A Little Patreon Refresh/A Little Test of a New Perk!

It's time for the thing I've been talking about since... oh my god, 2022? I've been putting this off for 2 years? 

Well, the long overdue PATREON REFRESH is finally here!

WHAT'S NEW?

Here's a list of the things I've changed:

• Updated the about page 
• Updated the member benefits 
• Added a welcome note for new members! Here's a copy of it. Please pretend that I sent this out to you on day one:

Hello, it's Brian David Gilbert! The guy whose Patreon you just joined!

If you'd like to get caught up on the things I've been posting for the past few years, check out the Collections tab. It's the easiest way to scroll through certain perks and watch weird old bloopers that I probably shouldn't have been so willing to post online. Oh well, too late now!

Thank you so much for your support. You allow me to continue making whatever silly little creation pops into my head, and I cannot overstate how grateful I am that you allow me to do that. Thank you thank you thank you. That's three thank yous in a row, so you know it's legitimate.

• Made a few more collections 
• Tried out a new Patreon benefit, which you can see above!

WHAT'S GOING AWAY?

I'm sad to say that I'm stopping the monthly livestreams for the $5 and $10 tiers. I had so much fun making them with you all, and I hope you had a wonderful time watching them, too! 

There are a couple reasons for this change: First, the streams became a bit difficult to schedule, especially when they needed extra set up before going live, or if the month was extra busy.

Second, they're not super popular! That has been great for the streams—we've had a lot of fun with smaller games, and doing absurd karaoke streams—but I think my time might be better served on benefits that you all might like more! And that's the purpose of the video on this post!

WHAT'S THE NEW PERK?

It's Brian Brecommends! Like, Brian Recommends, but with a B in front of recommends. Please help me find a better name than that. It's a monthly video that all paid subscribers will have access to!

There are two parts of this monthly video. In the first part, I talk about a piece of media that I really loved from the past month, with an emphasis on things that inspire me, or smaller projects that I think deserve more attention. (This month is about Perfect Days, the new Wim Wenders film about the Tokyo Toilet Project!)

The second part will be a Q&A, where I answer any questions you might have for me! These can be about my work, or my hobbies, or my favorite brand of pickles (it's Grillo's Pickles). The sky's the limit. I always loved doing the Q&A portion during some livestreams, and I think this is a fun way to keep that alive! 

(You can send these questions to me through a Patreon DM if you want to remain anonymous, or you can leave them in the comments of the post! And if no one sends in any, I'll just scroll through my YouTube comments to see if anyone has any questions for me. I'm sure that will go swimmingly.)

To stop me from talking for hours (and to make sure this doesn't cut into the work on my main channel), I've given myself a rule: I can only film for 10 minutes, and I can only edit it for 50 minutes.

This lets me do one of my favorite things: live-production, where I scramble to pull up the right images to talk about the thing I loved from the last month. Keeps it lovably hectic, and makes it easier for me to edit after the fact.

Let me know if you like this! And more importantly, let me know if you don't! So much of having a Patreon is making sure I'm spending my time on the things that make it worth being subscribed, so I truly want to know. In fact, this should be its own section.

WHAT ELSE SHOULD BE UPDATED?

Please let me know if there's ever anything that would make this Patreon more worthwhile to you!

I'm willing to give anything a try (within reason)! A podcast? Early releases of my videos? One BIG stream every couple of months? Or maybe just some standard, quality of life fixes?

For example, would you like me to upload an ad-free version of each main channel video here? I've had a couple people mention this, especially as YouTube crams more and more ads into every video. If you'd like this, let me know, and I can start putting up the ad-free versions alongside every blooper/behind-the-scenes video!

THAT'S IT!

For now, at least! I'll keep working on the perks in order to perfect the "time it takes to make" to "amount of patron enjoyment" ratio, so things might shift around in this early part of the year, but hopefully all for your benefit! Thanks again for sticking with me, and I can't wait to see where things go in 2024.