YandereDev
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2022 Transparency
🕑 Added 2023-01-04 05:39:30 +0000 UTCHello!
I have many festive annual traditions, but this particular tradition is quite different from the rest.
At the beginning of each year, I write a post describing how I spent the money that I received through Patreon throughout the previous year, and my plans for the upcoming year.
So far, I've written transparency reports for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. Welp, now it's time to talk about 2022!
Here is how much money I received through Patreon over the course of 2022:
- January - $2,127.45
- February - $1,912.63
- March - $1,900.65
- April - $1,818.63
- May - $1,752.94
- June - $1,735.72
- July - $1,989.98
- August - $1,914.20
- September - $1,907.15
- October - $2,038.62
- November - $3,129.17
- December - $2,310.51
This means that I made a total of $24,537.65 through Patreon in 2022.
Way back in 2015, I made a decision: on any month where I made more than $3,500 through Patreon, all income past the $3,500 mark wouldn't go to me; it would be be put into a "fund" that would used to compensate the volunteers who contribute to the game. I referred to this fund as "the surplus."
The Surplus
From 2015~2018, I always made at least $3,500 per month through Patreon, so the surplus was always growing in size, eventually growing larger than $20,000! However, starting in 2019, my earnings dropped beneath $3,500 per month, so the surplus stopped growing. At the end of last year, the surplus was at $19,955.84.
Throughout the entirety of 2022, I primarily worked on optimizations/user-requested features/quality-of-life improvements. Very little of my work actually involved requesting new assets from anyone. So, I only had to compensate three people this year:
- Julietta_00 - $210 (3D Models)
- CameronF305 - $229 (Music)
- Caitlyn Meyers - $150 (Voice Acting)
That's $589 in total! Subtract that from the surplus of $19,955.84, and we get $19,366.84. That's where the surplus is currently at.
2022 Game Development Progress
After the release of 1980s Mode in 2021, I received an avalanche of extremely useful feedback from players. I made a "checklist" of changes and improvements that I wanted to make to the game, based on the observations and suggestions of players. I thought that this checklist would only take me a few months to get through - however, as time passed, more feedback kept rolling in, so the checklist kept growing. Also, as I worked on the game, I made numerous observations, and I started adding more tasks to that checklist - everything from "features I had promised years ago, but never implemented" to "features that would make the game more approachable for new players."
Before I knew it, an entire year had gone by, spent entirely just making fixes/improvements to the game. Of course, I don't really think this is a bad thing, at all; I think it's a GOOD thing for a game developer to just hunker down and make literally hundreds of improvements to his game and make sure that all the bad and janky stuff is fixed. I'm proud of the many ways that the game has grown over the past year! In case you're curious, a large number of those improvements are listed here, on this page:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pcMJ9PjFMR96GAFa98KfCzUSKDMTHaG-vBLk_bTAf5E/edit
(I assume that at least one or two things aren't included on that list; because of the sheer number of changes that were made to the game, it's difficult to list absolutely everything!)
Individually, some of those improvements don't represent huge changes. But, when you think about the fact that there's 20 pages of them, you get a sense of the monumental amount of time and work that has gone into refining and polishing the game as much as possible over the past year.
I haven't gotten through the entire checklist yet, so work on the checklist will continue into 2023. Speaking of that...
Full Checklist, Please?
I keep saying "I've got a checklist of things to do, and I'm going down the checklist..." but I haven't posted the full checklist anywhere. As long as the checklist is a vaguely-defined, nebulous concept, people could get the impression that
1. I'm lying, and there actually is no checklist, nor is there any sort of short-term or long-term plan
2. I'm just going to say, "I'm still working on that checklist! Thanks for your patience!" forever, with no intention of moving forward towards any sort of goal or end-point
So, it's only fair that I post the full checklist publicly and show you exactly what is planned for the future in a convenient list format. It would make this blog post become absolutely huge, so I'll post it in the future - probably tomorrow, so that there is zero time for conspiracy theories to be born.
Just letting you know, though:
- Any item on the checklist could be erased if I decide that it's a waste of time
- The checklist can still grow in the future if I realize that the game desperately needs a specific improvement
- The checklist might contain things that you personally consider to be unimportant, but I'm still going to work on those things anyway, because I deem it necessary
So, what happens after the checklist is complete? Well...
Returning to YouTube?
Obviously, there will come a point in time at which I've finally finished going down the checklist and have made every major and minor improvement that I've wanted the game to have since 1980s Mode was released. At that point in time, I will finally resume making YouTube videos. There are a ton of videos I want to make; first, I want to catalogue the different ways that the game has improved over the past year, but I also want to talk about the game's evolution over time and release some "just for fun" videos like a short story featuring Aoi and Megami (the artwork has been done for years, but it was just never the highest priority to make the video!). Releasing a deluge of videos will be important for re-igniting hype for Yandere Simulator to give the eventual crowdfunding campaign a better chance at success.
With that said, there are a few more loose ends to wrap up...
Workspace Video?
Last year, I said that I was planning to upload a video of my workspace to YouTube, and then I never did it. I couldn't get some parts of my workspace "perfect", so I lost enthusiasm for the idea of showing it off. I could still make a video and post it if anyone really wants to see it, but it's very low on the priority list.
New Character Models?
In last year's transparency report, I wrote a long essay about how much I hate the game's current character models and want to replace them. I stated that the models were in the process of being updated...and then I said absolutely nothing else about it, for a year.
Well, I think I should change that. To prove that work has in fact been done on the models, I think I should write another Patreon blog post within the near future (two days from now?) showing off previews of the current character models, and explaining what work remains to be done on them.
More Patreon Content?
I've said this a million times, but I feel incredibly guilty that I don't provide very many rewards to my patrons. I have no shortage of ideas, but each one of them comes with a problem...
- I could provide patrons with an exclusive wallpaper every month! ...well, then I have to ask an artist to spend their time drawing me a wallpaper when that artist could, instead, be producing artwork for the game. This is counterproductive, since it takes manpower away from the game.
- I could provide patrons with exclusive physical merch, like shirts! ...well, merchandise is expensive to manufacture and ship. If you're donating $20 per month, and it costs $19 for me to manufacture and ship a t-shirt, I'm basically reducing your donation to $1, which would have a pretty damaging impact on my income.
- I could provide patrons with the latest builds of the game first, before it becomes available to the rest of the internet! ...well, I can easily see how this one would bite me in the ass. Instead of interpreting this as "giving rewards to supporters", people would interpret this as "putting the game behind a paywall" and being greedy, and it would just fuel anti-YandereDev hate.
...so, none of those ideas really work. If you have any ideas for rewards/benefits I could offer you that would not take time or manpower from development, would not be costly, and would not lead to accusations of greed, then please write down suggestions below. I really want to hear your thoughts!
In the meantime, I'll try my best to post more of the following on Patreon:
- Previews of upcoming content, and concept art for upcoming content
- Never-before-seen concept art that was created in the past, and may be of special interest to diehard fans of the game.
...but, if I forget to post sometimes because I'm super busy, please forgive me!
In Closing
Hoo boy, there were a lot of different subjects to cover today. However, I think I've finally said everything that I wanted to say! I think that you guys already know this, but just in case, I'd like to remind you that I post on my Wordpress blog way more often than I post on Patreon, so if you haven't seen me post on Patreon for a while, don't panic! Just visit my Wordpress.
That's all for today! Feel free to ask questions in the comments below. And, thank you for supporting the development of Yandere Simulator!
Comments
YandereDev
Sharing "Lost Media" is a good idea, honestly.
Maybe a good reward would be to know what the video you showed an illustration of Ryoba a few months ago is about, or to show "Lost media" of the game, like the intro that I think your teased in 2017-2018
YandereDev
Actually, yeah - I was already planning on that. Anyone who has donated at least $20 me over the years should get the final game for free.
Felipe Augusto Batista
A benefit you could offer to patreons is some kind of "discount tier" when the crowdfunding finally start, I saw some people doing it, creating some baker tiers on kickstarter tthat were either cheaper or that came with extra stuff only for people that had already helped the creator in the past.
King Wasabi
I think a good reward for us patrons would be for you to show off the new character models to us. I know you have stated previously that you want to show off the new models in a cool video, but why not give your patrons an exclusive view of them. Show off the models in full. Tell us about the functionality and the various improvements over the current models in the game. Y'know just go super in-depth with it.
