Housekeeping & A Flurry Of News
Added 2016-09-18 15:11:43 +0000 UTCHey team! Some unfortunate logistics news and some cool updates:
Bad news up front: very likely no video in September. I'm currently juggling four freelance gigs and school just started. I got a lot of writing done in August, but there has been very little time for production this month. Looking at how deep into the month we are, I'm pronouncing a September video Very Unlikely. It's a bummer, but until we hit that next funding goal it's going to happen from time to time as I try to keep myself financially stable. Things ease up considerably in October, so I would put the odds of at least one video in October at Quite Probable.
Now for cooler news: I've been sitting on this news a while but I'm going public with it now - there is a game coming out in 2017 called Outreach, it's an exploration adventure game in zero-g set on a Soviet space station during the Cold War and I will have a story credit on it! The developers, Pixel Spill, got in touch with me after seeing my Story Beats videos and hired me for two months over the summer as a script doctor, looking over their design documents and giving advice and feedback. In the end, a lot of my suggestions actually made significant changes to the plot and narrative design, so I'm now sharing a Story By credit with a few other people! I can't take too much credit for what comes out next year - someone else is writing the actual script and who knows how the game will change during production now that my stint is over - but it was an honor and a delight to be working in my favorite genre on such a cool project.
In smaller cool news: I also recently had a question answered on Story Hospital, a writing advice column run by Rose Fox, who was the Editor-at-Large on a really cool flash magazine I used to work on, #24MAG. Rose gave some really good advice about letting go of old drafts and trying to be creative on a schedule, and is, in general, a super awesome person. I highly recommend backing Story Hospital on Patreon for early access to posts and to have your questions put in the priority queue (like mine was).
Also: I recently did an interview on the Critical Distance podcast. Mine is not online yet, and I'll let you all know when it's live, but in the meantime you should check out the interview with Chris Franklin of Errant Signal, as he's a pretty cool dude whose work has directly inspired mine. (And maybe tweet something nice at him because dang is he self-deprecating.)
That's all for now! Cheers, my lovelies.
-I
Comments
Several have offered, and I'll be sure to ask for help if there's any kind of work I can outsource. As it stands, though, I can't think of anything I could pass on to someone else. It's kind of important that I write the scripts myself, I don't need people to capture footage because I can just grab it from YouTube if I'm not capturing it myself, and I wouldn't trust another person with the edit. All I can think to do is keep putting out work whenever I'm able, and hope that the income keeps going up to the point where I can devote more time to the channel.
Ian Danskin
2016-09-18 21:44:48 +0000 UTCSo Ian, would you say you could use help? From the community or whomever ?
Oscar Barda
2016-09-18 21:01:45 +0000 UTCI don't think the money people raise on Patreon is related to what they do. It's more just a gauge of how many people are interested in what you do, versus the numbers game that is living on a planet with so many prospective patrons on it. Neither is people's interest a measure of anything inherently important. It's all just a crapshoot. Such is life. (Sometimes life feels like a literal crapshute too.)
Michael
2016-09-18 19:27:08 +0000 UTCFortunately, SO FAR I'm gaining patrons at a faster rate than I am losing them, but it is true that, the longer I go between videos, the more the numbers threaten to dip. I don't know that there's anything to be done about it at this stage, though. Turning down more work just isn't feasible.
Ian Danskin
2016-09-18 18:24:03 +0000 UTCHmm… It's pretty easy to say that on my end since I'm not the one pressured into it, but I think the "until we hit that next funding goal it's going to happen from time to time" is a chicken and egg thing where, were you to produce more videos, you'd get more patrons. I think the fact that you have monthly pledges and output such a small number (I'm in the upper payer tier so don't get me wrong: I'll still pay for quality over quantity) is the reason patrons are leaving :x
Oscar Barda
2016-09-18 16:47:59 +0000 UTC
