Meiun's Vacation Fund!

[SantaClaws]

There has been many upon many questions regarding progress to v3 ever since it has been discussed v3 would be under development. There has also been a lot of speculation as to if its dead, when it will be finished, if it will be finished etc. Some members of the community have sadly left and lost hope, but the majority have stayed, and that factor is what may give this an actual fighting chance. As a well established community, almost a family to some, I believe that we could start a donation fund to Meiun, in order to give him a few weeks off of work or even a month to get a solid chunk of work done to v3 (Depends if he can actually take that much time off) nonetheless, I strongly believe we could give this a fighting chance. Just think about it, we donated money for other players ($910 in total!) just so they could play v2! If we could do that, I'm positive us as a community could come together and donate to Meiun. If enough of us pitched in, we could surpass the account donation pool value, and help him develop a large chunk of v3 and get that much closer to the day we have all been waiting for.

Everybody knows v3 wont be done overnight, but instead of us sitting around and asking pointless questions if its dead or when it will be done, why don't some of us take action? Meiun has a life to live, he has many other commitments and fits in the development of v3 whenever he can. We all know that nobody feels worse about how long its been taking than him. He knows that there is a large portion of the community that will always stay around and be here waiting for that glorious day. He does a lot for this community, I feel and I'm sure many other players feel it may be time for us to help him. Meiun has never tried to make Stick Online a profitable game for himself, he does it for his own enjoyment and continues to do that so we can enjoy the wonderful game he has created. Everybody knows Meiun won't ask for us to help, so we need to take it upon ourselves and help him. If even 50 players donated $10 thats already $500, there is so many of us which means each individual wont have to pitch in a huge amount. I believe Meiun very much deserves our help after all hes done, and I also believe we can pull this off as a community.

So who's with me? Do you guys want to take action into the development of v3 and possibly speed that up? I know we can do this as a community guys, please show your support!

[Matty_Richo]

http://www.stick-online.com/boards/index.php?topic=2811.msg59010#msg59010

But the problem is more that I wouldn't just be able to just take a month or two off from my job and actually expect to still have the job to return to afterwards. I'm sure I would be able to find another one, but I don't know that I would want to uproot my whole life and current job just for a month or two in development time.

Not at all implying that this is a bad idea, I would be more than happy to put money into this but there are definitely some things to consider.

One point that would have to be considered with this is that the money we raised would probably not so much be considered donations but rather us paying Meuin to work on Stick Online. This may be something Meiun would be uncomfortable with as it would probably then be reasonable for those of us that have contributed to that fund to expect semi regular reports or updates as to what is going on. It would also probably fair to expect Meiun to work on Stick Online for the entirety of the time we paid for, which (assuming we paid for one month, full time) would mean that he would essentially need to be working on Stick Online 8 hours a day, which he may not feel capable of or comfortable with.

[Meiun]

I would very much love to be able to do this. It may even be possible at some point. But there are a number of details that could make this difficult for me. The biggest issue is being able to get time off from my job and still have a job to return to afterwards. I'm not saying it would not be possible, but the timing would certainly need to be just right (which may be further complicated by the concept of having to get the kickstarter to also line up timing wise).

Additionally, if it were merely a kickstarter that allowed me "a month or so",  that would likely not be enough time to create a finished product. I would feel a bit awkward trying to create a kickstarter that was planned to end with an unfinished product. I'm sure I could have something that I would be comfortable doing some sort of playable demo for with that much time, but I don't know if that would be enough to justify a kickstarter.

[9267]

I'd definitely pitch in money if this became a thing!

[Jmac]

I would feel a bit awkward trying to create a kickstarter that was planned to end with an unfinished product. I'm sure I could have something that I would be comfortable doing some sort of playable demo for with that much time, but I don't know if that would be enough to justify a kickstarter.

I'd like to preface this by saying this isn't an attempt to coerce you into releasing an unfinished product that you aren't comfortable with; this is just me throwing out some thoughts :P So...

Many kickstarters generally offer some sort of "early access" to the product while it is still in development. Having some sort of alpha/beta release (assuming that's what you meant by a demo) as a donator bonus would most likely satisfy a large majority of people, and hopefully hold them over until the final release depending on the content included.

As you've most likely seen by several posts: our community is ready and willing to donate money to the development of the game, not necessarily to receive the final product. Having even a small portion of the game accessible would be exciting in and of itself, allowing us to rebuild our hype that we had when we first heard about v3 so long ago.

I understand that this would require much prior planning as far as time goes, so you don't lose your job and such, and I know you're still on the fence about the whole thing. Just know that you have an awesome community here who are backing you every step of the way, and we respect your final decision...well the majority of us do at least! ;)

[Meiun]

I would feel a bit awkward trying to create a kickstarter that was planned to end with an unfinished product. I'm sure I could have something that I would be comfortable doing some sort of playable demo for with that much time, but I don't know if that would be enough to justify a kickstarter.

I'd like to preface this by saying this isn't an attempt to coerce you into releasing an unfinished product that you aren't comfortable with; this is just me throwing out some thoughts :P So...

Many kickstarters generally offer some sort of "early access" to the product while it is still in development. Having some sort of alpha/beta release (assuming that's what you meant by a demo) as a donator bonus would most likely satisfy a large majority of people, and hopefully hold them over until the final release depending on the content included.

As you've most likely seen by several posts: our community is ready and willing to donate money to the development of the game, not necessarily to receive the final product. Having even a small portion of the game accessible would be exciting in and of itself, allowing us to rebuild our hype that we had when we first heard about v3 so long ago.

I understand that this would require much prior planning as far as time goes, so you don't lose your job and such, and I know you're still on the fence about the whole thing. Just know that you have an awesome community here who are backing you every step of the way, and we respect your final decision...well the majority of us do at least! ;)

I have no doubts that this community would be wonderful and supportive of any sort of potential kickstarter that happened (whether it be for a finished product or not). My main concern with that was more based on the fact that to reach the financial goal, I'd imagine it would require a good bit of donations from non-community members as well. I'm not sure how many people would be willing to donate to a kickstarter thats primary goal didn't even promise a finished product. In other words, I don't know that people would like the idea of donating to something, meeting the donation goals, having me complete all I promised for the kickstarter, and then still be left with uncertainty on when/if the game would actually be able to be finished. I personally think this would still be better than nothing in a lot of ways, but I'm not sure others outside this community would agree they were getting enough in return.

If anyone has any ideas on this, feel free to post them. I'm curious as to whether anyone has any better ideas on how this could theoretically be done effectively.

[Matty_Richo]

I have no doubts that this community would be wonderful and supportive of any sort of potential kickstarter that happened (whether it be for a finished product or not). My main concern with that was more based on the fact that to reach the financial goal, I'd imagine it would require a good bit of donations from non-community members as well. I'm not sure how many people would be willing to donate to a kickstarter thats primary goal didn't even promise a finished product. In other words, I don't know that people would like the idea of donating to something, meeting the donation goals, having me complete all I promised for the kickstarter, and then still be left with uncertainty on when/if the game would actually be able to be finished. I personally think this would still be better than nothing in a lot of ways, but I'm not sure others outside this community would agree they were getting enough in return.

If anyone has any ideas on this, feel free to post them. I'm curious as to whether anyone has any better ideas on how this could theoretically be done effectively.

I'll throw my thoughts in here.

• As far as not having a finished product after a month or so that really isn't an issue. Most Kick-starters are merely getting funding for the projects, some of which take years to actually get finished. I think a playable demo is really all that would be needed reasonably soon afterwards. You may, however, need to be able to set a rough time that a proper 'release' would be ready by.
• Another way to look at it might be, instead of how much can you get done in a month, how much time do you need to get it to a releasable position, we could potentially even cover the cost of 2 or 3 months.
• Would a solid month be the best way to do it? If taking a month off would cause issues at work or make developing stressful, what if we simply paid you for a day a week for the year. That way you'd simply be dropping a day of work rather than taking time off and it'd give you time to clear your head between working on SO.
• Are you comfortable having that pressure on you? If we were paying you to work on SO then I think it would be reasonable of us to expect that you spend all the time we are paying for, working on SO. We could probably even expect regular updates on what you are working on and it may even be necessary to have a few select community members delegated to keeping you accountable and whatnot.
• Kick-starter rewards and goals and what have you would need to be looked at. Obviously it isn't really efficient to have things like Stick Online T-shirts or physical merchandise as part of the rewards as that would simply take away from the development time. I also assume that, since you have been reasonably against the idea of people paying for in-game items, that you wouldn't want to do that either. Perhaps as rewards, until a playable V3 comes out you add a new item to V2 each fortnight or something along those lines.

Overall I like the thought of doing it, I am not rich but I would have absolutely no problem giving what I can to this and I'm sure if we put together a strong campaign then we'd even get some donors from outside the community too.
We do just have to make sure we think of ALL the logistics first because there is no use raising the money if we don't know exactly how it's all going to work. We're talking about a lot of money here so it is important everything is properly thought through.

[Meiun]

I have no doubts that this community would be wonderful and supportive of any sort of potential kickstarter that happened (whether it be for a finished product or not). My main concern with that was more based on the fact that to reach the financial goal, I'd imagine it would require a good bit of donations from non-community members as well. I'm not sure how many people would be willing to donate to a kickstarter thats primary goal didn't even promise a finished product. In other words, I don't know that people would like the idea of donating to something, meeting the donation goals, having me complete all I promised for the kickstarter, and then still be left with uncertainty on when/if the game would actually be able to be finished. I personally think this would still be better than nothing in a lot of ways, but I'm not sure others outside this community would agree they were getting enough in return.

If anyone has any ideas on this, feel free to post them. I'm curious as to whether anyone has any better ideas on how this could theoretically be done effectively.

I'll throw my thoughts in here.

• As far as not having a finished product after a month or so that really isn't an issue. Most Kick-starters are merely getting funding for the projects, some of which take years to actually get finished. I think a playable demo is really all that would be needed reasonably soon afterwards. You may, however, need to be able to set a rough time that a proper 'release' would be ready by.
• Another way to look at it might be, instead of how much can you get done in a month, how much time do you need to get it to a releasable position, we could potentially even cover the cost of 2 or 3 months.
• Would a solid month be the best way to do it? If taking a month off would cause issues at work or make developing stressful, what if we simply paid you for a day a week for the year. That way you'd simply be dropping a day of work rather than taking time off and it'd give you time to clear your head between working on SO.
• Are you comfortable having that pressure on you? If we were paying you to work on SO then I think it would be reasonable of us to expect that you spend all the time we are paying for, working on SO. We could probably even expect regular updates on what you are working on and it may even be necessary to have a few select community members delegated to keeping you accountable and whatnot.
• Kick-starter rewards and goals and what have you would need to be looked at. Obviously it isn't really efficient to have things like Stick Online T-shirts or physical merchandise as part of the rewards as that would simply take away from the development time. I also assume that, since you have been reasonably against the idea of people paying for in-game items, that you wouldn't want to do that either. Perhaps as rewards, until a playable V3 comes out you add a new item to V2 each fortnight or something along those lines.

Overall I like the thought of doing it, I am not rich but I would have absolutely no problem giving what I can to this and I'm sure if we put together a strong campaign then we'd even get some donors from outside the community too.
We do just have to make sure we think of ALL the logistics first because there is no use raising the money if we don't know exactly how it's all going to work. We're talking about a lot of money here so it is important everything is properly thought through.

I'd be totally comfortable spending full work days working on the game if that were my only job for the time. Doing that is sort of my dream job really. If I did get it to the point where I was comfortable releasing a playable sample, I'd probably be comfortable doing little play-tests like that as it was developed further beyond that too, so that should cover allowing people to be kept somewhat up-to-date on progress.

I also understand that people may not expect a finished product after 1 month, but if people only payed enough for me to work 1 month, then after that month I fear I'd be right back to where I am now and not be able to realistically forecast any date in which it would be done.

[Matty_Richo]

I have no doubts that this community would be wonderful and supportive of any sort of potential kickstarter that happened (whether it be for a finished product or not). My main concern with that was more based on the fact that to reach the financial goal, I'd imagine it would require a good bit of donations from non-community members as well. I'm not sure how many people would be willing to donate to a kickstarter thats primary goal didn't even promise a finished product. In other words, I don't know that people would like the idea of donating to something, meeting the donation goals, having me complete all I promised for the kickstarter, and then still be left with uncertainty on when/if the game would actually be able to be finished. I personally think this would still be better than nothing in a lot of ways, but I'm not sure others outside this community would agree they were getting enough in return.

If anyone has any ideas on this, feel free to post them. I'm curious as to whether anyone has any better ideas on how this could theoretically be done effectively.

I'll throw my thoughts in here.

• As far as not having a finished product after a month or so that really isn't an issue. Most Kick-starters are merely getting funding for the projects, some of which take years to actually get finished. I think a playable demo is really all that would be needed reasonably soon afterwards. You may, however, need to be able to set a rough time that a proper 'release' would be ready by.
• Another way to look at it might be, instead of how much can you get done in a month, how much time do you need to get it to a releasable position, we could potentially even cover the cost of 2 or 3 months.
• Would a solid month be the best way to do it? If taking a month off would cause issues at work or make developing stressful, what if we simply paid you for a day a week for the year. That way you'd simply be dropping a day of work rather than taking time off and it'd give you time to clear your head between working on SO.
• Are you comfortable having that pressure on you? If we were paying you to work on SO then I think it would be reasonable of us to expect that you spend all the time we are paying for, working on SO. We could probably even expect regular updates on what you are working on and it may even be necessary to have a few select community members delegated to keeping you accountable and whatnot.
• Kick-starter rewards and goals and what have you would need to be looked at. Obviously it isn't really efficient to have things like Stick Online T-shirts or physical merchandise as part of the rewards as that would simply take away from the development time. I also assume that, since you have been reasonably against the idea of people paying for in-game items, that you wouldn't want to do that either. Perhaps as rewards, until a playable V3 comes out you add a new item to V2 each fortnight or something along those lines.

Overall I like the thought of doing it, I am not rich but I would have absolutely no problem giving what I can to this and I'm sure if we put together a strong campaign then we'd even get some donors from outside the community too.
We do just have to make sure we think of ALL the logistics first because there is no use raising the money if we don't know exactly how it's all going to work. We're talking about a lot of money here so it is important everything is properly thought through.

I'd be totally comfortable spending full work days working on the game if that were my only job for the time. Doing that is sort of my dream job really. If I did get it to the point where I was comfortable releasing a playable sample, I'd probably be comfortable doing little play-tests like that as it was developed further beyond that too, so that should cover allowing people to be kept somewhat up-to-date on progress.

I also understand that people may not expect a finished product after 1 month, but if people only payed enough for me to work 1 month, then after that month I fear I'd be right back to where I am now and not be able to realistically forecast any date in which it would be done.

In that case, excellent. Realistically, how much time would you estimate you'd need to get it to the stage of properly releasing it? Also, if you're comfortable giving us a rough idea, how much money would we be talking to pay you each week? (I live in Australia and I'm pretty sure wages are quite different in America).
Because, if you earned 50K a year, that'd work out to about $12,500 for three months which is totally a plausible number for us to get. Alternatively $10,000 would cover one day a week for the whole year if that turned out to be a better option.

[Forum]

I would give you my lifesavings, 401k plan money, social security money, or whatever to improve the advancement into SO3.  :'(

[NotoriousM4^]

[Meiun]

In that case, excellent. Realistically, how much time would you estimate you'd need to get it to the stage of properly releasing it? Also, if you're comfortable giving us a rough idea, how much money would we be talking to pay you each week? (I live in Australia and I'm pretty sure wages are quite different in America).
Because, if you earned 50K a year, that'd work out to about $12,500 for three months which is totally a plausible number for us to get. Alternatively $10,000 would cover one day a week for the whole year if that turned out to be a better option.

I don't really like going into personal financial details too much. But if I were to rely entirely on the funding of a kickstarter for 3 months to work on SO, it would require a bit more than that to be comparable to my current job. At least if I were to do it without taking the equivalent of a pay cut for those 3 months. Though, if the timing were right I'd potentially be willing to make less to work on the game (easier said than done when you still have student loans, high rent, and other people to consider aside from just myself though).

It is also important to keep in mind that in order to see the game through to completion, it requires time from people other than just myself (artists and such). I can get a lot of things finished myself and worry about much of the remaining art later if needed, but it would still be a major factor eventually. Money hasn't really played a significant part in SO thus far, so this has never really been an issue. However, if serious money did come into play I'd imagine there might not be as many artists willing to volunteer their time for free.

In all honesty I'm a bit confused by the funding goals for a lot of game kickstarters. Do most of these games have additional funding outside the kickstarters? While some of them certainly raise a lot of money, I still see a lot of them in which the funds raised couldn't possibly cover cost of living of the people involved for the duration of their project.

[T-Rok]

Another thing to consider that was brought up today.

Say Meiun was successfully funded enough to program for say, 3 months. That's all good and what not, but what about art? Does this fund include money to also pay for an artist? And if it does, exactly how much does an artist need.

The biggest issue I see with this is that when people pay, they expect a product. They feel entitled. A vast majority don't truly comprehend funding a game. Now while our community might understand, that is not enough. It needs to be put up everywhere. People with zero knowledge of SO need to look at the kick starter and think "take all my money now". That's a hard sale without at least a guaranteed demo. Sure there might be a percent that would see SO2 and think wow I can envision the future. But in the end it is unlikely enough.

Would need everything listed below at minimum.

- money
- job to return to
- artist(s)
- large enough following
- zero pressure

Extra helpful stuff would be like

- advertising money
- extra project requirements (sound, server, that $80 sushi lunch, etc)
- lots of other stuff really.

In terms of probable money able to donate, I have a separate savings account called "SOSavings" that I've been putting money away into for a long time for such a cause.

[Matty_Richo]

I don't really like going into personal financial details too much. But if I were to rely entirely on the funding of a kickstarter for 3 months to work on SO, it would require a bit more than that to be comparable to my current job. At least if I were to do it without taking the equivalent of a pay cut for those 3 months. Though, if the timing were right I'd potentially be willing to make less to work on the game (easier said than done when you still have student loans, high rent, and other people to consider aside from just myself though).

It is also important to keep in mind that in order to see the game through to completion, it requires time from people other than just myself (artists and such). I can get a lot of things finished myself and worry about much of the remaining art later if needed, but it would still be a major factor eventually. Money hasn't really played a significant part in SO thus far, so this has never really been an issue. However, if serious money did come into play I'd imagine there might not be as many artists willing to volunteer their time for free.

In all honesty I'm a bit confused by the funding goals for a lot of game kickstarters. Do most of these games have additional funding outside the kickstarters? While some of them certainly raise a lot of money, I still see a lot of them in which the funds raised couldn't possibly cover cost of living of the people involved for the duration of their project.

I guess that first part is up to you. You'd need to work out exactly how much you would be comfortable living off for that amount of time, whether it's the same as what you are currently getting or less. The important thing is that you don't put yourself in any financial trouble because of this.

I hadn't even thought about the other team members. If I'm not mistaken the only other two people working on V3 are Ceroblitz and Venuse? I guess then you'd have to chat to them and see what they were happy to do.

A lot of the kickstarters for games are just funding the resources needed to develop the game and the developers do all the work in their spare time for free. But for every campaign you only receive any money if it reaches it's target. So if our target was 10,000 dollars and we only managed 5,000 then it would get sent back to the people that pledged it.
That is why the best thing to do is work out the minimum you need and set stretch goals. If you could realistically do it for 7,000 then you'd make that the target and then set stretch goals (if we reach 10,000 I'll add a coconut hat to the game and if we reach 20,000 I'll add a statue of Doge to the game world (Reddit would be all over that), etc).

[Loganvz123]

A lot of the kickstarters for games are just funding the resources needed to develop the game and the developers do all the work in their spare time for free. But for every campaign you only receive any money if it reaches it's target. So if our target was 10,000 dollars and we only managed 5,000 then it would get sent back to the people that pledged it.
That is why the best thing to do is work out the minimum you need and set stretch goals.

Kickstarter takes 5% of the donations if a campaign is funded successfully, or none if it isn't, in which case it keeps refunds the money.
Indiegogo on the other hand, has a 'flexible funding' option in which it takes 9% of donations if a campaign is not funded completely, or 4% if it is, though either way you get to keep the money you have raised. Bear in mind that Indiegogo only has about a quarter of the traffic that Kickstarter has, however it is still a completely viable fundraising platform.

(if we reach 10,000 I'll add a coconut hat to the game and if we reach 20,000 I'll add a statue of Doge to the game world (Reddit would be all over that), etc).

Please no.