Fame and Fortune
Someone brought up the topic of "getting donations" for a free game in Devtalk a few days ago, which led into a sobering reality check for the hopeful initiate. The reality is people just don't normally donate to free games. As someone who had published my works in the internet for almost two decades now, sometimes I wonder what would it feel if I hit one of those "breakaway success".
Would I be as adamant not to monetize my works? Would I be less critical to influencers? Would I feel more comfortable to promote my Ko-Fi page? It took many people multiple years to convince me to try making one, and up to this day I'm not sure what I'm expecting.
One of the biggest obstacles in my creative pursuits have been constant needs to work multiple jobs to make ends meet. A perennial tension. When I have time, I don't have the energy. On the other hand, since I don't rely on my hobbies for a living, I have been enjoying relative freedom in obscurity. If I want to rehash what I previously did, I can. If I want to explore something completely out of the left field, I can. If I want to release something experimental and half-baked, no one's stopping me. I can upload and forget, not having to care about engagement and traction and numbers.
Would I actually do more arts with this newfound success?
Or would I get disillusioned and stop altogether?
My circle is full of aspiring creatives. Some of us are actually able to live off Patreon subs (or similar services), but I'll be damned if I brush away the amount of efforts expended to maintain that. Community management is a fulltime job in itself, between the constant updates you have to share to your patrons and half a dozen social media sites, replying to Steam/Itch comments, Discord moderation, doing the taxes... And you still have to develop the damn game/draw the comic pages/... The grass may be greener on the other side, but I'm well aware that there is no free lunch.
The more I think of this, as much as I think it would be hilariously awesome if someone drops me a ton of money and I could do away with my day job for a while, my ideal environment would probably be a relatively benign day job to cover my daily necessities and allows me to still make stuff on the side. Just so I can go to conventions sharing freebies and talk to people without the baggage of covering the cost of the table. I don't want to grapple with all the ramifications entailing doing my arts for a living, and I definitely don't want the management side to take over actually doing the thing.
I know what we all think in the back of our mind. I might sing a different tune if I make the break.
Until then, this shall remains an amusing diversion, and I have no intention to change my ways.