Patreon Perks & Surgery Info

Alright so this is going to be a big one, lots to talk about today.

Lets start with Patreon perks. I originally planned to do a bit of an overhaul content wise and with patreon once I moved but due to surgery, moving has been delayed but I will get more into that later. Since moving is not happening any time soon I am going to be doing my planned changes a little bit at the time, and to start we are getting patreon perks and discord. I have always ran patreon with the concept of having it available for those of you who want to help keep the channel running, but not to lock anything important behind a pay wall. We will be keeping with that idea to a degree. Listed below I will have some of my ideas, but I have no idea what price points to set things at, so feel free to give recommendations.

1. Name in the game - This will give the ability for people to name anything nameable. Things like colonists in Rimworld, rides in RCT, City/districts in cities: skylines and stuff along those lines. This is obviously limited by what it realistic to name, but you get the idea.

2. Access to a private Discord channel - This will give patrons access to a private section of the discord where I would be more active making it much more likely for me to be able to answer questions and just generally talk about stuff. I know patreon gives options to set discord up as a perk, but I am not quite sure how it works yet, there could be 2 levels to this perk, one for $1 patrons and one for a higher threshold.

3. Sponsored videos - Once a month your contribution will sponsor a video, at the beginning of a video (series of your choice) there will be a special thank you to this patron.

We will still be having game key drops from time to time as I accumulate them and I am also considering a way to say thank you to new patrons at the beginning of a video when they first start to donate. For those of you here reading this now, the first month I would be working through all of you one or two at a time and saying thank you as well.

There was also an idea of a patreon only series of what ever game was voted on, but this would not be a continuous every day series (would be every day during a series, but gaps between a series would exist) but this would have to wait till I move which would give me better internet (my upload speeds cant support more content right now) and would also free up a bunch of time. This idea probably will not happen because it gets into the paywall problem I would like to avoid... but it is an idea that ran through my head.

Surgery & Moving

So these are together as one section because they are directly connected to each other. I had plan to move sometime in spring, which would have meant better internet, more time and also the ability to livestream. I knew I would need to get surgery to have all of my teeth removed at some point but I was hoping it was one of those things that would hold out till I was a bit more settled with life. But here we are and it needs to be dealt with now. I had an appointment this morning and I found out that the cost of getting everything done is going to be quite a bit more than my high end estimates so this is going to wipe out all of my moving money as well as put me in debt. Because of this moving is a non-option till I get rid of the debt and save up my moving fund again. I do not know the date for the surgery yet because I need to decide a few things and book it, but I was told it should be about a month after I book it.

In the week or two leading up to the surgery as well as a month after it for recovery, getting fake teeth and learning to speak again there will be pre-recorded content on the channel. Obviously this means feedback will be impossible during these videos but with the public/patreon discord set up it will mean we can at least have some more interaction while I am recovering.

Now, onto the last topic. Due to the surgery costing more than I expected, youtube views dropping, (with it expected to drop more during the month and a bit of pre-recorded content), and ad rates also dropping, money sucks. Unless I can pull something out of my ass and make things work quite a bit better I will be going back to work once recovery is done and I can talk properly again. The videos will not stop, but I will not be able to have them as my priority so they will be less frequent overall. 

I think that covers everything for right now. Sorry about the length but I feel this is important stuff to throw out there since we are a community, and letting you guys know what is going on is important. Once I get everything sorted out and finalized I will be making a video on it to let the rest of the community know as well. Thank you to everybody here for all the support, every one of your donations have kept keep the channel running over the past 2 years and I can't thank you enough for that.

     -Ryan Mercier