The Indie Game Magazine July 2015 | Issue 51

editorial Enlist in the Indie Armada! It’s Your Patreon-ic Duty! S ince I started working at IGM in December of 2013, I’ve been consistently coming up with ways to grow the brand and, ideally, turn this once-humble hobby blog into a still-humble small business success. After about 20 months of 40+ hour work weeks dedicated to community outreach, responding to devs, project management, and So. Much. Editing., I realized something: I don’t have any money. Not money just for me, mind you – although I like money, too – but money to support the IGM team that w orks so hard to put together daily web content and this pretty fancy schmancy monthly Magazine. We’ve always managed to support our own server costs and pay the fees associated with needing a third-party Mag distributor up to this point, but each month the writers and I only take home enough in commission fees to pay for dinner. One dinner. And not even like a lobster dinner, I mean like an appetizer and entree at Applebees if we do some sort of 2 for $20 special. But I don’t think it’s because we’re doing a poor job or because IGM isn’t popular. I think that’s just the nature of being indie. Indie gamers are used to buying games during Steam sales, or at rates of either pay-what-you-want or free. They might like indie content, but we’ve created a culture where it’s in their best interest to pay a steeply reduced price, if anything at all. What I’ve come to realize is that, despite how many folks compliment the layout of our Magazine and how much they appreciate us championing the little guys, most folks don’t want to spend $29.99 upfront for a year of IGM content. And if we’re going to convince them otherwise, we need to expand our operations and add even more value to the IGM experience. With that in mind, IGM is heading to Patreon on July 8. There are a number of reasons why Patreon is ideally suited to our needs – I encourage you to visit our campaign page at launch to read them - but there’s one thing in particular I want to stress in this editorial: I don’t consider Patreon to be a “last resort” or anything like that. Rather, I’ve realized that IGM isn’t a traditional business, and so traditional business models don’t work for us. They don’t work for me, personally. The business world is a terrible place full of people who just want to leech off of your hard work. I want to cut out the middle man like publishers and investors. I want our audience to invest in us. We’re already beholden to our audience, because we want to provide the best service we can for you out of love and respect for the community. So allowing our audience to be our most important investor doesn’t compromise integrity or leave any room for ulterior motives. It ensures we can continue to serve you, and only you. It gives us an opportunity to work more closely with our fans to provide the types of new content you want to see. And overall, it’s simply more gratifying to work a job where you can be 100% sure your audience supports you and wants you to succeed. That’s what Patreon, and the indie community, can do for us. I don’t want to over-dramatize the Patreon and say this is an all-or-nothing for IGM. But what I can say is we’ve already lost some amazing writers because they were forced to take actual paying jobs. I also want to make it clear that I’m not burnt out or tired of the work I do - in fact, I love it - I just need to prove IGM can provide a living wage if I’m going to keep investing all my time into it. If Patreon can be our springboard, allowing us to upgrade and improve IGM so we can appeal to a wider audience, I know this place will do just fine. (I’ve got a stack of ideas to grow this place for years to come.) I hope you’ll choose to support us, either through social media posts or a modest pledge, on July 8. It would mean a lot to both the team, and me personally. Vinny Parisi Editor-in-Chief Indie Armada Fleet Admiral

The Indie Game Magazine July 2015 | Issue 51 | Page 4