New Patreon Exclusive Series (And a Long Explanation of Why)

You asked for ideas and perspectives. Well, i am an old fart like Jade calls Pey'j and can't give an opinion how it might be living as a youtuber. Over the last 10 years i observed the fate and evolution of four letsplay youtubers: Keith/Sebastian of course, quill18, rockleesmile and deceased crab. Each one took a different archetypal approach. Deceased Crab started 11 years ago, is the classic "i'am doing this just for fun" type, never monetized his videos and stopped publishing two years ago because he was annoyed about the stupidity and cheekiness of comments. So he must have some income probably and is no help here as an example. Rockleesmile started with his famous indygames series some years ago and was quite similar to Keith/Sebastian an sympathetic, honest and skilled letsplayer giving you the feeling yourself are playing the game and the impression to see the person behind the channel. Then, two years ago RockLeeSmile had a personal and financial crisis. The indy channel was abandoned, he teamed up with northernlion, started woohooing and using catchphrases, playing the latest games in heavy rotation, started twitch/patreon and became something different, some artificial blueprint of northernlion, wich worked quite well having 2Mio views on twitch, but is still creepy. i really hope this is not your way Keith/Sebastian. The third one is quill 18. He specialized on the niche genre of strategy games and rougelikes which i thought would not work at all. He had around 50k subscribers and around 500-2k views as Keith/Sebastian. But then he started to change some things, is super successful now and somehow managed to stay the guy he is and to keep the channel authentic. He started coding live on ludum dare, did charity streams, live streams on twitch with audience decisions, and there are a lot of decision is strategy games, live D&D sessions on twitch, up to two paid reviews of games a week, which would not hurt your channel at all in my opinion, made a few tips videos for dota and fallout 4, started never ending exotic cornerstone series like stone soup/dwarf fortress and jumped from 50k to 300k subscribers, still beeing authentic, still publishing all patreon and twitch content on youtube after a while. That might be a good way for you. After so many playthroughs you are an expert in computer game mechanics. The way you dissected Legendary Gary or Detroit:BH was outstanding in a way the vast majority of youtubers are not even capable of. So team up with other youtubers in real live and move together to share equipment and experience. get one paid review a week for additional cash. think about partially paid crossmedia reviews like boardgames. dont waste time on random rants but start discussions about game mechanics, try exclusive series on patreon or twitch like a longplay of Detroid with all branches, try getting an endless cornerstone letsplay, try to make an exclusive reviews, game mechanics and discussions in the field you got the most expertise like soulslike games. I hope in a year from now you are living in canada in a affordable house full of nice streamer fellows and greenscreen studios. i know, thats not the way it goes in live, but why not dream a little bit? I hope it turns out right for you.

Posi Tron

YAY! >1.500 and still going :)

Posi Tron

Thank you for letting us know more about your current situation, I've updated my pledge accordingly (used to be just 1$ because I was under the mistaken impression that you were doing well). I'm introverted to the point that I don't normally comment anywhere (heck, for the longest time I willingly opted out of making use of my voting perk because it came tied to having my name in the credits and I'd rather just be invisible and support one of my favourite content creators from afar/relative anonymity), I understand not being up for prolonged social interaction. So please do whatever's best for your own well-being, I'd love to enjoy your content for a long time to come and that only works if you keep things sustainable. Which apparently also includes moving out of that oven of a room. We've recently resorted to taping old thermal/rescue blanket to the attic windows, in our continued struggle to deal with the current heatwave here in Germany. It seems like a good stopgap measure before we can ultimately get the windows replaced. Might be worth a shot?

seyren

How about a second Patreon series? Could help with the issue of some Patreon games being really long, resulting in long gaps between votes.

Andrew Gillett

I imagine the cost of living is killer in California. Compared to Ohio, food, transportation, and utilities are about the same, but housing/rent is at least triple in CA. I hope an opportunity appears where you don't have to move too far away from your family and friends. I dunno what these leavers are on about. I've only seen this as a tip jar, and I've gotten way too many hours worth of entertainment in return. Keith is the best LPer on YouTube. The channel has all the qualities I look for: dedication (full playthrough), respect (doesn't talk over scenes), organization (playlists!), skill (good at the game), and wit (funny/interesting commentary).

Also, as a patreon-question - Is there a way to tase Andrew every time he belches into the microphone during your joint plays?

Agreeing with the idea of an extra tier at $2 or $3. Maybe double voting at the $2/$3 tier, or some sort of multi-stage voting where the the people paying $2/$3 select the top half of the games.

This is just feedback as during the video you talked about the reason people leave patreon (this is likely going to sound as entitled as you were afraid of in the video, but making yourself known and all). Personally I've been pausing my pledge the last month or so because there is none of the series I like. As you said your channel received a boost from the Witness and I greatly enjoyed that as well as Archaica, Linelight. Basically unique and brightly coloured puzzle games. I figured my taste was so niche that it wasn't worth mentioning, but if you've experienced patreon defection at the same time as I started pausing... well this is my reason for doing what I did (obviously can't speak for others, but if you wanted feedback). Pipe pushers helped tide me over for a while, but it was months ago. I know they are tough and time consuming. But this was the genre that brought me to your channel. I'll be back at an active pledge again next month because I've begun enjoying the discord community, and I like that you facilitate it. I'll dial it back to the first tier though as it is currently discord that keeps me around. Otherwise I would like to say I agree with Ryan; There is no shame in spending the money you've earned from your job (patreon/youtube) on the things you want. I expect accountability from the software projects I support, but not from individual people. I was a fan of the Let's Drown Out series by Yahtzee so high hopes for this new series.

Siennarin

I've got a crazy idea that will take some huge balls if you are willing to go ahead with it: Go live in South Africa. Why: The cost of living in South Africa is low. You can have a high quality life for not that much money. I don't know how much you make but lets say it's $2000 a month. That's more than R25 000. Here that's not bad a salary at all. In fact my wife who was the editor of a magazine got about that much a month. It's enough to buy a house and live comfortably. However you can rent a great apartment here, plus pay for medical aid (I think it's called medical insurance in the States) and other insurances, internet, food. If you aren't going to buy a house and keep living cheaply then you'll be able to put quite a bit of that money away. The Risks: The crime rate here is much higher and in fact many white people are leaving the country. But you can go back whenever you like. Plus it will take some initial costs for you to get here. The flight and I don't know if you need a visa or not. I'm South African so I don't know what it'll take for other people to be allowed to come work here. It will take a lot of adjustment from you since well, it is Africa and we do some things different over here. But it's a great place. And you can always save some money here and eventually go back. I'd be willing to help if you ever want to come over. It's a bit messed up to tell a first world person to come to a third world but I think you'd be surprised how much better off you would be here. Plus everyone here speaks English so you don't have to worry about the language. If you are willing to go on an adventure then I think this is a viable option. Maybe even a good one. Otherwise I agree with one of the other comments which is to include a different patreon tier level. I'm willing to give more than $1 but not $15. So it's something consider. Keep up the good work Keith. Good luck over there.

I definetly agree with Pascal. You can just make it something completely vain. Just like you do now mit more tiers. 2 bucks patrons get shown a bit larger in the endscreen and above 1 bucks ones. 5 bucks ones get shown a bit larger than that and above the 2 and 1 bucks ones. Something like that. And you should definetly move. I know it's scary, it was when I did as well, but it was worth it.

Joker

I love the voting. The list of eclectic games often matches up with ones I want to play or watch and it's good fuel to grow my far-too-long play and watch list.

Joseph Coco

Average video length is 30 minutes. 1000 videos is 30,000 minutes. There's 1440 minutes in a day, so that's like 20 days worth of videos.

Ryan Scheel