Patreon creator pages: yea or nay?

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tepples
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Patreon creator pages: yea or nay?

Post by tepples »

What do we want to allow or forbid with respect to forum members linking to their Patreon creator pages? Is there a good way to announce that you have one?
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FrankenGraphics
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Re: Patreon creator pages: yea or nay?

Post by FrankenGraphics »

I don't have one. Just backing a few people i dig. But will say this:

-programmers generally have good pay.
-artists generally don't. if you want to commit to working with art you're willing to risk living below the poverty line. Much of the labor force that could do the stuff of dreams are busy being tied up in producing advertisements, since that brings the groceries in. Nobody likes ads.

i see nothing wrong with patreon in itself. it frees up some of that labor force pursuing more worthwhile projects.
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koitsu
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Re: Patreon creator pages: yea or nay?

Post by koitsu »

Making a post explicitly advertising one's Patreon: kinda uncool, depressing, and indicates desperation. This is a tech forum, not social media; we should stay focused on what the forum is about.

That said: I think someone having a link to their Patreon in their signature might be acceptable, specifically because other users can turn off display of signatures. Thus it's optional if a person chooses to put it there, optional if a viewer/user chooses to click on it, and optional if a viewer/user wishes to see such things at all.

(Note to participants/readers: Tepples almost certainly created this post because of a discussion on the nesdev Discord about the feasibility of Patreon for additional income/helping out some developers. Several folks were cited as examples, including nocash and byuu. I am 100% cool with this kind of support (and do support some of those mentioned), but I am generally against "shoving it in people's faces". If someone wants to help you out financially, they will go looking for you to find out how they can do so. "Advertising" it is, to put it bluntly, pathetic.)
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FrankenGraphics
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Re: Patreon creator pages: yea or nay?

Post by FrankenGraphics »

If someone wants to help you out financially, they will go looking for you to find out how they can do so
I don't think that's how these things work. People will consider becoming a patron, or donate money to a paypal button (which would happen rarely in the first place; patreon has superceded paypal buttons as a better financing/fan contanct model), or whatever, when they have a clear minimum effort route enabling to do so right front of their eyes. I don't think anone stuck in traffic or feeding their kids are thinking about what creators they might want to start subscribing to (let alone research if there is a subscription). I think i maybe did that once, if this counts: Someone asked me to do a little bit of sprite work and i didn't feel like accepting pay for it and asked if they could put it on shirus' donate button instead, which in turns goes to charitable causes.

I'm completely ok with if people want to put patreon links in their signature.

I wouldn't mind if people wanted to make a topic about some cause or project either. It's probably best reserved for a general / misc type subforum though. We're not going to see a flood of them. It'd be easy enough to ignore if you'd want to.
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gauauu
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Re: Patreon creator pages: yea or nay?

Post by gauauu »

koitsu wrote: That said: I think someone having a link to their Patreon in their signature might be acceptable, specifically because other users can turn off display of signatures. Thus it's optional if a person chooses to put it there, optional if a viewer/user chooses to click on it, and optional if a viewer/user wishes to see such things at all.
I agree with this. Sigs have always been a fairly low-key way to link to personal stuff, and this seems like a reasonable non-intrusive approach.
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Banshaku
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Re: Patreon creator pages: yea or nay?

Post by Banshaku »

I don't understand much about that system so my opinion may not have much weight but I wouldn't be able to ask for money when it's something done as a hobby. I may be tight with the family most of the time but I wouldn't be able to ask for that.

What I would do is more of the like I may help someone and I may receive something in return as a way to say thank you but often for that too I'm not expecting things and may feel unconfortable about it. I asked for help, which is something I'm not used too and was pleasantly surprised when people where more than happy to support so I will be glad to give back some of my time once they need help someday.

So the patreon thing is too foreign for me to understand for now.
tepples
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Re: Patreon creator pages: yea or nay?

Post by tepples »

I guess one perk that a creator could offer is name-dropping patrons over a certain level in a game's credits. I know Explosm does this with Cyanide & Happiness shorts.

"-programmers generally have good pay."
Sometimes getting good pay requires willing to moving to a different city. Some of us aren't yet at a point in our lives where moving becomes practical. And some of us are programmers-turned-producers who need some sort of income with which to commission artwork.

So if it turns out that Patreon to fund someone's work in general is too intrusive or too foreign to would-be patrons' mindset, would Kickstarter to fund specific releases be better received?
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FrankenGraphics
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Re: Patreon creator pages: yea or nay?

Post by FrankenGraphics »

Having a patreon is not asking for help, or begging. It is having (part of) a business model. You create content for your patrons and communicate with them in ways you wouldn't otherwise have done or had time for. It takes time and effort, and in other words, it is work.

Whether that business model is effective for every patreon user or not is another thing. You need a good idea, do work that is useful or otherwise enjoyable by others, and have the right conditions to succeed, as usual.

Yeah, for NES homebrew, KS has worked well. I don't see patreon taking over anytime soon.

For tools, however, i could see it working. I currently back a tool through patreon, and it basically works like this: I could have had it for free anyway. Being a patron gains me access to a bulletin board for user feedback and discussion. It also unlocks a few community features within the tool itself that i don't need or care for, so the tool is essentially freeware for what it was designed to do.

Some patreons use pay per installment which works well for some things. this tool use pay per month. The minimum fee for participating is 1 dollar / month, but since pretty much nothing is left of that dollar after duites, i pay two, and so do many others.

It's basically a shareware system made to work in our time.

If you've built up a fanbase, it could also work as a supplemental solution. But be prepared that it takes time to maintain. You need to reach a critical mass before it actually pays off doing all that extra work. On the other hand, having some accountability to a tangible fanbase might help you being more productive in your spare time.
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Banshaku
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Re: Patreon creator pages: yea or nay?

Post by Banshaku »

I was seeing the word thrown around often but wasn't sure what it was. I completely misunderstood it. My bad ^^;; I didn't saw it has begging but more you receive money and you give something back to your backer or something like that. Now it's more clearer what it is.
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FrankenGraphics
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Re: Patreon creator pages: yea or nay?

Post by FrankenGraphics »

Yeah, that's about it.

Patreon page holders are usually very polite and use phrases like "thanks for your support" and "thanks for helping me realizing this project" - it is good to highlight that the backers actually help sustain the viability of the project, be transparent what that money goes to, and show fruits of their investment/involvement at every turn. After all, yes, you do help out, but it's a mutual transaction.

A bit unfortunately, being this humble (which i think is good in itself) reinforces the misconception that it is some form of e-begging.

I believe the spreading of this misconception usually stems from an insufficient concept about the precarious nature of doing creative work/business and how a typical salaried, longterm dayjob isn't an option to most people who've trained for this sort of work. As a creative worker, you need to consider other forms of business or employment forms to be able to work within this field. Patreon is one such option among others, and if you have or are able to make production suitable to its model, it can save you from needing to hunt for gigs as much, and gigs you know are bad deals but which you'd otherwise need to accept just to keep a roof over your head.

Sure, some patreon accounts have unserious business plans. Maybe some kid occasionally thinks it's easy money. They won't succeed. It's just like how a poorly planned kickstarter/a kickstarter with a poorly conceived product won't succeed. Avoid those and you're fine.
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rainwarrior
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Re: Patreon creator pages: yea or nay?

Post by rainwarrior »

My favourite NES related Patreon is The Assembly Line podcast. KHan and Sole Goose doing in-depth interviews and reviews for NES homebrew:

https://www.patreon.com/nesassemblyline


I have a patreon of my own. My own stated goals are to make free NES and game development things: tutorials, tools, games, music, etc.

https://www.patreon.com/rainwarrior


Patreon as a platform overall... maybe similar to Kickstarter in some ways, but it's for ongoing work rather than a one time exchange. There is no minimum funding bar like with Kickstarter, everything pledged goes to them, once a month. This is primarily for someone who can make many small projects, or at lease ongoing releases of a larger project. Art and music often seem to be a good fit for weekly/monthly projects.

However, since it's not an all-or-nothing funding model, there's no bar for viability. In this respect a successful Patreon is much harder to attain than a successful Kickstarter. The things I share on Patreon cost me much more to make than my current level of funding supports. I'm just an idiot working on spec. The Assembly Line I mentioned above isn't even covering their hosting costs, but obviously recuperating some of that loss is worthwhile. Patreon can still be very useful as a small supplemental income, even if it's not a person's primary means of support. It doesn't necessarily need to be a viable business plan by itself. (...though for that matter neither does Kickstarter.)

FWIW the Patreon fees are pretty low, so as a patron what you spend goes mostly to the person you are trying to support. They certainly get a better cut than e.g. Twitch or iTunes or Steam.
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Re: Patreon creator pages: yea or nay?

Post by nocash »

I am just giving it a try, too. Hoping that a decent signature with link to homepage (and patreon) won't hurt, as long as it doesn't include animated full-screen gifs.
The only thing that might look more decent would be a "homepage" button shown alongsides the "profile" and "pm" buttons, but that doesn't seem to be supported here (and it might be even too decent and too less eyecatching, and it would be less flexible for linking to multiple webpages).

Okay, took me a while to figure out how to make signatures. Just adding a signature in "profile/edit signature" doesn't do it. One must also enable it in "board preferences/posting defaults". And even then, it will show up only in new posts... whilst changing the signature at a later time time will affect all posts that did have the signature enabled at time when they were originally posted.

What I like about patreon is that it isn't yet subject to corruption or lobbying from nintendo/sony (or whatever they had done to make paypal declare people associated with "emulators" to be violating any kind of unspecified laws). Kickstarter could be also nice, but receiving money in advance could add some more pressure on getting work done in fixed timeframes, and finishing the work in advance and then delaying release in favor of a kickstarter marketing campaign also doesn't seem right for me. Patreon newsletters can be also fairly enthusiastic about investing lots of work into marketing and socializing, but one could also ignore those advices and just hope that some friendly people will drop by and spend money anyways.

Living in an (expensive) city with well paid jobs helps only if one is able and willing and up-to-date with doing paid work, I am pretty good at screwing up those things, my current goal is more on the opposite side: saving up enough money to be able to quit the city, and find new home in a trailer park : )
homepage - patreon - you can think of a bit as a bottle that is either half full or half empty
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