Before I start, the first thing to say is “thank you” to everyone who has supported me. Your support means a lot to me and I’m very grateful you consider my games interesting enough to be worth contributing for.

Just over a month ago, I launched a Patreon campaign for monthly free games. This was an experiment: I’m not in dire immediate need of money to pay my bills but I do enjoy making small games and releasing them for free. Could I convince people to give me money in return for these games that I’d want to be making anyway?

Because I wasn’t sure what to expect, I decided to set a goal: if I reach $300 per game by 1st September, it will have proved itself worth continuing with. If not, I’ll shut down the campaign to avoid being stuck in that awkward situation where I’m making $3 per game and I’m embarrassed to link to it.

Paying it forward

While I don’t make enough money from my games to be self-sufficient, I don't need the money from Patreon to pay my bills (I live in the middle ground of slowly-dwindling savings). It felt right to promise to give some of my earnings each month to the following places:

• 10% to a different musician each month, with a particular focus on people who aren’t white cis men. This would be a reasonable percentage for a commercial project, but unless my campaign becomes massively more successful than expected, this amount is undervaluing these people’s time quite considerably.
• 10% to support game developers and game critics running crowdfunding campaigns.
• 10% to Stephen Lavelle for any month I use PuzzleScript. PuzzleScript is the main tool I’m using for small games these days, and the main reason I felt it was even feasible to make a game a month while still working on existing projects.

It’s impossible to know what affect this had on how willing people were to support me, but regardless I feel good about having done it.

The results so far

• Week 1: $151.47 from 19 patrons (initial week)
• Week 2: $30 from 4 patrons (week of making first game)
• Week 3: $7 from 3 patrons
• Week 4: $4 from 2 patrons
• Week 5: nothing

Which takes the total to $192.47 from 28 patrons. So, again, thank you to all of you! Note that the first week stats are skewed by one very generous $50 patron.

So what does this mean? It sounds like a lot of money at first, but when you break it down:

• Roughly 10% goes to Patreon
• 10% goes to Maize Wallin, the musician for the first game: $19.25
• 10% goes to these game critics and game creators: $19.25
• 10% goes to Stephen Lavelle for creating PuzzleScript: $19.25
• And I’m left with $115.47, or approximately £68.

Now, even for a very short project $19.25 isn’t a reasonable amount to be paying a musician. I’ve decided this should be a minimum of $30 (10% of the $300 goal), but even $30 isn’t good compensation for several hours of work.

(It’s worth noting a quirk of Patreon: any pledge made after I clicked the “I’ve created something patron-supported” button won’t be taken this month, since I’ve not made anything since they started backing me. So the first payment from Patreon would actually be $171.47 rather than $192.47 but it seems fairer to look at the whole month instead. Also see below why the actual payment to me isn’t going to happen anytime soon in any case.)So, am I going to hit my $300 goal? Hard to say. At this rate the answer is “not quite”, but it’s possible that the next game I make will be 10 times more exciting than Cyber-Lasso. And possibly the kickstarter effect of “it’s so close!” will come into play closer to the time, which I’m not sure how to feel about.

The first game: Cyber-Lasso

I’d like to write up a separate blogpost about Cyber-Lasso at some point, so here let’s just say that I’m very happy with my first Patreon-supported game.

Created for the Space Cowboy Jam, it’s about exploring an abandoned space station and using your cyber-lasso to solve puzzles spanning multiple rooms. And as mentioned before, it features a lovely soundtrack by Maize Wallin.

I’d like to release an updated version with improved graphics and sound effects, but there’s been a lot going on. Soon, hopefully!

International payouts on Patreon

I try to avoid using PayPal wherever possible, so part of my decision to use Patreon was based on the belief that I wouldn’t be forced to use PayPal to receive my money since their FAQ states:

We can send payments by PayPal, check, or direct deposit.

However what it doesn’t say is that check and direct deposit are only available in the US. For international creators, PayPal is the only option.

I asked about this and got the following response:

Thanks so much for writing in to us! We really appreciate the time you took to send us an email! So as of now, PayPal is the only method for international payment. We are going to be setting up debit card payments to international creators soon though. Thanks for being patient!

When I asked what their definition of “soon” is, they replied:

Well- thats the tricky part. Were not 100% sure. It really depends on when we can hire enough engineers to start pushing out features as fast as we want to!

Sorry I cant be more help here!

This puts me in a slightly awkward position of not knowing when I’ll be able to access the money. For the time being, I’ve decided to continue until 1st September since I’ve already made the commitment to do this until then. At that point I’ll see what the situation is, although I’m not expecting anything to have changed.

[Update Sep 2014: I’ve not used it yet, but they have added the option to pay out to a non-US bank so this complaint is no longer relevant.]

Thanks

Special thanks to Laura Hall for suggesting the animated gifs on the Patreon page, Richard Lemarchand for advice on phrasing the section about looking for diverse musicians, and Maize Wallin for the music for the first month’s game. And thank you to my 28 patrons! <3