YandereDev
patreon
New Milestone Goals and Paid Volunteers
🕑 Added 2015-12-04 21:24:36 +0000 UTC When I first started working on Yandere Simulator, I was a freelance programmer. 90% of my time was spent working on freelance jobs, and I only worked on Yandere Simulator for a few hours every week, in my spare time. Many people wanted me to work on Yandere Simulator as a full-time job, so I started using Patreon. I stated that if my Patreon reached a certain threshold, then I would stop taking freelance jobs, and work on Yandere Simulator as a full-time job.My Patreon hit the "full-time" threshold pretty quickly, so I stopped looking for freelance jobs, and began working on Yandere Simulator full-time. It's been that way for almost a year now.
I'd like to take this opportunity to make three things really clear:
- The Patreon is my "payment" for spending 12+ hours a day, 7 days a week working on this game. The Patreon is not the game's budget.
- When you donate to someone via Patreon, Patreon takes a cut, a credit card company charges a fee to transfer the money, and the government eventually taxes that money. The number that you see when you look at my Patreon page is not what I actually receive every month.
- The game's actual budget will be raised during a crowd-funding campaign (using a service such as Kickstarter). This campaign will be launched once Yandere Simulator meets my own personal criteria for "A game I'd back on Kickstarter." The crowd-funding campaign won't happen until April at the soonest.
I set the "full-time employee" threshold at $3,500 per month, but we’re currently way past that mark, at around $4,400 per month. Because I've only been asking for $3,500, I've been counting the excess money towards the game's budget. In other words, if the game needs $100,000, but I obtain a surplus of $10,000 through Patron, then I only need to ask for $90,000 during the Kickstarter. Get it?
However, I've decided that the excess money from the Patreon should be used differently...
For almost 20 months, I've been accepting volunteer help with Yandere Simulator. These volunteers have been offering their assistance completely for free. Every day, I hear from several new people who’d like to pitch in with the game. Not all of them are skilled enough to contribute meaningfully to Yandere Simulator, but some of them certainly are.
Some volunteers are available to help every day, and other volunteers are only able to spare me a few hours per a month. Sometimes, I won't need to ask a volunteer for help for weeks at a time...but in other cases, a volunteer is so valuable that I constantly have tasks for them, and would be absolutely lost without them.
At this point in time, several extremely talented volunteers have proven themselves to be absolutely irreplaceable. I want to make them permanent team-members and have them work on Yandere Simulator full-time. I can't pay a team of people to help me full-time without tens of thousands of dollars, but I'm not ready to ask for that much money yet; that’s what the crowd-funding campaign will be for.
However, there is a middle ground that exists between "free volunteer" and "full-time employee".
Some volunteers are freelancers whose contributions to a project are directly proportional to how much they're getting paid to work on that project. By paying one of these volunteers about $500 per month, I can have more of their focus and attention. They don't become full-time employees, but they would switch from contributing to Yandere Simulator weekly to contributing daily.
So, what does that mean? This means that I'm adding new milestone goals to the Patreon. $3,500 is my personal "full-time" threshold. $4,000 means that I can afford to pay a volunteer $500 per month for extra effort and assistance. $4,500 means that I can afford to pay TWO volunteers $500 per month, or pay one volunteer $1,000 per month. $5,000 means that I could afford to pay three volunteers...etc.
The "I'll pay you $500 per month to contribute more time and effort to Yandere Simulator" offer will not extend to every volunteer; only the volunteers whose contributions are directly required for upcoming features.
Not every volunteer has "For $500 per month, I would contribute daily." circumstances. Some volunteers might not be able to contribute to the game daily because of their full-time jobs, meaning I would have to pay them enough to quit their jobs in order to get more of their time. The $500 offer is not for those volunteers; it’s only for the ones who are able to contribute to the game daily if incentivized by $500, or a multiple of 500.
It's possible that some current volunteers might hear this news and say, “Oh, you're paying volunteers now? Well, I deserve payment for what I've done for you, so I'm holding my work hostage unless you make me one of the paid volunteers." This will not produce favorable results for them. The "paid volunteer" offer will only be extended to professional-quality volunteers who are currently not contributing daily, but would be able to if they began receiving compensation.
There are many volunteers whose work I am so grateful for that I want to fully compensate them for all of the help that they have given me, once I have enough money to do so. The first crowd-funding "stretch goal" will be "raise enough money to pay back the most noteworthy volunteers for their help". Additional stretch goals would be "more variety in character models", "male protagonist", "open-world small town", etc.
In short: I added some new milestone goals to the Patreon. If these milestone goals are reached, I can begin paying the most skilled volunteers to spend more time focusing on Yandere Simulator. This will result in better production values, and help the game come out sooner.
I always value what the Patrons have to say, so please let me hear your thoughts on this.
Comments
Oh my god, most of the stuff I like to see NEVER goes into this much detail. That is great to see how much time and effort you put in. Also, keep up the good work :P
Alyssa
Now that you've hit $5,000 I really hope you make new goals to hire or compensate more volunteers or have the special ones to give them more time to help you.
Silicia_Volt
Does this number take into account taxes and bank fees? Or is it only the amount of money pledged minus Patreon's cut?
YandereDev
Happy New Year to you, too!
Mistigdarksyt
Happy new year ^^
YandereDev
Yes, I'm aware. Unfortunately, I don't believe it's possible for me to edit/update the post that I made above.
TeKett
i hope you are now aware that patreon have fixed (on the 19 dec?) so the amount of money is now shown correctly to what the creator will get at the end of the month, and not the amount pledged
Mistigdarksyt
I play the game and find bugs for you to bring the game to continue , I find the games very well
Man I am glad I am on patron or else I would have never found out about you. You have my support.
YandereDev
I appreciate it, friend! Thank you very much!
Mistigdarksyt
hay i Support you to ^^
YandereDev
Every little bit helps! I appreciate your contribution! Thank you so much!
DannyE
Im studying in Gamedesign atm and saw some video's of your work on Youtube and couldn't resist supporting you in some way. It's only 3 dollar a month (cause im a student xD) but hopefully it will help you reach your goal what you set out to reach with this game. We need more people like you :D Hopefully someday i can do the same ^^
YandereDev
I'm honored to have your support! Thank you very much!
Matthew Gorton
Merry Christmas, YandereDev. I've been following you for a while now. This is the first project I've ever Patroned. I'm super excited to see Yandere Simulator completed, whenever that may be. Good luck.
YandereDev
I appreciate your contribution, no matter how large or small it is!
lasmas
I'm no rich as hell but you will have a little dolar from my part every mouth good luck in the project!
Jayu
^_^
Sergio "Puntosmx" Montserrat
A rather lengthy post, but I like that you are considering sharing the income with those that contribute to the game. I would prefer that you begin with those that have already contributed in some significant way, but you're the one that makes the decision about money and expenses. Thanks for the update, and I hope we'll get more quality content with this incentive ^_^
Dara Sasaki
Also, in response to the most recent blog post (the clarification one,) I'm sorry you have to defend yourself, but I'm also very glad to see you standing up for yourself :) You are one of the nicest, most patient game devs, and I used to be worried you'd be run into the ground by all the obnoxious and/or entitled fans, but I'm not concerned anymore.
Patrick (Gammalad)
I am planning to up my pledge soon ^_^ you'll make it!
Thomas Schroeder
Keep kicking ass, man! I have to agree with Pocket, up til perhaps $7500+ a month, I would want to see you get paid what you're worth.
Hermetic Kitten
I hope I will be able to give you a bigger contribution in the future. I believe in you! Please, take great care of yourself and celebrate this goal. You deserve it! Greetings from Italy!
Rabe Lohengramm
shut up and take my money.jpg
While I think this goal is noble, I personally prefer that it go totally to you. Even at 4500 per month, I still would consider you underpaid for a standard software developer (even in the gaming industry), especially given your workdays are longer than the typical workforce's, and especially when considering patreon's fees, which are not part of a normal developer's salary. (Plus a typical dev gets health insurance coverage, annual bonuses, etc.) I just would rather feel confident that you're being fairly compensated. I do support having stretch goals to compensate volunteers in whatever kickstarter happens, however. Just my 2c.
Stelic22
Great idea, full support this was to speed up and help development
TRlegacy
You da man yanderedev.
RedInferno
Wow! 4500 already :)
