I've been thinking about Windfalls

This week, two things happened. The first was Caves of Qud leaving early access after nine years. The second event was the release of a video by a major YouTuber covering the game Path of Achra. The results are clear as day. Pictured below are the two player count graphs for these two games on Steam. It is clear that in the last week, both games have seen huge influxes of new players. The circumstances are different, but the result is the same, resulting in a large payday for both of these developers.

In corporate structure, when you are working with shareholders, windfalls are scheduled and manufactured. In order to keep a business growing, money has to come in at a predictable rate with predictable increases. If these predictions are correct, then the people in charge get a bonus, and everyone else shows up to work the next day. If not, some people are informed that their jobs are being cut. Scale this down to small teams or individuals working on a project, and windfalls often become less consistent and harder to predict. Many developers or creators online keep a day job to maintain a steady income stream between expected windfalls.

The way I run my streams and video releases these days almost fits this model. I have decently predictable windfalls on three fronts: game releases, game updates, and video releases. For a long time, I’d crank out easy content on YouTube while streaming four-day weeks. Now, I work toward the next windfall with a bigger video launch. These are predictable to a point. However, if a video underperforms, then I have to work quickly to make up for it. My first three major projects all performed above expectations. The fourth drastically underperformed. While it has slowly picked up pace two weeks after release, I did my best to release a smaller project in a shorter time frame to make up for the video that underperformed.

My streams are often the same way. I have small windfalls and bigger events. The small ones are when I start a new fort or generate a new world. I could also consider playing a new game that has a similar appeal to my normal work as a kind of windfall. But there are also the extremely unpredictable events, such as sudden patches that appear at three in the morning on a Monday.

The unpredictability of this makes self-employment hard in any industry. When you are a small independent business or an individual working freelance, finding work is always key. As a content creator on Twitch and YouTube, many of us are just crossing our fingers and hoping our friendly local oil baron in chat is kind enough to tip a few hundred dollars in gifted subscriptions on a Saturday so that bills can be paid the following week. I've started to feel like I’m one of the lucky ones. We are close to the end of the year, and I’m seeing friends from game development and in content creation seeking windfalls. Updates, patches, sales, DLC, and even new releases. While YouTubers are uploading more to take advantage of high advertising revenue and the abundance of sponsors seeking videos, streamers are doing subathons and talking about their brand deals. In all of that noise, I’m in the corner typing on my blog.

If you asked me a month ago if I was planning to do a subathon in December, I would have said yes. This is the time of year to do it, after all. More people are home, it is dark outside in a lot of the world, and there is more free time for a lot of people. This means getting eyes watching. While asking people to open their wallets to keep a streamer at it for longer is a more likely outcome, I’ve seen a lot of people talking about needing windfalls right now. For a lot of folks, it has been a rough few years financially. This past year has been especially bad. The economy in a lot of sectors is extremely unstable. Every time we look around, we see news of layoffs and closures in all walks of life.

This is a bit of a ramble, and for that, I apologize. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. The behind-the-scenes of any industry will seem cynical when it is boiled down to its most basic level of give and take. Give Valve money, you can play a game. Give a streamer money, you get a funny hat while you watch them play a game. Give Microsoft money to use their OS while they sell all the data they harvest on your behalf.

If you look at my books, it is clear that a hefty chunk of my windfalls come from a small portion of my audience. However, my day-to-day sustaining income is much more widespread. I've always been a bit troubled by how one runs a business like mine ethically. The place I’ve come to is that I must provide a predictable and consistent show that people enjoy enough to pay for. That covers the Twitch side of things, and I think I’ve achieved that. Month-to-month release windfalls aside, I do well enough. Frankly, I’ve got nothing to complain about as long as I am making my minimums. This makes me one of the lucky ones. Being in this position is rare in my industry.

YouTube is a bit more fickle. Right when I think I’ve got it figured out, it all drops away and the income is chunked in half. This often results in a huge shift in the style of content as a means to course-correct the change.

I’m fortunate to have a lot of control over my income in how and when I work. I’m not directly selling a "product"; I can’t run out of stock, and I like what I do. However, this does make me wonder what the other side of the fence is like. Trying to sell a video game or software product to an audience of people who don’t know it exists yet. Taking a book to a convention to hawk it at whoever walks past. Am I the seasoned developer who has released four games and has a rabid fan base waiting on the fifth in this example? At least I’m not George R.R. Martin being bankrolled for eternity with royalties without even having the need to release the last novel of a series.

I guess what I’m trying to say is I feel fortunate to be able to step back and not worry so much about manufacturing windfalls anymore. Aside from what I do on YouTube, things seem to flow naturally with highs and lows. I’ll be streaming more as I get closer to moving. The life change of buying an apartment will require me to spend less and save more. The smartest way to do that in my industry is simply to work more. However, if I can find a way to do that without putting pressure on those who can’t afford it, I plan to take that route.

I missed last weeks blog. I think the best way for me to keep a work life balance is this free weekly blog is the one that I will skip when I'm feeling over worked. Besides, a large portion of you who read this were busy eating turkey anyway.

I plan to stream Tuesday - Friday this week. I will have at least one new video out. Future of the fortress is almost done being cooked as I'm writing and should be out mid week. After that I will get back to working on the ghost fort video. While it had made progress it got paused so I could make both the Qud Turtle video and my most recent adventure mode video from today.

As always. Thank you so much for reading my rambles. I'll see you during my next stream or in the comments section. Thanks for the support.