Bay 12 Games Forum
Dwarf Fortress => DF General Discussion => Topic started by: LordArchibald on April 13, 2015, 08:43:39 am
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Is there some reason why there is no DF's patreon page? It would definitely bring some decent income (people who hate using PayPal, too lazy to find the donate option, scared of "recurring PayPal subscriptions which are hard to cancel" option, people who simply forgot (on patreon you have control over all your supported projects in one place), and so on). It's so trivial to setup this...
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Hmmm, I suspect it may have been less well known until it started to show up at certain sites over the last what, 6 months?
That is a pretty good question though, as long as the page is properly set up and such I can't think of a reason why it wouldn't be a great fit for DF and Toady.
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I actually wrote and asked Toady about this, and he does consider it but there is also a bit higher price for using this service compared to the paypal. Maybe it will happen sometime in the future.
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people who hate using PayPal... scared of "recurring PayPal subscriptions which are hard to cancel"
just out of curiosity how many of those are there
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I say that if it does wind up getting one, it waits until after the point when Patreon contracts. Service still appears to be new to the public eye, so there are probably still a bunch of people trying to make a quick buck using the service. Besides that, waiting would give a better idea of which sort of reputation the site develops in the terms of its userbase, as that could potentially lead to things using the site to be having a tarnished reputation if the users become a certain type of people.
May want to change the title to 'Why is there no DF Patreon?', as with the current one, I came in believing this thread was about someone having made one trying to make money off of DF when they weren't the ones programming it.
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Are those Paypal subscriptions for the receiver only? I don't think I've ever seen a monthy fee or whatever..
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There is no monthly fee for the user, but there is a paypal fee that the recipient of the donations pays. It's less than what Patreon or other crowdfunding sites take, which is usually around 10%.
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Patreon's fee system is a bit complicated (https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/204606125-How-do-you-calculate-fees-) because it depends on how people pay and how much else people are giving money to, but it *is* still a bit higher than pure Paypal.
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Patreons tend to get pretty good rates, probably because the default is that you repeat your contribution, not that you don't. Even very limited games with far smaller fanbases than DF (not to mention much shorter lifespans) are taking five digits per month. And that number only goes up over time as long as development is continuous.
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We looked back through our email, and there seemed to be enough interest to go ahead and give this a shot. There are all sorts of optional settings and so forth which we haven't fully dived into, but we've hopefully set up a passable page here:
Bay 12 Games on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/bay12games)
Just let me know if there are any issues!
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I hope you're happy lord archibald :D
do we get story rewards if we support on patreon?
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Yeah, the idea is just to do it all the same way at this point -- check the $1+ reward box and you'll have a option for either story or crayon. We still have to see how payments clear and what sorts of activity posts we need and all that, but it should all work smoothly eventually.
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Yeah, the idea is just to do it all the same way at this point -- check the $1+ reward box and you'll have a option for either story or crayon. We still have to see how payments clear and what sorts of activity posts we need and all that, but it should all work smoothly eventually.
You already make more a month through that alone than I do lol
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Holy crap, you've got $340 dollars on that already.
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Holy crap, you've got $340 dollars on that already.
Just broke $400, and it's only going to keep going up. For perspective on Patreon, here's the account of a porn game* made in Flash:
https://www.patreon.com/user?u=108351
It employs four people each with about the amount of money that the Adams brothers share. And it's been sitting there with the number going up for a year or something, but compared to DF development it's been no time at all. If DF follows the usual pattern, the number on Patreon is going to be astronomical by the standards of previous DF donations before very long at all.
*The Patreon page is SFW, but don't click any links unless, you know, you want to.
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hey do we get patron only updates? :D
Just broke $400, and it's only going to keep going up. For perspective on Patreon, here's the account of a porn game* made in Flash:
https://www.patreon.com/user?u=108351
and I thought some succesful kickstarters were a bit out there...
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hey do we get patron only updates? :D
You can make Patron-only posts to the Patreon page, since someone already has, but as Toady already puts everything in the devlog or on the forum anyway, what would be the point of making patreon-only updates? Especially since there's a lot of people over the years that have donated the old fashioned way, and there's nothing really that it would do any good to keep from prospective donators in the first place, as the game release system isn't structured that way.
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Signed up for Patreon as well. I've always been doing it lump sums at a time. While I was never sure about setting up a recurring payment so many people use this that I figure this is as good a way to do it as any.
Here's hoping the most complicated things Tarn and Zach have to work out is who has continuing stories. Little worried about that though, are Tarn and Zach going to do stories every month or every certain amount of money? I'd love to still get an updated story every few months, I'm not really sure my patreon contribution would realistically cover something like that once a month. Unless I'm overestimating how long it takes Tarn and Zach to make the rewards.
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$773 which is pretty good for only one day.
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hey do we get patron only updates? :D
I was thinking I might use that feature to talk about something technical, like how rewards work or something, but even there it's probably better to be public. I think other people can make private posts, and I might have commented on them, but I can't see which ones are private so I don't even know, he he he.
Here's hoping the most complicated things Tarn and Zach have to work out is who has continuing stories. Little worried about that though, are Tarn and Zach going to do stories every month or every certain amount of money? I'd love to still get an updated story every few months, I'm not really sure my patreon contribution would realistically cover something like that once a month. Unless I'm overestimating how long it takes Tarn and Zach to make the rewards.
We've been giving everybody the option of rewards for years -- a lot of people don't go for them, even when they get the nice shiny reward email, and now with the Patreon, I'm not sure how it'll be. We're just going to send out the normal email as payments clear at the beginning of May. If we have 150 stories and crayon rewards to do, we'll do them, and see how it evolves from there. If we get overstretched we'll adjust, hopefully without much pain.
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Figured this would work out well, we loves our toad!
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If we have 150 stories and crayon rewards to do, we'll do them, and see how it evolves from there. If we get overstretched we'll adjust, hopefully without much pain.
At this rate, the two of you are going to be coders, mathematicians, cool dudes, AND artists!
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If we have 150 stories and crayon rewards to do, we'll do them, and see how it evolves from there. If we get overstretched we'll adjust, hopefully without much pain.
At this rate, the two of you are going to be coders, mathematicians, cool dudes, AND artists!
Legendary Cool Dudes, Proficient Mathematicians, Talented Coders, Competent Artists. By the end of it Legendary everything.
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Legendary Cool Dudes, Proficient Mathematicians, Talented Coders, Competent Artists. By the end of it Legendary everything.
Does this include gelder, too ?
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Legendary Cool Dudes, Proficient Mathematicians, Talented Coders, Competent Artists. By the end of it Legendary everything.
Does this include gelder, too ?
What the fook is a gelder?
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Both Rock,Paper,Shotgun (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/04/29/dwarf-fortress-patreon/#more-285047) and PC Gamer (http://www.pcgamer.com/you-can-now-support-the-creators-of-dwarf-fortress-on-patreon/) did articles about Bay12 adopting Patreon.
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hey do we get patron only updates? :D
I was thinking I might use that feature to talk about something technical, like how rewards work or something, but even there it's probably better to be public. I think other people can make private posts, and I might have commented on them, but I can't see which ones are private so I don't even know, he he he.
So... errr... how would this work in relation to those who have alternate contributions set up?
And yea, I saw the RPS article and was wondering if it was legit or not. Guess it is.
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I hope you're happy lord archibald :D
Erm... I feel kind of strange, that's the first time someone actually took the advice/question I gave (especialy with such old and established community as DF), I was expecting it would be forgotten and/or that some lame excuse why it won't work will be given. Oh well, seems there is a young blood still running here :)
BTW, $1600 in like 2 weeks, whoa, much faster than I expected.
We looked back through our email, and there seemed to be enough interest to go ahead and give this a shot. There are all sorts of optional settings and so forth which we haven't fully dived into, but we've hopefully set up a passable page here:
Bay 12 Games on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/bay12games)
Just let me know if there are any issues!
I'm not really an expert on Patreon, was using it for like a few months, but just in case you were considering which payout option to use, the Direct-something (transfer directly to your account) works and I had no troubles here (with higher volume (like yours $1000+) you will save on PayPal fees if you use that one since it has a flat fee).
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It's been two days, not two weeks.
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And it's showing no sign of stopping. $1800 now.
The beauty of patreon is you get a lot of people doing recurring $1 or $5 donations which may not have donated at all before, or donated sporadically (like me!). You may not get quite the same peaks of income as before, but hopefully it'll be a higher average and more predictable income.
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For now, we (you) don't know what the effect of this is.
Perhaps these 1800$ are mainly donation from people who already donated to DF, so it's more like a cannibalisation.
Of course, there is a reasonable chance that they will make more money with that than they did before. White & sea !
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I'm tempted to register a Patreon account. I typically donate at the "big" releases, so that might only be every couple of years or so. Just look at the monthly donation summary and you can see how up and down it is. An on-going Patreon would really take a lot of the uncertainty out of funding, so cannibalisation is no bad thing.
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I'm tempted to register a Patreon account. I typically donate at the "big" releases, so that might only be every couple of years or so. Just look at the monthly donation summary and you can see how up and down it is. An on-going Patreon would really take a lot of the uncertainty out of funding, so cannibalisation is no bad thing.
I didn't say it was a bad thing. Just that this amount (1800$) doesn't mean anything for the next months, as monthly donation are around 3000$ most of the time with 5000, or 10 000 or more for big releases.
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For now, we (you) don't know what the effect of this is.
Perhaps these 1800$ are mainly donation from people who already donated to DF, so it's more like a cannibalisation.
Of course, there is a reasonable chance that they will make substantially more money with that than they did before. White & sea !
Of course we don't know, but we can extrapolate based on other projects, and the overall income is likely to increase, with "peaks" (those normally corresponding to releases) now seeing a surge in one-time donations but also an increase in recurrent funding.
It costs a lot of money to develop and distribute the beguiling dwarven strategy game, however
Is this actually true? I thought there was just a relatively small server cost and the living expenses of Toady and Three Toe, and since that goal is consistently met, additional funding is essentially thanking the Adams brothers by allowing them to live in comfort and security rather than in poverty, not anything directly related to development or distribution.
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I thought there was just a relatively small server cost and the living expenses of Toady and Three Toe, and since that goal is consistently met, additional funding is essentially thanking the Adams brothers by allowing them to live in comfort and security rather than in poverty, not anything directly related to development or distribution.
Two adults living off roughly $4k per month wouldn't be my definition of "comfort". God help them if they ever want to have families.
Anyway, Graham Smith, the RPS article writer, is a fan of DF and may have been putting his own spin on it to encourage donations. Frankly I'm spreading the word where I can. I actually signed up for the Patreon and it was relatively painless. Not in for a huge amount until I see how it works out. Threw a buck Peridexiserrant's way as well, as I use the Starter pack exclusively.
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Two adults
And a cat. Don't forget Scamps.
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I was under the impression that Zach still works a day job, but I could be wrong.
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I thought there was just a relatively small server cost and the living expenses of Toady and Three Toe, and since that goal is consistently met, additional funding is essentially thanking the Adams brothers by allowing them to live in comfort and security rather than in poverty, not anything directly related to development or distribution.
Two adults living off roughly $4k per month wouldn't be my definition of "comfort". God help them if they ever want to have families.
A matter of perspective, I suppose. I spend quite a bit less than that and consider it comfortable, though, and from what is public of Toady's lifestyle, he isn't a man of particularly expensive vices either.
I was under the impression that Zach still works a day job, but I could be wrong.
I was under the impression that he lives with their parents, though I got that impression years ago.
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What I would like to know is if I donate money will I see more productivity and organization as a result.
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What the fook is a gelder?
Gelder, a person who performs animal castration.
Does this include gelder, too ?
Lets hope not.
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What I would like to know is if I donate money will I see more productivity and organization as a result.
There's no logical reason why that would happen. There isn't a money-related roadblock in Toady's workflow.
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But if you donate money, you may be a bit surer Toady won't suddenly stop working on DF and become an accountant :-\
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Not sure productivity is really a problem.
Toady looked at hauling back in the day and implemented minecarts and physics for them.
Now he starts out talking about getting performers in taverns and so far we've got people throwing festivals while literally throwing the strings of their instruments (randomly of course), libraries, philosophical underpinnings, absurdly complicated systems to generate rules for absurdly complicated music and dance styles, and lord knows what else.
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What I would like to know is if I donate money will I see more productivity and organization as a result.
There's no logical reason why that would happen. There isn't a money-related roadblock in Toady's workflow.
at least not while we keep up a reasonable amount of donations
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Not sure if already suggested:
What about (optional) contributor badges for forum members as additional reward? I think that whould boost the donations.
//: slightly offtopic:
I don't understand what the storyreward is.
Also I don't know how to receive an award, respectively how to choose one.
Your help is greatly appreciated!
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If we have 150 stories and crayon rewards to do, we'll do them, and see how it evolves from there. If we get overstretched we'll adjust, hopefully without much pain.
At this rate, the two of you are going to be coders, mathematicians, cool dudes, AND artists!
Legendary Cool Dudes, Proficient Mathematicians, Talented Coders, Competent Artists. By the end of it Legendary everything.
... You guys do know that Toady has a maths phd and used to teach at uni, right? I think he's got the mathematician skill down already...
What I would like to know is if I donate money will I see more productivity and organization as a result.
Uhm, yeah, do yourself a favour a throw away the illusion you can ever influence the direction of any donation based project with donating. The only thing you're influencing is it existing. If the project lead ever sets up donation goals you can pick, you can count yourself lucky.
This may seem a bit... cynic? But I have seen open source projects where users try to gain that kind of influence through donating, but end up frustrated because they are not actually able to assert that kind of control. It's a bit complicated, but trust me on this.
You're better off donating for wanting DF to reach 1.0 than to hope for any improvements in areas you are personally invested in. You just don't have that control, please don't delusion yourself.
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Story reward = I think a 1D ASCII image + few hundred word story by Threetoe, possibly you get to choose the topic.
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Not sure if already suggested:
What about (optional) contributor badges for forum members as additional reward? I think that whould boost the donations.
//: slightly offtopic:
I don't understand what the storyreward is.
Also I don't know how to receive an award, respectively how to choose one.
Your help is greatly appreciated!
Here are some examples of story rewards: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/ASCII_Art_Reward
The first cycle of Patreon payments is clearing now, and we're just waiting for the interface to let us send out the emails. It might not be possible until all of the payments clear, which could be a few days still. We'll keep people posted.
I'm not sure about forum badges -- a similar idea was floated for people that contributed through PayPal some years ago, and I think we decided we didn't want to divide the forum people up into groups, in the same way we've resisted added moderators and lots of post count distinctions (though we have the one).
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Thanks for your reply, Toady and NJW2000.
I'm not sure about forum badges -- a similar idea was floated for people that contributed through PayPal some years ago, and I think we decided we didn't want to divide the forum people up into groups, in the same way we've resisted added moderators and lots of post count distinctions (though we have the one).
Sounds reasonable. I always disliked the post count in other forums for this very reason.
I think I will pick the drawing.
I live in Europe, I'm not sure if my donation covers the expenses (let alone the efford). However, I'll donate again (frequently if possible) and wonder if the donations are counted together.
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wonder if the donations are counted together.
Yes, they are. I asked it and was replied in the last FotF.
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Although I'm not sure what is meant by counted together -- for an individual, reward-wise, or for the Bay 12 Report? The Bay 12 Report is going to be a total of everything that came in that month from whatever source. Rewards from PayPal and Patreon are considered separately, and we're still considering how to best handle things like story continuations -- we haven't promised that people would get a new crayon art reward every month, though a few people have asked for clarification ($1/month wouldn't cover postage/materials in that case). At the same time, PayPal people get story continuations and so on.
Our priority is that absolutely everybody that wants a reward gets one, regardless of contribution amount, and we'll have to consider multiple rewards after that. So far, the number of reward requests we've received is manageable (kind of like a major release worth's), but we'll probably have to come up with some way to handle continuations that is fair to every kind of contribution type while still saving enough time for writing the game. We'll probably be in flux on this until we land on something decent, but it seems like satisfying the baseline one-time reward requirement is going to be straightforward, at least. Those are already in the pipeline for anybody whose first Patreon payment has cleared (I still have 100 pending that'll get their emails when they clear). We'll be sure to have any update posted well before the next cycle.
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Well, I'd propose something like :
*Rewards are hand crafted and scanned ( or made on a digital media directly with a digipen ) and sent by e-mail to those that choose that. Perhaps an easier solution would be to just post them on a website for download for everyone ( I have allways felt that art is for sharing ).
*And obviously if there's a lot of people putting out donations you would have to put up some fair way to who gets and who does not get any art , You spend a lot of time on the game and I think most of us would be ok with you two putting up some terms or picking randomly between donators instead of dedicating more time on art and stories than on the game itself.
Just my five cents.
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I don't think there is a fair way of doing it. Either Toady and Threetoe spend more time/money on rewards and less on the game, or people don't get their rewards.
Though that's the way it's always been done, and it hasn't been a problem thus far (I think?) so this might be a case of "if it ain't broke don't fix it".
If the amount and cost of rewards is a problem, perhaps raising the baseline amount needed for a reward (say, $2.50 instead of $1)? It's still in the realms of pocket change, and I'm sure people won't mind if it means the whole thing is less taxing on you.
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Although I'm not sure what is meant by counted together -- for an individual, reward-wise, or for the Bay 12 Report? The Bay 12 Report is going to be a total of everything that came in that month from whatever source. Rewards from PayPal and Patreon are considered separately, and we're still considering how to best handle things like story continuations -- we haven't promised that people would get a new crayon art reward every month, though a few people have asked for clarification ($1/month wouldn't cover postage/materials in that case). At the same time, PayPal people get story continuations and so on.
Our priority is that absolutely everybody that wants a reward gets one, regardless of contribution amount, and we'll have to consider multiple rewards after that. So far, the number of reward requests we've received is manageable (kind of like a major release worth's), but we'll probably have to come up with some way to handle continuations that is fair to every kind of contribution type while still saving enough time for writing the game. We'll probably be in flux on this until we land on something decent, but it seems like satisfying the baseline one-time reward requirement is going to be straightforward, at least. Those are already in the pipeline for anybody whose first Patreon payment has cleared (I still have 100 pending that'll get their emails when they clear). We'll be sure to have any update posted well before the next cycle.
That answers my question, thanks again.
I don't think there is a fair way of doing it. Either Toady and Threetoe spend more time/money on rewards and less on the game, or people don't get their rewards.
Hehe, I find it kinda ironic (but absolutely understandable!), that the donators who are trying to support the game, actually might slows the development process down. Nowadays people think that if you throw money at something, that it's going to grow faster:
What I would like to know is if I donate money will I see more productivity and organization as a result.
Well, thanks to the the money, Toady can work on the game fulltime. Produktivity is as good how it gets. But most importantly, donations are keeping DF alive.
I hope that was grammatically correct and understandable
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... You guys do know that Toady has a maths phd and used to teach at uni, right? I think he's got the mathematician skill down already...
It rusted.
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It reached 3000 $ today ! Which is good, after 1 month and a half.
EDIT : It reached 4000$ on the 09/25/2015.
EDIT : It definitively went above 4000 after May 2016
EDIT : It reached 5000 $ in March 2017
EDIT : It reached 6000 $ in August 2018
EDIT : It reached 7000 $ in March 2019
EDIT : It (briefly) reached 8000 $ in March 2020
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Not sure if already suggested:
What about (optional) contributor badges for forum members as additional reward? I think that whould boost the donations.
//: slightly offtopic:
I don't understand what the storyreward is.
Also I don't know how to receive an award, respectively how to choose one.
Your help is greatly appreciated!
Here are some examples of story rewards: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/ASCII_Art_Reward
The first cycle of Patreon payments is clearing now, and we're just waiting for the interface to let us send out the emails. It might not be possible until all of the payments clear, which could be a few days still. We'll keep people posted.
I'm not sure about forum badges -- a similar idea was floated for people that contributed through PayPal some years ago, and I think we decided we didn't want to divide the forum people up into groups, in the same way we've resisted added moderators and lots of post count distinctions (though we have the one).
In case people are wondering: Baughn has the one. :D
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"The one" was referring to post count distinctions (bay watcher), AFAIK.
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In case people are wondering: Baughn has the one. :D
How in the world did he get that title, anyway? Can't be entirely about moderator status, as Kurtulmak, Johnathan S. Fox, piecewise, and Mephansteras are as well on select boards.
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He's a contributing programmer. IIRC, the SDL code was written primarily or entirely be him, or something along those lines.
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It reached 3000 $ today ! Which is good, after 1 month and a half.
A month and a half with no releases. The benefit of Patreon is largely in donor retention/repetition, and as a platform, it tends to most greatly reward those who put out products. On top of that, Toady normally sees a donation spike in release months. Taking that into account, I think it's safe to say we ain't seen nothing yet.
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Well, for now, it's mostly people who donated in paypal and moved to patreon. I don't think the "new" donations represent more than 500 or 1000$. But, as you said, it's only a beginning.
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hopefully this will develop like other mature patreons where seemingly absurd amounts are being pledged (in the tens of thousands) which I suspect is largely from people pledging small amounts and never bothering to cancel.
It may take time though
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A small necro for this topic
Just that : between yesterday and today, donation progressed from 5800 to 6300 $/month !
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A small necro for this topic
Just that : between yesterday and today, donation progressed from 5800 to 6300 $/month !
Let's be honest, it's hardly surprising, is it? If nothing else the potential Steam release has been on every geek news site.
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and now, for the first time, 7000$, which makes 1200$ a month in only 2 weeks. But it's stabilizing, now, so in don't think it will increase anymore.
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Oh, did you all see this? What a great guy:
https://www.pcgamer.com/if-dwarf-fortress-sells-millions-on-steam-its-creators-will-give-the-money-away-as-fast-as-possible/
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Yeah, I managed to catch that one. There have been a few articles lately that I've noticed and it makes me wonder if there are ones that I've missed because I don't really follow games news much. I wonder if Toady will make a list of them on the devlog. He used to do it with certain stories but maybe there are too many recently to bother keeping track of.
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Yeah, I managed to catch that one. There have been a few articles lately that I've noticed and it makes me wonder if there are ones that I've missed because I don't really follow games news much. I wonder if Toady will make a list of them on the devlog. He used to do it with certain stories but maybe there are too many recently to bother keeping track of.
Most seem to be stored in his Twitter likes list (those that get Tweeted, at least), so should be able to track them down (if you filter out all the cat pics...).
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Ah, okay. Good tip, thanks. I should really check the twitter account more often.
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Hello all. First post here for me.
I would really like to help bay 12 out but would prefer to buy the game than donate. I would be willing to buy it today on steam for full price even though it won't be released for who knows how long. If it is an option to pre-sell games on steam I think it could be rewarding as I am sure I am not the only one who thinks this way.
Just throwing that out there, I certainly don't expect bay12 to make this change just for me but I am sure there are many more like me.
I am new here, so if this goes against the spirit of the forum (I at least know commercialization isn't the main focus) feel free to delete my comment! Cheers.
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@pressurseal
Don't worry there is no "bad place" to comment ! What you can do is to play it, first. Playing the game and telling people you like it. If you like it of course !
For now, play it for free. And, once it will be release, then, you'll buy it. If before, you want to donate, well, donate. It's free ! Just do as you want.
Good game !