A Restructuring of Supper Mario Broth Patreon Tiers and Rewards

Hello everyone, supporters and readers. It has been a long time since I have last posted here, and I apologize from the bottom of my heart for having taken this long to finally be able to come back with an announcement and resume posting content regularly. Thank you all so much for continuing to support me throughout this time of low activity. This period ends now.

Before I begin, let me once again remind you that all of you are entitled to refunds in any amounts you wish. Simply contact me over Patreon or over any of my other blogs, and I will refund you any of your contributions, up to the full amount since you started your support. I have already paid out full refunds to multiple former patrons, so please do not hesitate to request yours. I have failed to keep up the promises from the launch of the Patreon and I do not wish for anyone of you to feel like you have wasted your money, so the least I can do is to pay it back in full.

That said, now I have restructured the membership tiers and do not intend to let you down again. In this article, I will go into detail on what the new tiers are, how you should decide whether to continue your support on the same tier or drop to a lower one, and my reasons for these decisions. Since this may be too much to read, I will start off with a simple infographic that summarizes the changes:

As you can see, the main change is that if you remain on the same tier, you will get more different rewards, while if you wish to keep the current type of rewards, you can drop your support to a lower tier. Now, I will go into detail about the above changes, broken up into segments. First, I will explain the concept and reasoning behind the restructuring. Then, I will introduce the changes I made to the rewards. Finally, I will provide some tips on how you can best choose what tier you would like, and how to best consume the content in that tier.

Why the Restructuring?

From the moment I launched the Supper Mario Broth Patreon, I have been under stress due to my lack of experience in providing paid content leading me to offer rewards I had trouble delivering. As I put together the campaign, I thought that I should offer my supporters content that is deliberately contrasting to the regular posts on my blog. My thought process was, "if I provide short-form, bite-size, single-topic content to the bulk of my viewers, certainly my patrons would like something completely different, such as extremely long-form or multiple-topic content".

I have made a mistake in assuming that I could produce such content without issue to begin with. For many years, I have run the main suppermariobroth.com Tumblr by posting one finding at a time; then I added the MarioBrothBlog Twitter account that operated on the same principle; and finally the Small Mario Findings Tumblr, again similarly structured. This has led me to become much more efficient at producing this type of content - small, digestible posts that focus on a single finding with a few sentences of commentary - than on the content I had promised to my supporters on Patreon.

The Supper Mario Broth: The Lost Levels articles were getting so long that not only was it hard to write them, the length was starting to become an issue to some of my supporters. I have received many comments over the excessive length of the articles, as well as remarks that due to their length, it was not possible to read them as they were released, instead needing to save them until one had a large amount of uninterrupted time. For a visual of what I mean, please take a look at this:

This is one article, zoomed out to fit inside the page. As you can see, the length can be considered daunting, especially in contrast with the posts you may find on my public blogs.

The same problem was present with the previous concept for my podcast, the Supper Mario Broth Supper Show. After I promised several-hours long podcasts at the launch of the Patreon, I found that due to the podcast being entirely scripted, this would mean that I would need to write tens of thousands of words of script for each episode, with the longest being over 40,000 words long, which according to a widely used method of distinguishing works by length, is enough to be formally considered a novel. 

You may compare this to podcasts produced by other creators. Many podcast hosts record 2-3 hours per week, or 1 hour a day, which does make my difficulties seem unreasonable. However, please keep in mind that the vast majority of podcasts are not entirely scripted. Even with interviews, most hosts have simply a guideline laid out before the podcast. My podcasts are, in the strictest sense of the word, audiobooks. I first write a script - a book - and then I simply read it out loud. However, the length presents problems other than being difficult to produce - problems that directly affect you, the listeners.

Again, as with the long articles, the excessive length of the podcasts, going onto 3 hours, made them hard to consume without specifically freeing time to do so. I never wish my content to inconvenience anyone simply to be able to consume it, but with the old arrangement, this was exactly what was happening. I regularly got comments months after uploading a podcast to the effect of "I finally found enough time to listen to your podcast". This demanding type of content is not what I would like to produce.

Finally, for the highest tier, I also offered a monthly drawing in the style of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door which, again, I simply underestimated the difficulty of creating. The effort required in redesigning the requested characters in that style, drawing them up to standard for the game's visual fidelity, and continuing this for each member of that tier every month has resulted in me failing to keep up with the requirements and needing to issue many refunds. I realize that compared to professional artists, the amount of work I had to do in this regard was minor, however, please understand that I am barely an artist. I work in the medical field and have never had any formal art education.

In short, I simply overestimated my own abilities in every regard prior to launching the Patreon. This, coupled with the abovementioned issues arising from the excessive length of the content and the wrong medium being chosen for part of it, has led me to reassess what kind of content I am able to create consistently and what kind of content you, my supporters, would have an easier time actually consuming.

The New Tiers and Rewards

The main idea underpinning the changes is "more digestible content, more frequently". Instead of offering you infrequent large articles and podcasts, I will provide a quick, consistent output of single-topic articles and podcasts. The research paper-level analysis will be conducted in a much more fitting e-book format.

In addition, every type of content is made available to a tier with a lower cost than previously. Thus, for example, the podcasts, which were previously available to the $6 tier supporters, are now available to the $3 tier supporters. Each tier, of course, includes all rewards of all lower tiers. Let me go through them one by one.

• The new $1 tier - Sup(per)porters

As some of my patrons are only able to contribute $1 a month, they were previously unable to access any of the exclusive Patreon content I produced, as the lowest tier was $3. Now, I have introduced the Sup(per)porters tier so everyone who decides to support Supper Mario Broth can get a reward in the form of an exclusive series of daily articles: Supper Mario Broth: Special Zone.

Supper Mario Broth: Special Zone is a daily in-depth dive into a single topic. Unlike the previous Supper Mario Broth: The Lost Levels articles, the length will be manageable, with 5-15 images with anywhere from a few sentences to 2 paragraphs of text for each. You may think of it as an extended version of a regular Supper Mario Broth post. 

The first article in this series will be published at the same time as this announcement, so you will be able to read it right after. In addition, the Supper Mario Broth: Special Zone issues published for the rest of June 2019 (as well as all other normally exclusive content) will all be available to all readers regardless of membership tier, so you can decide for yourself whether you would like to change to the $1 tier after this period.

• The $3 tier - Supper Players

If you choose to join, or remain in, the $3 tier, you will gain additional value over the previous reward available to that tier, which was the weekly articles. Now, in addition to the included $1 tier access to the daily articles, Supper Players will have access to the new, weekly Supper Mario Broth Supper Show podcast.

In contrast to the old, monthly podcast, the weekly podcast will be shorter, roughly 20-30 minutes per episode, and deal with topics that either specifically benefit from being presented in an audio format - such as music and sound design in Mario games - or topics that at least do not clearly suffer from being presented in such a format, such as discussions of story or general considerations about the Mario universe (as opposed to highly technical topics that would benefit from visual accompaniment). The topics will be chosen specifically to be easy to listen to in an audio format without becoming confused if your attention is briefly directed somewhere else while listening - as many listeners choose to consume podcasts in situations like their daily commute where they cannot dedicate their full attention to the audio.

As with the articles, there will be one episode of the new Supper Mario Broth Supper Show before the end of the month, which will be available to listen to all supporters regardless of tier. You may then decide if this is something you may be interested in.

• The $6 tier - Broth Siblings

Since the type of content that the old podcasts had is no longer represented by the new podcast, I have decided to introduce a new type of format that will deal with those topics instead. Broth Sibling tier supporters will be able to access a monthly released e-book series called the S.M.B. Files.

The S.M.B. Files (standing for Schematic Mario Breakdown) are the "spiritual successor" of sorts to the original idea for the old podcast. What this means is that each issue of the e-book - which will be presented as a downloadable PDF file with selectable text, suitable for reading on most devices (other file formats available upon request) - will be an extremely in-depth analysis of some topic the same way the old podcast was, akin to a research paper on an aspect of the Mario franchise.

However, the S.M.B. Files profit from being presented in the same manner actual research papers are presented: as a document with variable layout, including as many images, diagrams, graphs etc. as is necessary to convey the information as efficiently as possible.

Let me give you an example. Please take a look at this image (you may want to open it in a new tab in your browser if you wish to read the text):

On the left is a page from the script for one of the episodes of the old podcast, particularly the one about Zelda series references in Mario games. On the right, I have taken part of that page and created a mock-up of how it would appear in an issue of the S.M.B. Files.

As you can see, the content benefits greatly from being able to be presented alongside images. While in the podcast, I had to either describe the appearance of each item or simply hope that the audience knows what it looks like, the S.M.B. Files format allows me to provide visuals for everything that is necessary. There are also layout elements I will utilize for both a slight amount of decoration and a better flow of the information on the page.

One special advantage of the S.M.B. Files over every other type of content I have created so far will be the selectable attribution text below each image. You can see it for yourself in the above example - a very small line of translucent text under each picture. The advantage is that with e-book formats being easy to zoom, anyone who will want to find out more about the source will be able to zoom in, select the link, and open it in a browser. This would not be possible with my usual way of embedding links in images, and I hope that at least some readers can take advantage of this more convenient way to find out more related information.

As with the other two reward tiers, the first issue of the S.M.B. Files will be viewable to all supporters regardless of their contribution to help you decide whether this content is something that would interest you.

• The $10 tier - Supperstars

The Supperstars tier will continue enjoying the same access to all other tiers' benefits, however, as I outlined previously, I am extremely sorry about having to stop accepting requests for Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door artwork, as I do not have the skill to efficiently produce the art. Supperstar tier supporters are still able to request T-shirt designs to be added to the Supper Mario Broth Redbubble store, or individual topics to be tackled in the new Supper Mario Broth: Special Zone column.

To at least partially make up for this, I will credit all Supperstars tier supporters in all audio, video, and e-book content I produce. In the case of audio, I will read out the supporters' names, so please feel free to correct me if I mispronounce them. In the case of other content, the names will appear under a "Special Thanks" section. 

Every Supperstar tier patron is also able to request a custom message to appear alongside their credit. You can use it to promote your own websites or social media accounts, or - if you should find it entertaining - to make me include a humorous message in my work. In case of audio content, I will read it out loud every time. Please understand that I cannot accept messages that are too long or are inappropriate for a family audience, as that would disrupt the content.

Points of Advice on how to Consume the New Content

As the content published on my Patreon will become much more frequent from now on - with on average more than one post a day - there may be a desire on your part to limit the email notifications you receive for it. To adjust this, go to your Profile Settings on your Patreon account and then click on Email Settings.

There, navigate down until you see this section and deactivate the two settings I have marked with a red outline:

Note that this will stop all notifications from my Patreon account unless I message you directly, so you will have to check the Patreon page manually in order to see the posts. I recommend that you try to leave these settings turned on and see if the notifications become too numerous for you to not find aggravating over the next days or weeks before trying to adjust it.

If you are a $1 supporter, Patreon does not automatically add you to the new $1 tier, so you will have to do so manually. I will message all current $1 supporters before the end of the month directly to ensure everyone is reminded to activate the tier to be able to read the exclusive posts.

Finally, please let me know of any e-book formats you would prefer instead of PDF, so I can offer the S.M.B. Files in that format as well. It is very important to me that you can experience the content in the format that is most convenient to you.

Thank you for reading through this announcement. I cannot express how sorry I am for not being able to follow up on my previous rewards, and how much I regret not doing this restructuring sooner. I hope that with the new schedule, such disappointments become a thing of the past.

If you have any questions about any of the changes, please comment below this post and I will reply to you as soon as possible. Please remember that for the rest of June, all posts will be publicly viewable so you will have the chance to see the new content and decide what level of support - if any - you would like to go forward with in the future. 

Thank you very much for reading.