IF Seal: When should I start a blog or Patreon?
When would it be appropriate to open a tumblr blog for my game? My story is in development, and I'm confised as to which point I can start my social media. I assume knowing your characters is pretty important since the if community sends a lot of character questions. And afterward, when would I open a patreon? To follow up, how would I go about setting up a patreon as well; should I just start with early access or all at once at a certain point? This is a deep question, my bad lol. :)
Dear Blogging Friend,
Well, what I would say is that any time is an appropriate time to start a blog if you are enjoying the idea of keeping people updated with your progress on your project! I will point you to an answer from a little while ago about starting blogs which may be of interest.
Before you begin sharing things about your project...
...it is worth knowing what your story is about and where you think it will head, and some things about the characters, so that if you're asked questions about those things you can share them; even if you're not asked about them, you can make posts on the subject.
About Patreon: I am not an expert on best practice for this at all, and financial success in such things comes with vast amounts of luck, so please take this with a pinch of as much sea-salt as you'd like.
I think it's best to focus on working on your project first and foremost. If players enjoy your public project and want to see more of it, they may be interested in supporting you financially. I would not recommend starting straightaway with a subscriber model
If you are sharing additional material for subscribers, make sure to balance your time and energy as it is easy for it to take over, and potentially pull focus from your project itself
It's worth creating a backlog of things that you're planning to share so that you're not scrambling to make them each month
If you find yourself not feeling it or unable to fulfil promised tier rewards, do not hesitate to pause billing: that is better than suffering in silence or leaving people hanging
From what I have observed, early access to your WIP is the main draw for subscribers in general; as above, you will want to share some of your work first, though, otherwise no one will know whether they enjoy your work enough to subscribe
I do not recommend keeping a WIP paywalled right up until release because unless you are fortunate enough to have an extremely large and highly active subscriber following, you will miss out on a wider breadth of feedback which can impact the quality of the completed game
Do not fall into comparing your subscriber count or finances with other creators: that way leads misery
Finally, if you're working in ChoiceScript, you need to make ChoiceScript material available to the public within a month unless you have made a formal alternative arrangement with Choice of Games
I hope that is useful, Blogging Friend! Best of luck with your story!