Xarkly 12489 Popular Post Share Posted October 23, 2022 The Patreon Petition Spoiler howdy do So, most of you will be familiar with the Patreon platform, which, in a nutshell, is a website that facilitates content-creators producing exclusive content to fans who donate (called Patrons) via monthly commitments/pledges (usually, it's very small, like 1-5 dollars per month for the basic package). In pretty much every case, creators use Patreon to build on a pre-existing platform and allow particularly devoted fans to give extra support in exchange for some exclusive benefits. For example, a YouTuber could receive additional support on Patreon from some of their best fans in exchange for exclusive videos, early access to videos that will be uploaded to their YouTube later, or let their Patrons vote for what kind of videos they will produce next. In a lot of cases, the main draw of Patreon isn't always these exclusive benefits -- rather, it's an extra mile fans can go for their favourite creators. Okay, so what does this have to do with LotC? To some of you, the 'LotC Patreon' discussion isn't new (and it most certainly isn't my idea), but it's been something variously mentioned in Discord from year to year without a serious discussion ever being had about it (in public, at least). The gist of this idea is that our server would operate a Patreon to generate additional revenue (more on the details of this below) in exchange for some additional (and mostly minor) perks. As I'll stress a bit later in this thread, the driving force behind an LotC Patreon wouldn't be exclusive perks (which are ultimately much better incorporated into VIP packages), but rather to enable members of our community to offer a small monthly pledge that has the potential to drastically improve our sever and its content. Now, we're talking real money, so specifics are going to be important. Throughout this thread, I'll touch on what I think are the most important aspects of this discussion: Does LotC need a Patron? -- The Financial Context How would we invest our Patreon proceeds? What Patreon benefits could we offer (in contrast with VIP)? How would we regulate our Patreon? I DOES LOTC NEED A PATREON -- THE FINANCIAL CONTEXT Money has always been an interesting and obscure topic for our server. Most of you will have heard all sorts of claims, from the server going bankrupt and closing down imminently, to various players offering staggering sums to purchase the server. As only our Admins (and ex-Admins, I guess) have an actual indication of what the real day-to-day server finances are like, it's naturally very difficult for us, as average players, to discuss it. We can glean a basic understanding of what kind of figures the server operates on via the company reports of Tythus Ltd., who is the legal entity operating the server and is owned by the server's illusive creator, Tythus. You can look up this information yourself (I won't share the source directly - though it's not doxxing since the information is publicly available, I'll err on the side of courtesy), but, to tell a long story short, Tythus Ltd. seems to operate within relatively unremarkable financial margins. It's hard to contextualise its assets and liabilities absent a specific insight into how much the server generates and spends (since this isn't specified on company reports), and Tythus Ltd. does not include profit-and-loss-statements in its reports. What we can conclude is that Tythus Ltd. has filed its financial statements with 300-2,000 pounds in equity, but it's impossible to say if that's from pure revenue generated by the server or otherwise supplemented. Okay, so those two paragraphs said a lot of financial jargon without actually saying a lot, but it does let us conclude with relative certainty that, through one means or another, LotC (or Tythus Ltd., at least) pays for itself and, unless Tythus is personally investing fairly substantial sums (in excess of 7k in 2021), that it makes some money. So, on that basis, it does not appear as if LotC needs a Patreon. So why are we having this conversation, then? As the old addage goes, there's always room for improvement. Although the running of our server is exclusively done via volunteering, we make use of a lot of professional services. The most notable of these is, of course, coding and plugin development -- as a lot of you will no doubt know, any qualified coder can expect a starting salary 50-100% higher than their peers in other industries (take it from me -- despite graduating 2nd in my law undergrad and having a masters, two of my best friends who did computer science earn over double my current salary). Although coding is the most lucrative and critical example of our reliance on volunteer professional services, it's definitely not the only one: art (in all forms), video production, editing, community management, music compositions, voice-acting, social media management, and recruitment are all examples of services that can and do have real monetary value. While we'll discuss where Patreon money could go in more detail in the next section, the point here is that we can both encourage professional services provided to our server and reinvest in our community with monetary incentive/reward. Important to note here is that I'm not saying we should start individually commissioning freelancers to do work our necessarily pay full prices, but rather that we should, where we can, pay homage to our own players who, out of passion, invest their professional skills into improving the quality of our server while they could be using said skill to make real money. II HOW WOULD WE INVEST PATREON PROCEEDS? Irrespective of the amount we'd incur through Patreon, a big question is how we go about investing it back into the server. I mentioned some of the professional talents our server enjoys for free from its passionate players in the previous section, so here I want to go into a bit more detail as to how we could use Patreon revenue to both reward good-faith professional contributions to our server, and encourage higher-quality contributions. I want to flag here, and I'll echo it later, that I absolutely would never want to see Patreon proceeds claimed by upper Staff/Admins for their role of running and managing the overall server. All proceeds should specifically go to rewarding established professional contributions (such as coding, art, etc.). With that said, here are some basic examples of what Patreon proceeds could go towards: Coding & Plugins: As I've said, tech-based contributions are effectively the poster-boy of any Patreon initiative on the server. As skilled people with very high real-world earning potentials, and as an area that most people are not proficient in whatsoever, coders are very important to the functioning and improvement of our server. We've seen a lot of cool plugins in the last year (big props to the60th), but plugins are usually very and tedious to make, especially on a volunteer basis. Offering a financial reward as a "thank you" to our coders could go a long way in terms of helping coders justifying spending time on server development (a lot of you will no doubt remember how, in the past, proficient coders simply could not justify doing free work). Art: Obviously, art can take many forms (from traditional artwork, to graphics, to skinning), and consequently art has a lot of promotional value. I've always thought it would be incredibly cool to promote LotC via artworks celebrating and advertising various events on the server, from massive eventlines like the Inferi or the Scyfling Invasion, to even bigger inter-player conflicts, like the War of the Two Emperors or the Sinner's War. Picture how cool it would be to make a post on our various social medias with a movie-tier-looking poster promoting some upcoming/ongoing event, generating hype and interest from current, returning, and prospective players alike. Building off this, it could even feed into official LotC merchandise (an entirely new source of revenue) whereby artists could produce super high-quality server pieces that could be purchased things like posters. Some smart YouTubers have started doing this for some of their flagship series -- see the below example of YouTuber 'Swampletics' producing a movie poster for the finale of one of his RuneScape YouTube series: Spoiler Videos: We've had a couple of media content produced over the years - like the Nation Spotlights, and the Damnable Horde & Outer Nether eventline trailers - but they've been really inconsistent in both frequency and quality. A financial-backing to rectify both these issues to create an active video presence across all of our social media platforms. While we should continue spotlight videos for nations and trailers, I feel like a massive missed opportunity for our server is the lack of lore videos we should be making VaatiVidya-style to explore, simplify, and theatrically portray our server's rich lore and history. 'Videos' in this regard is an umbrella term for shooting, editing, and voice-acting, all of which are deserving of some kind of remuneration. Server Costs/Upgrades: This is a bit different from the others, and an exception to the idea that we should be reinvesting in server talent, but the idea is that, should it ever be required, Patreon funds could be used to offset some server expenses and facilitate upgrades, such as the box/server/hosting, and this could be an especially pertinent consideration if it is indeed the case that there are any personal funds from Tythus being invested in the server. Like I detailed in the first section, these four aren't the only possible investment opportunities by a longshot, they're just the easiest to explain and lend themselves to a distinct final 'product' that could be rewarded upon completion. I think they perfectly make the point I'm trying to make in this section, it's just important to remember there's a lot more we could do with Patreon proceeds such as community management, social media management (though this ties in very strongly with videos), original soundtracks (which would be perfect for videos), recruitment, and writing. Okay, but how do we actually decide who gets paid what? Right, this is an extremely important question for putting this debate into perspective - we've established some of the various overall initiatives we can invest in, but how do we determine what funds are allocated where? I think there are three main options: Patreon-Manager Discretion: Simply put, it would be the responsibility of the staff managing the LotC Patreon to distribute proceeds at their discretion. I think this is a bad idea, for the reasons I'll expand upon in Part IV, but include a lack of oversight and transperancy that risk undermining the integrity of the Patreon as a whole. I just think it's worth acknowledging it's a general option, albeit not a good one. Proportion Poll: The idea here would be that Patrons vote (via Patreon itself, see the next section) in advance as to what projects they'd like to fund, based either on a monthly basis or project basis. This could have a few different variations, from Patrons choosing where their monthly commitment goes to (i.e., coding) to Patreon Polls listing various ongoing projects (such as a (a) a plugin, (b) a video project, (c) an original soundtrack, or (d) an official artwork. I think this sytsem works best if a larger approximation of proceeds are given to the project with the most votes, while a smaller approximation to the runner-up, etc. I think this idea works fine? -- it's just that it invites some nitty-gritty questions like how to divvy out proceeds in a project with multiple workers (such as videos if you have one person recording, one person scripting, one person editing, and one person voice-acting), but I think this could just be figured out down the line. 'Thank You' Model: Again in the form of a Patreon Poll, the difference with this from the Proportion Poll is that Patreons vote how to distribute a month's Patreon income retroactively. For example, at the end of a month, a Patreon Poll is put up listing the various projects done by the server that month. For example's sake, let's again say this consists of (a) a completed plugin, (b) a completed video project, (c) a completed original soundtrack, or (d) an official artpiece. With these projects completed and Patrons able to view/enjoy them, they can vote on that basis as to which project should be given remuneration (again via proportion of votes, but I think the scale should be a bit different here to give every project something if possible). The same concerns of disbursement within projects apply. III WHAT PATREON BENEFITS COULD WE OFFER? Instrumental to remember is that any LotC Patreon project (more than likely) would be driven by players' desire to support our projects rather than solely for benefits which is the case with most content-creator Patreons. That said, this doesn't mean that we can't provide some benefits to Patreons. Before we discuss that, though, let's draw a line in the sand between Patreon perks and VIP perks. VIP perks, in contrast with Patreon perks, are actually intended to be perks in exchange for fairly substantial once-off payments (with upper VIP packages costing hundreds, though most are purchased during holiday sales). These perks range from the tag colours, aesthetic effects, rename tags, to soulbind slots, but the point is that their selling point is the perks. That seems a bit redundant to say, but it sort of makes sense when we contrast it with Patreon perks, whose primary purpose is to support the server and any actual perks are just small incentives. It's also important to bear in mind that Patreon payments are monthly -- i.e., you sign-up for a monthly subscription of a few dollars, whereas the VIP packages are once-off expensive purchases. So, with that in mind, the goal of Patreon payments aren't to replace VIP perks, though the status and value of VIP packages are worthy of a debate of their own another day. This contextualises how we should go about Patreon benefits, as their inherently meant to be fairly minor, not only by design, but also by necessity so that the value of VIP packages aren't further undermined. Here are some of the various minor perks we could include for Patrons: Patreon Tag: Much like VIP packages, we could have a unique in-game/forum/Discord tag for active Patrons. The discussion of how this tag ranks in comparison to VIP ones is a valid, if mostly inconsequential one, and one that certainly doesn't need to be settled now. If you were to ask me, I would probably say that we should have a few different tags, such as a 1-month Patron tag, 3-months, 6-months, 1 year, etc. I believe we have five unused Minecraft colours left on the server, those being yellow, light red, dark blue, dark aqua, and black, and we can double this to 10 colours if we include bolding these tags (bear in mind dark blue and black are very hard to see). Patreon Polls: As discussed in the previous section, Patrons could access Patreon Polls that direct how their Patreon donations are distributed. These Polls could be expanded to include stuff like voting on which plugins (out of a list of several the techs are actually interested in making) are developed or artworks produced/commissioned. Patreon Raffles: While it would be unrealistic to try reward every Patron this way, we could do raffles where Patreons have a chance to win prizes that could range from Steam games to art commissions. Patreon Skins: Every month, a unique skin could be released for Patreon use. While a non-tailored skin might seem strange, I think it would be cool to passively hand out skins produced by server artists (who could be in turn given remuneration via these Patreon donations) that are inspired by various factions throughout server history, such as a skin replicating the armour used by characters in various periods of LotC lore - for example, one month could feature an armour skin based on Horenic soldiers in the 30 Year War, while another month could imitate the robes supposedly worn by the earliest followers of Larihei. All-in-all, it's essential to remember that Patreon pledges are ultimately driven by a desire to support the server and those who volunteer professional services, so any perks (and the above list should be far from exhaustive) are not intended to be overly compelling in their own right, but it obviously doesn't hurt to give some incentive where we can. IV HOW WOULD WE REGULATE OUR PATREON? Now, this one is a bit complicated. Who controls/manages the funds received on Patreon, and who even runs the account itself? While the natural answer is the Admins, again I think it's important to contextualise things a bit before we get into more detail. First of all, LotC is owned/operated by Tythus Ltd., like I said in Part I. Despite Telanir/Llir's tags on the forums/Discord, Tythus Ltd. only has one registered employee - Tythus himself (unless there's some kind of legal arrangement we're unaware of, but this seems unlikely since early LotC did actually have Admins serve as company directors). While this again depends on the specificities of the relationship and any legal agreements between Tythus and the server Admins, a basic reading of the server's Terms of Service and Tythus Ltd. company information lends to the understanding that only Tythus himself has any legal rights to the LotC server, its actions, and any revenue generated, whether through VIP or Patreon. Issue is, this obviously isn't the case as management of the server is delegated to volunteer Admins who are not employees of Tythus Ltd., this relationship is a bit murky and it's impossible to understand how it works. We could simply say that the financial management/diligence aspect ought to be handled in the same way as revenue from VIP/crown purchases, however that is (though it is very important to note the added complication that the Patreon project involves funds actually being reinvested into players). Despite the above paragraph being complex and inconclusive, I felt it nonetheless worthwhile to touch on some of the legal elements at play here so that we have some minimal insight into the technical aspects that may affect a Patreon project. Ultimately, it is a complex technical question that can't really be given a good-faith answer without Tythus or the senior admins (namely Telanir and Llir, who seemingly purport to be Tythus' direct agents but are not employees or directors of Tythus Ltd. and therefore seemingly have no actual rights or legal responsibilities), but I felt that because "well, who's going to manage the Patreon and distribute the actual real-world money?" is such an important question, it was necessary to break it down like this. At the end of the day, failing legal specifications, transparancy should be king. Monthly posts that break-down the distribution of Patreon assets would be great in this regard, but it's important to acknowledge this question is just difficult to answer because our lack of information about how financial aspects of the server have been handled in the past. Good to bear this in mind for the sake of our discussion, and it feel like if the idea did gain traction among senior Admins it could be handled down the line. So that's that! As a final remark, I think that a Patreon and the revenue it could bring via passionate players who just want to donate a small monthly sum (as low as $1, even) to support the server could go a long way to incentivizing and rewarding the seriously impressive and legitimately valuable services that people provide for this server, such as coding and artwork. Please comment with your own thoughts and suggestions, and have a nice day. 30 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
subatomic 1089 Share Posted October 23, 2022 nice 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
KamikazeReaper 400 Share Posted October 23, 2022 just ensure it follows the EULA 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xarkly 12489 Author Share Posted October 23, 2022 3 minutes ago, KamikazeReaper said: just ensure it follows the EULA Afaik EULA relates to direct in-game purchased benefits, which Patreon perks don't pertain to, they're strictly out-of-server benefits (except for tags, which are EULA-safe). 5 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
UnBaed 8685 Share Posted October 23, 2022 I feel like a Patreon could be a good way for the server to take in more revenue and broaden our horizons for improvement and entertainment. Most of my experiences with it have been through supporting artists, of course - but it gets your tied in more with a community interested in the same stuff that you are. The only way I would see something like this succeeding, however, if it's with a strong focus of consistency and ensuring supporters that their money isn't being wasted and that promises will be kept. I think the best way to start a Patreon for the server is just taking in open donations to fund and bring in those rewards and unique opportunities down the line, to then stay consistent on with higher donation tiers being unlocked. Either that, or bring back Gizzy Gaza. 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkeypoacher 6991 Share Posted October 23, 2022 If I was Tythus/Telanir why would I agree to any of this? Wouldn't I rather handle my company/minecraft roleplaying pet project's own finances? Not trying to be overly negative here, but besides LoTC's current roster of coders and their projects, none of these "professional services" are being rendered - I can't tell if there are plans to actually hire artists/video editors/minecraft skinners (?) in the future. You're proposing that we start raising money for ill-defined projects that might happen contingent on a revenue stream that we have never tried before. 6 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laeonathan 3771 Share Posted October 23, 2022 7 hours ago, monkeypoacher said: If I was Tythus/Telanir why would I agree to any of this? Wouldn't I rather handle my company/minecraft roleplaying pet project's own finances? Not trying to be overly negative here, but besides LoTC's current roster of coders and their projects, none of these "professional services" are being rendered - I can't tell if there are plans to actually hire artists/video editors/minecraft skinners (?) in the future. You're proposing that we start raising money for ill-defined projects that might happen in the future. I fully agree. I think if we raise money, it should be for a purpose, aka: Hey guys we wanna upgrade our server to XYZ and need 8000 Euro for it. Donate here: Because people won't donate for something they dont know what its for. But if there's a certain purpose I'd gladly give 100 Euro or more for it. And when it comes to 'professional' services: In my opinion LOTC really shouldnt professionalise. Because that always comes with commercialising. We're a community who wants fun, not a company trying to make money. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
GMRO 5219 Share Posted October 23, 2022 I’d be glad to see this become a thing, yet you could equally argue that things like change logs or including players in decisions about the server they play on should be something that’s done anyway. The reality you may see is that the admins for all of this would be essentially middle men for coders and the like to actually pay them, maybe @The60thshould just start a patreon himself. What I’d really aim for is this giving players some ability to actually challenge administration decisions by pulling out their patreon support when administration makes questionable policy on their ban and unban policies for instance. 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xarkly 12489 Author Share Posted October 23, 2022 11 hours ago, monkeypoacher said: If I was Tythus/Telanir why would I agree to any of this? Wouldn't I rather handle my company/minecraft roleplaying pet project's own finances? Not trying to be overly negative here, but besides LoTC's current roster of coders and their projects, none of these "professional services" are being rendered - I can't tell if there are plans to actually hire artists/video editors/minecraft skinners (?) in the future. You're proposing that we start raising money for ill-defined projects that might happen in the future. I had a few people mention that this seems like it should be handled 'internally', but a look at Tythus Ltd.'s company filings suggests that the server (in the last two years, at least) doesn't have the resources for that. Now, like I said in the post, we don't have the full story of finances and can just go off what the financial statements tell us, which isn't a lot, but it seems like enough to conclude that - at an initial glance - the server doesn't have a lot of resources to provide monetary incentives to our creators. As for professional services, I don't think we can really brush aside coding and go "well, aside from this" when this is a major point of a Patreon that seek to enable the players of our server to reward people who dedicate their skills that have real-world value to improving the server. Outside of that, though, you're right in that other professional services are inconsistent in frequency and quality, but that's sort of what this hopes to change - a lot of artists, video-makers, etc. could be incentivised to help produce much higher-quality content for the server (see the list in the post). Obviously, you or I aren't in a position to give a mandate of projects we'd like to see funded. We're not Admins, nor any kind of staff. All we can do, at this point, is just spitball and point to the various benefits that could be possible, which is what this thread ultimately aims to do. It's meant to be a discussion, and none of us bar Admins could really ever provide anything beyond "ill-defined" by way of example. 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
drfate786 1638 Share Posted October 25, 2022 I have a better idea, Tythus can start an only fans page and give the money to charity. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Llir 5486 Share Posted October 26, 2022 Hey, just looking at this quick from my phone, I'd be happy to clarify some details of how finances currently working and my thoughts on a Patreon. The financial returns look the way they do since the server doesn't run a profit, all the revenue generated is invested back in, mainly to hosting costs, hardware upgrades (looking at upgrading the main server right now actually 😊), and other assets such as professional world painters for future maps, our forum software, and other miscellaneous costs. I don't think any of those things should fall under a Patreon. Also, I want to reassure people that we are making enough to pay the bills, but we definitely don't make enough to pay out to staff, it basically balances out at the end of the day as is. The ranks Telanir and I have mainly are just for extra permissions to our forum software and discord server, equivalent to superadmin type roles, and don't reflect an actual legal association with Tythus LTD, we aren't employees or paid, just passionate volunteers like the rest of our staff. Now, into the main idea. I've had serious discussions about a Patreon in the past for the kind of professional services on staff you discussed, but details like if it has in-game perks, how it's managed/distributed, if the community would even be open to it, or how other staff would feel about it are complicated issues that I'm open to look into, but have definitely been blockers on anything actually materializing. Personally for me, I've always seen the work I do as a hobby and I'm not sure how I'd feel about gettig compensated for it, so I've never really been motivated to spearhead getting such a system started, though I definitely don't speak for everyone on staff in this matter. I appreciate your thoughts and ideas on this kind of stuff and would love to see what the rest of the community thinks as well. At end of the day if people are open to it, it can be run fairly, and benefits the growth and quality of the server then it might be something that can get going. Transparency would have tp be a key aspect of anything that's created. I'll be keeping an eye on this thread and look forward to seeing what people think. This isn't a discussion I was super comfortable on starting myself but I'm happy to see somebody bringing it up. 6 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xarkly 12489 Author Share Posted October 26, 2022 @The60th @Llir Cheers for leaving your thoughts, really appreciate the engagement. The nutshell and main thing I wanted to push for was improvements to our server in a lot of different ways. As I said in the post and Kowa seems to affirm, the server, as is, doesn't seem to make enough money to fund all the improvements that could really push LotC's quality (like lore/history video series, promotional art, etc.), so a Patreon seems like the natural solution. Then, since we have a lot of people on the server capable of producing high-quality content (again, namely art and code), it makes sense that we should invest and utilise our own while also improving the server. And yeah I get the whole thing of keeping LotC a volunteer passion project. I'm not proposing that we try to become for-profit or anything, but I, like everyone, would love to see our server improve with things like a better media presence. That, however, means acknowledging that pure volunteerism won't always take us the distance. It's great that we do have people who make us free videos and plugins, but there's a reason so much of our content is inconsistent and infrequent. LotC, through it's ten years of history, has so much potential for stuff like art and video series that would undoubtedly promote the server and increase recruitment, but I think some kind of Patreon initiative is necessary to get us there. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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