Patreon: Milestone Goals

[Emxx52]

We've decided to start a Patreon campaign, but before we do the details have to be discussed.

I'd like to begin with the Milestone Goals. It's probably the easiest thing to discuss and edit, besides, we already have the base to begin with.
Here is a list of Goals from our unfinished-yet Patreon page:
Basic Initiative!
$101 per month
With this basic amount of money to share between the members of our team we could possibly work faster!

Up to the Moon!
$201 per month
Increased amount of money == increased number of Colobot: Gold Edition releases per month!

On the Offensive!
$303 per month
We would be able to pay for high quality rendering of Colobot: Gold Edition trailers and other game-related animated videos of our production!

Advanced Initiative!
$502 per month
That's a huge amount of money for us (open-source game devs), don't ya think? What would we do with that much money? Well, buying new and improved versions of commercial programs like Adobe Premiere or FL Studio would probably allow us to create better quality content for both the project and the community around it.

Moar than we expected.
$904 per month
We would be surprised. And stunned. And we would work even harder to meet your expectations!

Moar than enough.
$12,000 per month
Quite impossible to achieve, isn't it? But... we would be able to leave everything else and just develop the game. The project would no longer be an open-source free-time hobby, it would become our job.

The number of processing units in ResearchCenter
$65,536 per month
TerranovaTeam would be gathered in one single place, forming a studio of game developers. That practically means Colobot: Gold Edition, Colobot 2 aaand other games developed faster. Aaand videos. Aaand so many other stuff that game studios create. Like... I don't know, Imma just an open-source dev, I kinda work for free.

http://i.imgur.com/UuO86zE.png | http://i.imgur.com/u33oEIQ.png | http://i.imgur.com/6H0VXgG.png | http://i.imgur.com/YUInosN.png


All of these Goals should be discussed here. Do you like them? Or not? Would you like to suggest another one? Well, now's the time.

[krzys_h]

Like I mentioned in the other thread, I think these goals are too big for a start. I don't think we'll get to even $101/month any time soon.

[tomangelo]

I've an question: are we really sure, that we actually could work faster, when we'll get 101$? We still aren't full time developers, most of us still have school or work, maybe some other liabilities. This would look bad, when we'll get these 200$ monthly, but there wouldn't be any release in 2 months, because we've many other important things to do, or we just didn't finish coding. You don't know how often we're inactive? Or we'll release unfinished games, like Ubisoft?
Of course, paying after release or huge commit will speed up our work when we'll have more free time, but we can't promise, that we'll do 3 releases in month.

[tomaszkax86]

These are insanely huge milestones. And unrealistic. I doubt we'll get $10 any time soon. $65,536 per month? Christ. I don't wanna pay taxes from that.

And we still haven't discussed what are we gonna do with all that money. Do you wanna buy new software or something? Better server for hosting stuff? I'm pretty sure we won't open any game development studio any time soon. At least not a successful one.

[Emxx52]

Like I mentioned in the other thread

Ah, yes, and my respond was like 'those are just examples, might change, ought to discuss it later'. So I don't know, suggest something smaller

are we really sure, that we actually could work faster, when we'll get 101$

Well, that depends. I think I can be motivated that way, so yeah, definitely I'm going to work faster if the time comes.

These are insanely huge milestones.

Yes, I know . But as I said, this is just a base for us to work on, so... yeah, any suggestions would be appreciated.

And we still haven't discussed what are we gonna do with all that money.

Yes, we haven't, but we will in another thread. Let's just focus on the descriptions and amounts here.

[krzys_h]

And we still haven't discussed what are we gonna do with all that money.

Yes, we haven't, but we will in another thread. Let's just focus on the descriptions and amounts here.

It's hard to discuss about the amounts if we don't know what we need them for...

[Emxx52]

I think that everything is in the descriptions of the Goals, there is not much though about what we are going to do with the money, cuz how in the world am I supposed to know that. Especially if the greater per-month-amounts are going to be split between each user involved. The thing that needs to be discussed in another thread is how exactly the money is going to be split. It has nothing to do with these Goals, which are still... not really being discussed. Well, it does, but not in a direct way . Just... suggest something already.

[tomaszkax86]

If we don't know what to do with potential money, then why in the world are we asking for money? The only thing I can come up with is server/website maintenance costs and buying some new software. Talk with krzys_h if he would be interested in getting better server. You could put a milestone on that.

[tomangelo]

This is an idea. krzys_h mentioned some time ago, that he almost don't have free disc space on server. With funding we could maintain better server with more space for binaries.

[krzys_h]

I actually managed to free up some disk space on the server recently, so that's not really a problem, unless we really want to keep old builds for a long time.
We're actually running out of space on our main colobot.info server, only 515 MB free (out of 20 GB), but we'll have to contact zielmicha about that.
If we'll actually have some stable income it might be a good idea to pay for the servers from that instead of our private funds.

[CHmSID]

I think the problem is that @Emxx52 (from what I understood), wants the money to be split between Terranova members for private use(like a salary). I think the money should not be split, but used by the members as a group. Better servers and paid online services are things this money should go towards. Things the project will benefit from, not its members. I agree that volunteers will not work faster when given money (they stop being volunteers then, I'd presume).
Personal incentives are not the way to go here.
You guys gathered together from the love to this game. If you start coming here for money I think this community, or rather Terranova Team, will break down.

[Simbax]

You guys gathered together from the love to this game. If you start coming here for money I think this community, or rather Terranova Team, will break down.

And only people with love to this game will stay here. A lot have already lost the love and nobody new is coming. Nowadays, Colobot isn't even one of a kind, because there is a lot of (good) programming games much better achieving their goals. Colobot doesn't even have a serious programming language, so there is even no motivation to learn from it. In my opinion, this project is already dead for the supposed target audience. It was already dead in 2001, as it was too hard to learn anything from it without previous at least little knowledge about real Computer Science and nearly everyone beat it without any programming, so it missed its main goal. This project is only attractive for people, who remember the game from their young ages, not for completely new people who hear about it the first time. Most of us can't even convince our closest friends to the game, and we want to convince some random guy on the Internet, who has never programmed before?

No thrilling plot, too small educational value, no shocking graphics, no sophisticated sandbox, no anything to attract anyone new. If we would like to advertise it, we would need to lie, so there is really not much point in Patreon, it's just another source of small donations to let the place for community going on. I agree, there is no point in splitting the money, better spend it on the server and so on, to let the old nostalgic fans have their fun. I wouldn't except any miracle with or without money.

I don't like these goals, as they are promises which we can't keep.

$101 per month
With this basic amount of money to share between the members of our team we could possibly work faster!

Split $101 between team members and other costs and everybody gets basically just another can of Coca Cola or something like that. This certainly wouldn't make anyone work much more.

$201 per month
Increased amount of money == increased number of Colobot: Gold Edition releases per month!

Aside from that $201 would have as much of effect as $101, increased number of releases is not something that would mean faster development. I would even say it would make it slower, because we would be wasting more time on releasing than on actual development. And more releases would put more pressure on us, thus they would have much worse quality overall, which would culminate in a bad end product.

On the Offensive!
$303 per month
We would be able to pay for high quality rendering of Colobot: Gold Edition trailers and other game-related animated videos of our production!

I asked @RaptorParkowsky about that. Here is the result: using https://blendergrid.com/ rendering not fully done GOLD teaser (http://colobot.info/forum/showthread.php?tid=584) (2500 frames in 4k resolution) would cost... 897 USD (excl. VAT). Keep in mind server costs and splitting between members of the team. This needs no further comment.

$502 per month
That's a huge amount of money for us (open-source game devs), don't ya think? What would we do with that much money? Well, buying new and improved versions of commercial programs like Adobe Premiere or FL Studio would probably allow us to create better quality content for both the project and the community around it.

And we would buy it as... who? A company? Or everybody would just buy what one needs? It is then from one's personal budget and nobody can force anyone to buy a program especially for Colobot developing. Frankly, I think that most of us use a free software or a cracked one anyway, so it wouldn't make any difference. Everybody in the team use their own tools and is alone responsible for having them legally and choosing them, the only thing that matters for the public is the effect of their work.

$904 per month
We would be surprised. And stunned. And we would work even harder to meet your expectations!

Well, this sum maybe would actually motivate someone. If we wouldn't need to save money for render farms.

$12,000 per month
Quite impossible to achieve, isn't it? But... we would be able to leave everything else and just develop the game. The project would no longer be an open-source free-time hobby, it would become our job.

Yes, we would, if the team won't be growing. However, some of us might still have a better (and, what is more important, certainly) paid full-time job. And remember about all the taxes and splitting problems.

$65,536 per month
TerranovaTeam would be gathered in one single place, forming a studio of game developers. That practically means Colobot: Gold Edition, Colobot 2 aaand other games developed faster. Aaand videos. Aaand so many other stuff that game studios create. Like... I don't know, Imma just an open-source dev, I kinda work for free.

Nice dream, but there would be a LOT of problems with establishing this. It's not that easy to change a place to live, and we are spread across the whole country, if not world. And who would take the responsibility for managing that? It's really hard...

To sum up, in my opinion, they are really bad goals. There should be less of them and they should be more realistic, without empty promises. Most of them shouldn't exceed $100 and, honestly, I think that asking for $10,000 at the beginning is as funny as a person asking  "I want to make a new Facebook, just give me money".

[krzys_h]

You guys gathered together from the love to this game. If you start coming here for money I think this community, or rather Terranova Team, will break down.

And only people with love to this game will stay here. A lot have already lost the love and nobody new is coming. Nowadays, Colobot isn't even one of a kind, because there is a lot of (good) programming games much better achieving their goals. Colobot doesn't even have a serious programming language, so there is even no motivation to learn from it. In my opinion, this project is already dead for the supposed target audience. It was already dead in 2001, as it was too hard to learn anything from it without previous at least little knowledge about real Computer Science and nearly everyone beat it without any programming, so it missed its main goal. This project is only attractive for people, who remember the game from their young ages, not for completely new people who hear about it the first time. Most of us can't even convince our closest friends to the game, and we want to convince some random guy on the Internet, who has never programmed before?

No thrilling plot, too small educational value, no shocking graphics, no sophisticated sandbox, no anything to attract anyone new. If we would like to advertise it, we would need to lie, [...]

But we can change that. That's why Colobot: Gold Edition exists. That's why we're still here.

[Emxx52]

@Simbax : Finally someone wrote a post about what has to be discussed in this thread. Explained why exactly such ridiculous amounts are not good. Thank you.
So you may ask why did we had something like that in the first place? Well, I've already said thaaat:

I feel like these goals are too big for a start.

That was just an easter-eggish proposition (as you can see most of the amounts were meant to remind Colobot missions), so those goals and their descriptions are more like just examples and so I'd like them to be discussed here.

So yeah, that's the story. Now let's use these examples and what we know is not-so-good about them and create new Goals. Any ideas?

for private use(like a salary)

What will we do with the money (and how will we do it) is a thing I'd like to discuss in another thread, which... unfortunately doesn't exist yet. Originally I'd planned to create all new Patreon threads (four or so) yesterday, but it seems I managed to create just this one.

But we can change that. That's why Colobot: Gold Edition exists. That's why we're still here.

++

[CHmSID]

So yeah, that's the story. Now let's use these examples and what we know is not-so-good about them and create new Goals. Any ideas?

One obvious reward would be to grant each patreon with a Donator tag on this forum.
All tiers would also receive the rewards of lower tiers.
$1 - Their name in credits as donators.
$2 - Access to some kind of a mailing list which could include important dates, work progress status, etc. Similar to what developers of KSP are doing with devnotes. This would require someone to actually write all that so it's probably a bad idea.
$5 - ?
I don't think we have on offer anything worth this much money monthly.
$10
$20
$50

[krzys_h]

$1 - Their name in credits as donators.

I'm afraid we might run out of space in the credits screen at some point. I'd put this in a higher tier.

The idea itself is good, but we don't have too much to offer unfortunately

[Emxx52]

Milestone Goals != Rewards System. That's not the thing we discuss here, so I'll move this post to (yet) another thread when it's created. Goals are reached when we get the specified sum of donations every month.

[CHmSID]

There is no point in specifying the goals when nobody here will be bound to meet the quota anyway? Why don't we ditch goals and just go with the rewards? One problem I see is that most of the rewards are a "one off" system, in other words, not suitable for monthly donation.

[Emxx52]

We could, but I think that rewards aren't as encouraging as the goals are. I mean, showing the people that their money is not going to be wasted cuz there's actually some point in supporting us, a specified purpose (like... gathering the team in one place for example ) works better than just giving something in exchange for their donations IMO.

[CHmSID]

I agree it works better, but apart from paying for servers, we can't promise anything to those people, realistically. We're only a collection of individuals with their own agenda. Nobody can force anyone to work in order to fulfill those goals once the money has been given to us.