Hello, listeners and patrons alike. We come to you with some exciting news: We are changing the Patreon around! It feels like we just did this, but the last major change was back toward the beginning of 2017. We’re trying to constantly observe what’s happening with the network and learn what to do better. That means making changes like this from time to time.
We’re also aiming to never shake things up in a way that is too disruptive to you, the listener. We want to give more (or at least focus up and give better). So we put a lot of thought and consideration into making sure these changes either solve problems or help us achieve goals.
Here’s the summary of what we’re planning, and you can find the details below. In order to grow the network, give patrons more, and cover rising costs, we plan to:
- Bring back Bonfireside Chat as a Patreon show.
- Give Patrons a whole episode of Watch Out for Fireballs!
- Move from theme months to covering big-name games more frequently.
- Change WOFF! Listener Response episodes to WOFF! Dispatch, make it more interactive, and have broader topic discussions.
- Make Adaptation Decay a monthly show.
- We are getting rid of the content store, and making premium episodes available on Patreon in perpetuity.
- We are phasing out the promise of physical goods, and sending out an “I’m Sorry!” package to people who never got theirs.
- In general, we are simplifying the Patreon drastically, while offering more at each tier.
So without further preamble, let’s get into more detail.
We want to grow.
We want to give patrons more.
We want to meet rising costs.
People want Bonfireside Chat.
So we are bringing back Bonfireside Chat as a Patreon show, with a slightly different format. Listen to Bonfireside Chat 2.0 Episode 0 on the feed to learn more. Our first game is the Soulslike shooter Immortal Unchained!
We want to value WOFF! appropriately.
This does two things: It makes the Patreon more valuable for our members, and it incentivizes more membership.
But don’t panic! When an episode goes premium, we will include a good portion of it on the public feed (up through the Generalities). So you still get something each week, it’s just that the play-by-play goes to members.
NOTE 1: This won’t go into effect for January. We already announced those games, and we don’t want to revoke access to something anyone was excited for.
NOTE 2: We will still have multi-part episodes, but we will never put a whole episode (Part 2, 3, or 4) behind a paywall. Only single episodes will get this treatment.
WOFF! Theme Months are going away.
We want the WOFF! Listener Response episodes to be more interesting.
So the last episode of WOFF! for each month will contain responses about the games from that month, prompts and questions from the Patrons, and a segment that is a longer-form discussion about a particular topic. These will be fun experiments, and we hope you’re down for them.
We want to do more Adaptation Decay
The content store is complicated, and having content time-gated on Patreon is confusing and dissatisfying.
We really biffed the physical goods.
To say sorry for our past neglect of this promise, we will be sending out one large package to everyone who was qualified for those rewards (you should have already received an email about this). We are sorry that we disappointed you on this front, and there’s really no excuse. We hope the I’m Sorry package helps.
We’re honoring our previous commitments.
The current Patreon scheme is complicated and we want to simplify it.
We have a lot of reward tiers and stretch goals. Some of the reward tiers require backing for several months, which is confusing. In general, we let the Patreon grow tangled and weird, and we want to prune it down so it’s easier for you to pick the right tier.
So, we’ve got less of everything, but what remains should be even more valuable. We are reducing the number of new shows on the horizon, because we are already stretched pretty thin. But there’s still stuff to aim for, and we hope this makes the Patreon much more valuable and friendly.