain idea for a smaller more informal project that voting could be used for, but I cannot guarantee it ever coming to fruition, and even then it would not be something consistent. Either way, I don't think I want to have voting as a main part of the patreon.

Polls and submissions were things I started doing not because I thought it would be fun or because it would improve my stuff in some way, but because I felt pressured to offer some kind of incentive to subscribe, and I've just kinda kept it going ever since even though I've never particularly liked it. So I figured I should just be honest and ask, would you guys care if I just stopped doing those? As I said, they already became so infrequent that nothing in particular would really change, only that I can pursue whatever concepts I want rather than trying to twist prompts into something that I would enjoy doing. I hope it goes without saying that even if you aren't influencing things through voting and submissions, the breasts will be as heavy, the asses will be as sweaty, and the bellies will be just as stuffed and bloated as they always have been.

Instead of submissions, I had the idea to give the $10 tier access to frequent sketch posts. These would simply be posts full of, for example, rough sketches from scenes that didn't make it into the final cut, things I just drew for no particular reason and that I wouldn't otherwise post, things that are maybe a bit more extreme than usual (!?) or that otherwise stray a bit from what I usually do... I feel like this would be a good fit for people who like my stuff enough to want to give me such a generous amount of money, and would thereby likely be interested in even the stuff that's a bit rough around the edges. It's also something I could consistently deliver on (sketches are always piling up) without adding much workload. If you are a $10 tier subscriber (or a prospective one), let me know if this is something you'd be interested in!

The last thing I want to touch on is potentially changing the price of the $3 tier to $5. When I changed the minimum price from $1 to $3 last year, my reasoning was that I felt that at $1, I wasn't valuing my work enough. My reasoning with this is mostly the same. I put a lot of time into this stuff, sometimes all of my time. I have to juggle a lot of different stuff to make it work. Those are not complaints; I make this stuff because I want to. And if I made better stuff, then a livable income would surely come on its own... but as I'm sure I said last time, at a certain point I have to make some sort of decision on what I consider my time and effort to be worth.

I have no intention of giving you my life story, but I'll be candid and say that what I currently earn through patreon is not enough. It's getting there, but as it stands I need to rely on other things, and I already very rarely spend money on anything that isn't 100% essential. I'm not looking for any kind of luxury, or to siphon as many pennies out of you guys as humanly possible, I simply want to be able to sit down and work on stuff on without worrying all year long about whether or not I'll be able to pay taxes. If I went through with this price change, and it went over well, I would, for the first time, be very close to making that a reality. But that's if it went over well, of course. I understand that with any price increase, I risk hitting a threshold where more of you leave than stay, be it because you don't think it's worth it anymore, or because you simply can't afford it. So... I don't know what my point is, other than that this is a very difficult decision.

I have no doubt that this comes across as especially obnoxious now of all times, where just about everything is slowly but surely increasing in price. All I can really do is be honest with what I'm facing. Regardless of what decision I end up coming to, and whether or not you stick around, I am very very grateful that you ever chose to support me. None of this would be possible without you.

...that ended up way way longer than expected. If you read all of that, thank you very much for your time. To sum it all up, I want to scrap everything that's in the backlog, I want to make games intead of scenes, I want to stop doing polls/submissions, I want to show $10 subscribers gross sketches, and I am thinking about changing $3 to $5. Please let me know what your thoughts are on this! I wrote all of this specifically so I could hear what you think before making any decisions. If you don't want to comment, consider liking the post if you're on board with everything I wrote (that way if it has no likes I'll know you all hate everything I said).

Thank you for your continued support