Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

Boba · 2019-09-12 16:05:49

I don't think half of it is going to advertising now, and I don't want to rely on outdated and purposefully ambiguous graphs. Where is the money going right now?

mrjawapa · 2019-09-12 17:34:44

Right now it's going to support kirby's meth addiction.

rat, Raphe9000, Filip2005, SirJosh3917, cpcrabs, Mouseh, Schlog, mutantdevle, IanJanes, PTU

Kira · 2019-09-12 20:05:15

Related to this topic: https://forums.everybodyedits.com/viewt … p?id=45563

Xenonetix's answer to the topic:

It's clear that Xenonetix does not intend to provide any information according to this. Furthermore, most of the patreon money is going to be used for:

Which honestly seems like a completely stupid idea in my honest opinion. It's clear to see that EE's company is not swimming in funds yet, the owner wants to use most likely the totality of the Patreon funds for an event that will last a week. Very smart.

Don't waste your time, you won't get anything.

Boba

Snowester · 2019-09-12 20:34:56

They're partially being used for Xeno's rent... Literally the whole rent of his.

Boba, IanJanes

Charlie59876EE · 2019-09-12 22:21:11

Kira wrote:

Which honestly seems like a completely stupid idea in my honest opinion. It's clear to see that EE's company is not swimming in funds yet, the owner wants to use most likely the totality of the Patreon funds for an event that will last a week. Very smart.

but use your brain for once. if EE get's enough advertising, that means more players, and more income for other things that are important. With enough advertising they can make the money spent on advertising easily.

Boba wrote:

does he.. even have a job? i’ll be honest from what i can tell almost none of these staff members are self sustainable and have a job

Xenonetix wrote:

I'm not sure which world you're living in where a Patreon that pays currently $341 a month is enough to make "profit", but I certainly could not live on $341 a month, and it's only because I do freelance sheet music work in addition to working on Everybody Edits that I make enough money to live.

He does 'freelance sheet music' in addition to make enough money for rent etc. found https://forums.everybodyedits.com/viewt … p?id=46124

Boba

Kira · 2019-09-12 22:45:10

Charlie59876EE wrote:

but use your brain for once.

Don't talk to me like that, random.

First of all, you're the one who's going to use your 20 iq left in your child brain.
Do you know what Gamescom is? Right, you don't.
Do you honestly expect Everybody Edits Universe to compete with all newest games that are a quintillion times more popular than EE? You probably do, and I wouldn't be surprised.

Second of all, if you truly think that Gamescom is going to bring players to EEU, you're a complete fool. They will set up a booth, peaking the interests of a few but most of the public will be thinking "Did they really pay to set up a booth with this **** game?" Because let's face it. EE is good, but first impressions this game looks like absolute trash, and if you want a booth to be popular, you're gonna need to have insane first impression which is not going to happen.

Third of all, the current budget they have is no where close to get Everybody Edits popular or even bring any player, because ads advertisement cost an insane amount of money that won't really get you any new players. Keep in mind that not only they have to pay for the server costs, they also have to pay everything that comes along with marketing a game.
-It costs about $50,000 to market an indie game.
-Branding takes about 2 weeks to complete, it will cost you about $7,000 to do yourself, or about that to outsource.
-A trailer takes about 1 week to produce, costs you about $4,000 to do yourself, and maybe less to outsource.
-A website takes about 2 weeks to complete, costs you about $7,000 to do yourself, and maybe less to outsource.
-Social media takes the full 3 months to complete, costs you about $11,000 to do yourself, and maybe less to outsource.
-A devblog takes the full 3 months to complete, costs you about $9,000 to do yourself, and possibly less to outsource.
-PR takes the full 3 months to complete, costs about $9,000 to do yourself, and about that to outsource.

Next time you come at me with "But use your brain for once", give me facts and counter arguments, because you just look like a plebian now

Luka504 · 2019-09-12 23:02:29

Boba wrote:

Kira wrote:
Charlie59876EE wrote:
but use your brain for once.
Don't talk to me like that, random.
First of all, you're the one who's going to use your 20 iq left in your child brain.
Do you know what Gamescom is? Right, you don't.
Do you honestly expect Everybody Edits Universe to compete with all newest games that are a quintillion times more popular than EE? You probably do, and I wouldn't be surprised.
Second of all, if you truly think that Gamescom is going to bring players to EEU, you're a complete fool. They will set up a booth, peaking the interests of a few but most of the public will be thinking "Did they really pay to set up a booth with this **** game?" Because let's face it. EE is good, but first impressions this game looks like absolute trash, and if you want a booth to be popular, you're gonna need to have insane first impression which is not going to happen.
Third of all, the current budget they have is no where close to get Everybody Edits popular or even bring any player, because ads advertisement cost an insane amount of money that won't really get you any new players. Keep in mind that not only they have to pay for the server costs, they also have to pay everything that comes along with marketing a game.
-It costs about $50,000 to market an indie game.
-Branding takes about 2 weeks to complete, it will cost you about $7,000 to do yourself, or about that to outsource.
-A trailer takes about 1 week to produce, costs you about $4,000 to do yourself, and maybe less to outsource.
-A website takes about 2 weeks to complete, costs you about $7,000 to do yourself, and maybe less to outsource.
-Social media takes the full 3 months to complete, costs you about $11,000 to do yourself, and maybe less to outsource.
-A devblog takes the full 3 months to complete, costs you about $9,000 to do yourself, and possibly less to outsource.
-PR takes the full 3 months to complete, costs about $9,000 to do yourself, and about that to outsource.
Next time you come at me with "But use your brain for once", give me facts and counter arguments, because you just look like a plebian now
social media and devblogs you can do for absolutely free, also dont randomly attack this dude? please?

Your summary kinda... doesn't reflect what the article is saying, and a lot of what the article is saying is "here's what your time is worth on average multiplied by the time it'll take you" but, like... Here's the thing. If you make a trailer yourself, or make the devlog yourself, or make the website yourself, or do all the social media stuff yourself, it doesn't "literally" cost you anything but time. The only thing that has any real bearings on Actual Human Dollars™ is the outsourcing predictions.

The problem with what I've long come to dub Time As Indie Dollars is that this all assumes a lot about the returns you'll be seeing on this. Market rate values mean absolutely nothing. Allow me to explain:
So your game finally comes out. It took you three years to make, including designing, planning, multiple failed prototypes and all those fun things that come from indie games. You release your game on Steam for an example price of $20. Over the next 6 months, 20,000 people buy your game.
Whoa! You just made $280,000 in six months! Except you kinda didn't. You made $280,000 in 3.5 years. So let's make a few more assumptions. Let's assume that on this game, you only worked for 8 hours a day, 6 days a week. You take Sundays off so you can watch Twin Peaks in your underwear. That's roughly 1095 days of working, or 8760 hours. All of a sudden, all that work is starting to add up.
So you have your $280,000 (before taxes) but your sales have started to peter out. But let's break down those sales figures into how much you actually made. Not your theoretical market rate because nobody is paying you your salary but yourself. Well all of a sudden that $89 hourly value you "should" be making drops down to $32 because that's what you actually made. It's nothing to sneeze at, but it's literally a third of what this article is putting forth.
Here's the other problem. This article is seemingly obsessed with salaries, but the thing about salaries is that you actually, well, get paid your salary. When you're an indie dev, it's actually entirely possible to make a game and not get paid at all. When you're an indie dev, your salary is what you have made selling your game minus expenses. No more, no less.
So your $185,638 salary suddenly becomes $80,000. Definitely liveable, unless you live in high expense place like Silicon Valley (don't live in the Bay Area unless you need to or you were born there and can't afford to leave, it's a bad time), but nowhere near the salary this article is pointing out.
So now we get into the real meat of things. We get into questions like "Okay, so how much did that trailer really cost me?" Well, here's the thing. Unless you were getting paid from a previously released game, it probably cost you, well, time. Not money, but time. That trailer you spent a week on (a good trailer will take more than a week) probably actually cost you the cost of an Adobe subscription for all their apps, since you don't want to deal with the time lost learning poorly documented free software alternatives. So we'll put that at $40. You subscribe for a month for Premiere and After Effects because you want to really make that trailer pop. So in terms of actual expenses, your trailer more cost you $40 to make. It also probably sucks because editing a good trailer is really difficult but that's not the point here.
What that trailer did do, however, was contribute to your overall marketing, as does PR, as does branding, as does the devlog, as does, well, everything else. The only reason your "salary" is as high as it is is because you got the game into the eyes of people willing to part ways with their $20 to play the electronic beep boop game. The only reason you made that "salary" of $80,000 a year is because of this work.
And here's the real trick of it. The number I pulled out of my behind at the beginning there? That 20,000 at $20? That's being super generous. I mostly picked those numbers because they'd cover the cost of living expenses (admittedly very late) for the three years you'd have to have worked on the game. In reality, most devs don't make anywhere near that much. A lot of indie devs have to work two, three jobs just to make do while they work on their games. It's why a lot of games go without ever being released. When you use the word "salary," there are certain expectations there. There's the expectation of a clearly indicated wage. There's the expectation that you'll get to buy food that week.

The real takeaway is that these things aren't costing you actual money, just time. And if it wasn't for that time invested, you wouldn't make any money aside from the pennies you'd get from somehow showing up in the Steam discovery queue. Your salary is also, unless you make pretty successful games with a decent degree of consistency, never as high as the article points out. The article is 100% pie in the sky thinking in its optimism. In reality, things are never that simple and clear cut.

TaskManager, mutantdevle, Onjit, rat

Kira · 2019-09-12 23:04:12

Luka504 wrote:

Boba wrote:
Kira wrote:
Charlie59876EE wrote:
but use your brain for once.
Don't talk to me like that, random.
First of all, you're the one who's going to use your 20 iq left in your child brain.
Do you know what Gamescom is? Right, you don't.
Do you honestly expect Everybody Edits Universe to compete with all newest games that are a quintillion times more popular than EE? You probably do, and I wouldn't be surprised.
Second of all, if you truly think that Gamescom is going to bring players to EEU, you're a complete fool. They will set up a booth, peaking the interests of a few but most of the public will be thinking "Did they really pay to set up a booth with this **** game?" Because let's face it. EE is good, but first impressions this game looks like absolute trash, and if you want a booth to be popular, you're gonna need to have insane first impression which is not going to happen.
Third of all, the current budget they have is no where close to get Everybody Edits popular or even bring any player, because ads advertisement cost an insane amount of money that won't really get you any new players. Keep in mind that not only they have to pay for the server costs, they also have to pay everything that comes along with marketing a game.
-It costs about $50,000 to market an indie game.
-Branding takes about 2 weeks to complete, it will cost you about $7,000 to do yourself, or about that to outsource.
-A trailer takes about 1 week to produce, costs you about $4,000 to do yourself, and maybe less to outsource.
-A website takes about 2 weeks to complete, costs you about $7,000 to do yourself, and maybe less to outsource.
-Social media takes the full 3 months to complete, costs you about $11,000 to do yourself, and maybe less to outsource.
-A devblog takes the full 3 months to complete, costs you about $9,000 to do yourself, and possibly less to outsource.
-PR takes the full 3 months to complete, costs about $9,000 to do yourself, and about that to outsource.
Next time you come at me with "But use your brain for once", give me facts and counter arguments, because you just look like a plebian now
social media and devblogs you can do for absolutely free, also dont randomly attack this dude? please?
Your summary kinda... doesn't reflect what the article is saying, and a lot of what the article is saying is "here's what your time is worth on average multiplied by the time it'll take you" but, like... Here's the thing. If you make a trailer yourself, or make the devlog yourself, or make the website yourself, or do all the social media stuff yourself, it doesn't "literally" cost you anything but time. The only thing that has any real bearings on Actual Human Dollars™ is the outsourcing predictions.
The problem with what I've long come to dub Time As Indie Dollars is that this all assumes a lot about the returns you'll be seeing on this. Market rate values mean absolutely nothing. Allow me to explain:
So your game finally comes out. It took you three years to make, including designing, planning, multiple failed prototypes and all those fun things that come from indie games. You release your game on Steam for an example price of $20. Over the next 6 months, 20,000 people buy your game.
Whoa! You just made $280,000 in six months! Except you kinda didn't. You made $280,000 in 3.5 years. So let's make a few more assumptions. Let's assume that on this game, you only worked for 8 hours a day, 6 days a week. You take Sundays off so you can watch Twin Peaks in your underwear. That's roughly 1095 days of working, or 8760 hours. All of a sudden, all that work is starting to add up.
So you have your $280,000 (before taxes) but your sales have started to peter out. But let's break down those sales figures into how much you actually made. Not your theoretical market rate because nobody is paying you your salary but yourself. Well all of a sudden that $89 hourly value you "should" be making drops down to $32 because that's what you actually made. It's nothing to sneeze at, but it's literally a third of what this article is putting forth.
Here's the other problem. This article is seemingly obsessed with salaries, but the thing about salaries is that you actually, well, get paid your salary. When you're an indie dev, it's actually entirely possible to make a game and not get paid at all. When you're an indie dev, your salary is what you have made selling your game minus expenses. No more, no less.
So your $185,638 salary suddenly becomes $80,000. Definitely liveable, unless you live in high expense place like Silicon Valley (don't live in the Bay Area unless you need to or you were born there and can't afford to leave, it's a bad time), but nowhere near the salary this article is pointing out.
So now we get into the real meat of things. We get into questions like "Okay, so how much did that trailer really cost me?" Well, here's the thing. Unless you were getting paid from a previously released game, it probably cost you, well, time. Not money, but time. That trailer you spent a week on (a good trailer will take more than a week) probably actually cost you the cost of an Adobe subscription for all their apps, since you don't want to deal with the time lost learning poorly documented free software alternatives. So we'll put that at $40. You subscribe for a month for Premiere and After Effects because you want to really make that trailer pop. So in terms of actual expenses, your trailer more cost you $40 to make. It also probably sucks because editing a good trailer is really difficult but that's not the point here.
What that trailer did do, however, was contribute to your overall marketing, as does PR, as does branding, as does the devlog, as does, well, everything else. The only reason your "salary" is as high as it is is because you got the game into the eyes of people willing to part ways with their $20 to play the electronic beep boop game. The only reason you made that "salary" of $80,000 a year is because of this work.
And here's the real trick of it. The number I pulled out of my behind at the beginning there? That 20,000 at $20? That's being super generous. I mostly picked those numbers because they'd cover the cost of living expenses (admittedly very late) for the three years you'd have to have worked on the game. In reality, most devs don't make anywhere near that much. A lot of indie devs have to work two, three jobs just to make do while they work on their games. It's why a lot of games go without ever being released. When you use the word "salary," there are certain expectations there. There's the expectation of a clearly indicated wage. There's the expectation that you'll get to buy food that week.
The real takeaway is that these things aren't costing you actual money, just time. And if it wasn't for that time invested, you wouldn't make any money aside from the pennies you'd get from somehow showing up in the Steam discovery queue. Your salary is also, unless you make pretty successful games with a decent degree of consistency, never as high as the article points out. The article is 100% pie in the sky thinking in its optimism. In reality, things are never that simple and clear cut.

It's an exact copy-paste from the article's summary headings.

I get where you're coming from, though. You're right that as a hobbyist (as I think most people here are) time is fairly cost free. But when you depend on the income to keep a roof over your head, you need to make these kinds of comparative decisions. Do you spend the hour adding a feature to your game, or spend it on marketing efforts instead and ship without that feature? Or spend it on a freelancing gig so you can pay your bills?

TaskManager, rat

Luka504 · 2019-09-12 23:06:57

Yea u rite

Kira

Kira · 2019-09-12 23:25:08

(To people who don't get it, all of this is a meme and is meant in good fun, read it with a grain of salt )

Joeyjoey65 · 2019-09-13 01:47:08

Kira wrote:

(To people who don't get it, all of this is a meme and is meant in good fun, read it with a grain of salt )

really cause i thought a discussion like this was meant to be taken seriously

Boba, Charlie59876EE

NoNK · 2019-09-13 01:52:42

Merged into the EE Memes thread.

TaskManager, Boba, Jorc, Norwee

daneeko · 2019-09-13 04:29:39

Moved to Debates(/)

peace · 2019-09-13 07:24:39

xeno said somewhere what he egts paid form EE and its lower then a job but he likes EE

Boba

daneeko · 2019-09-13 16:17:27

Boba wrote:

peace wrote:
xeno said somewhere what he egts paid form EE and its lower then a job but he likes EE
then why doesn’t he get a job

/gamerule keepInventory true

Filip2005 · 2019-09-13 18:21:46

The money is going towards Xenonetix's new Ferrari

Xenonetix · 2019-09-17 20:22:22

To date, a total of $5,455 have been paid out to staff from Patreon funds. Remaining funds have gone towards servers and domains, and then into an Advertising Budget.

When we get to the right time to start advertising, the initial plan is for a Facebook Banner Ad Campaign, but that won't be until at least some way into Open Beta. Primarily, I'd rather the advertising budget go towards promoting the smartphone app when we launch that, and sure, we would love to be able to attend Gamescom, but we do require approximately $12,000 in the Advertising Budget to do so, which we're nowhere close to currently. We'll see how things go.

I do indeed work as a freelance Sheet Music Curator. I create sheet music for online sale for a couple of companies regularly, and this pays me approximately $250 (£200) a week. It's nothing spectacular, but it's enough to pay my rent and live on, and I'm certainly not (yet) depending on EE or EEU for money.

We all want EEU to be successful, and in time, I would love to be working on EEU full time, but right now, most of the staff have alternate forms of income, and I really hope none of them are depending on EEU as their source of income, because they'll be very disappointed. I make it very clear when recruiting new staff that they're voluntary positions with potential for occasional pay. As the game scales, I hope to be able to pay them more as time goes on.

LukeM, Charlie59876EE, mutantdevle, Boba, PTU

Tomahawk · 2019-09-17 21:02:47

Gamescom sounds like a bad use of crowdsourced funds to me. If the ultimate aim is to grow the playerbase, that $$$ should be better spent on online advertising.

For example, how many potential new players could be redirected to the EEU webpage by ads, for the same cost of transporting several people to Germany and back? I'd probably love to attend Gamescom too, but this is free Patreon money you're spending.

On a side note, EEU will need a "log in as guest" feature so that people redirected to the site by ads don't have to register or sign in to try the game.

Charlie59876EE, shadowda, den3107, Xfrogman43, Onjit, Norwee, mutantdevle, Snowester, MartenM, Boba

Schlog · 2019-09-17 23:42:24

Kira wrote:

Don't waste your time, you won't get anything.

said as if you're supposed to expect something in return for donating

kira i get that u like to **** around on the forums but this whole "**** ee its not going anywhere" mentality stopped being funny ages ago when u decided to spout the same **** over and over

mutantdevle, Charlie59876EE, Filip2005, Norwee

Kira · 2019-09-18 00:13:00

Schlog wrote:

****

I **** **** agree that **** **** **** **** however, we **** need **** to **** do ****.

I **** don't **** agree **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** with this **** **** **** **** **** **** mentality, that's for sure. We hope for a **** **** **** **** and a better tomorrow, that's **** **** EEU is **** all about **** ****

drstereos

Tomahawk · 2019-09-18 08:07:48

Gentlemen, please.

Behave.

Anatoly · 2019-09-18 15:32:04

Tomahawk wrote:

Gentlemen, please.
Behave.

You’re currently on the wrong forum to expect that

Boba

Snowester · 2019-09-18 18:52:15

Anatoly wrote:

You’re currently on the wrong forum to expect that

sips tea

Norwee · 2019-09-18 19:13:59

Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

▼Hidden text

Pqwerty

mikelolsuperman · 2019-09-18 20:03:41

NorwegianboyEE wrote:

Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?
▼Hidden text
https://homerepairgeek.com/wp-content/u … toilet.jpg

?

drstereos, PTU

Official Everybody Edits Forums

#1 2019-09-12 16:05:49

Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

#2 2019-09-12 17:34:44

Re: Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

#3 2019-09-12 20:05:15

Re: Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

#4 2019-09-12 20:34:56

Re: Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

#5 2019-09-12 22:21:11, last edited by Charlie59876EE (2019-09-12 22:21:36)

Re: Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

#6 2019-09-12 22:45:10

Re: Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

#7 2019-09-12 23:02:29

Re: Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

#8 2019-09-12 23:04:12

Re: Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

#9 2019-09-12 23:06:57

Re: Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

#10 2019-09-12 23:25:08

Re: Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

#11 2019-09-13 01:47:08

Re: Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

#12 2019-09-13 01:52:42

Re: Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

#13 2019-09-13 04:29:39

Re: Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

#14 2019-09-13 07:24:39

Re: Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

#15 2019-09-13 16:17:27

Re: Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

#16 2019-09-13 18:21:46

Re: Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

#17 2019-09-17 20:22:22

Re: Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

#18 2019-09-17 21:02:47

Re: Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

#19 2019-09-17 23:42:24

Re: Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

#20 2019-09-18 00:13:00

Re: Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

#21 2019-09-18 08:07:48

Re: Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

#22 2019-09-18 15:32:04

Re: Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

#23 2019-09-18 18:52:15, last edited by Snowester (2019-09-18 18:52:26)

Re: Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

#24 2019-09-18 19:13:59

Re: Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

#25 2019-09-18 20:03:41

Re: Can we get updated statistics on where the Patreon money is going?

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