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People News Matt Barton's Crowdfunding Campaign on Patreon

Infinitron

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Tags: Matt Barton

This time it's not a joke! If you've been following our thread about him, then you'll know that Matt Barton recently expressed frustration over his show's lack of success in several posts on his blog. In the discussions that followed, some of his fans - among them, our own felipepepe - suggested that Matt attempt to raise money on Patreon, which is a kind of subscription-based crowdfunding site for artists and creators. Well, he decided to follow that advice, and today he opened a page there:



Matt Chat is dedicated to preserving and celebrating the history of the videogame history. I contend that videogames have become an indispensable part of our culture, and great videogame developers are just as historically important today as any great film director or book author. Instead of only enjoying games, I want to take you on my journey to learn where our favorite games and platforms came from--what kind of people made them, and what were they thinking?
Matt Chat began as a hobby project in February 2009. Starting off primarily as a way to promote my book Dungeons and Desktops, Matt Chat quickly evolved a life of its own. Each week, I feature in-depth reviews of classic videogames and interviews with famous developers such as John Romero, Chris Avellone, Tim Cain, Richard “Lord British” Garriott, and Rebecca Heineman.

I have fun doing these videos, and love humor and frequent references to my favorite 80s movies and games. However, unlike many prominent "YouTubers" doing videogame stuff, I'm dedicated to being factually correct and well-informed about the games and developers I have on the show. You'll never hear me throwing tantrums, disrespecting guests, or dropping the F-bomb.

The latest post on Matt's blog explains further:

As you probably know by now, I’ve decided to take the advice of several Matt Chatters and set up my own Patreon page. Patreon is still new enough to elicit more head scratching than enthusiasm at this point, but I think once you understand it, you’ll agree that it’s a better way to support folks like me than PayPal or Kickstarter. Here are my thoughts on it.

The main reason I decided to go for Patreon was the payment structure. The problem with PayPal is that you’re limited to either paying a subscription (so much per week, month, etc.) or a one-time payment. The subscriptions are great, of course, but it puts me in a position of feeling guilty if I have to take some time off. If there’s no new episode that week, you just paid for nothing. I understand that most of you folks would probably say–”So what, Matt? Enjoy!” But I still don’t feel right about it.

Patreon, however, allows you to pay only when I release new content that I specifically label as “paid.” This maintains the pressure on me to continue to release new episodes (if I don’t–no money!), but I don’t have the dread of pissing off a subscriber if I don’t get it done on schedule.

The one-time payments from Paypal are probably the least offensive option for most people. Unfortunately, almost everyone who does that never donates again. I guess the mindset is, “I paid him $50, that’s enough for here to eternity!” I always appreciate, of course, these awesome gifts, but they simply aren’t a sustainable way to produce the show. I’d prefer, actually, for that person to do the $1 or $5 per episode deal instead; that way, I’d have a steady flow of income for quite awhile, and hopefully by the time I’d collected the $50, the person would simply let it continue. At any rate, I’d have a much better way to plan my spending and make sure I don’t blow my budget.
A worthwhile cause! In addition to the basic $1 per video pledge, the campaign offers various tiers that grant access to exclusive content, ranging all the way up to $50 per video, which allows the wealthy patron to help Matt select his next interview, and credits him as a sponsor at the beginning of the show.
 

80Maxwell08

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Wow $88 a video that's not bad at all. Especially for the amount of people he has watching him.
 

zerotol

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Ill watch but i don't pay. ever.

Why do people need money to do the things they love doing?
 
Self-Ejected

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It's not like his stuff has incredible production values, and most games that he covers he already owns or are cheap enough to acquire even in boxed form. And I mean interviewing people like MCA or Tim Cain is something most RPG fans would gladly do for free to instead of expecting to get paid for their time.
 

SophosTheWise

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Ill watch but i don't pay. ever.

Why do people need money to do the things they love doing?

Because even doing things you love costs a lot of energy and time. Many consumers absolutely underestimate the effort going into these kinds of productions, even if they seem to have a relatively low production value.
 

Alchemist

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People in the Matt Chat thread were saying he needs to have better editing and higher production values. Well, here's your chance to put your money where your mouth is. Maybe with the money he can hire someone to do editing for him. Also he could run contests / giveaways of rare game stuff (that might cost money to procure) ... stuff like that to increase participation and viewer numbers. And get a professional mic / camera setup.

I don't begrudge him wanting compensation for what he does. He's a great proponent of keeping classic PC game history alive and that's a cause worth supporting.

Yeah and aren't youtube videos monetized already?
I don't think Youtube videos are monetized by default - the creator has to opt-in for ads. Matt doesn't have ads, as far as I know.
 

tuluse

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It's not like his stuff has incredible production values, and most games that he covers he already owns or are cheap enough to acquire even in boxed form. And I mean interviewing people like MCA or Tim Cain is something most RPG fans would gladly do for free to instead of expecting to get paid for their time.
I guess one difference is that people who you would like to interview will actually take an interview with Matt.

Then again, they've all been interviewed by the codex so maybe it doesn't matter.
 
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SophosTheWise

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People in the Matt Chat thread were saying he needs to have better editing and higher production values. Well, here's your chance to put your money where your mouth is. Maybe with the money he can hire someone to do editing for him. Also he could run contests / giveaways of rare game stuff (that might cost money to procure) ... stuff like that to increase participation and viewer numbers. And get a professional mic / camera setup.

I don't begrudge him wanting compensation for what he does. He's a great proponent of keeping classic PC game history alive and that's a cause worth supporting.

Yeah and aren't youtube videos monetized already?
I don't think Youtube videos are monetized by default - the creator has to opt-in for ads. Matt doesn't have ads, as far as I know.

Yeah, and also it doesn't really pay-off well, especially if you're doing long videos every once in a while. What pays-off is short videos every day. But I'm not even sure if it would pay well with his views.
 

dukeofwhales

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I'm fairly sure that to make any kind of money off YouTube you need to be consistently registering in the hundreds of thousands of views (that's what it takes to be a YouTube 'Partner' and get a sweet revenue sharing deal). Otherwise I think you can optionally put additional ads on your stream to take a share of that, but I imagine the payout per thousand impressions is <$1 (and Matt Chat doesn't have these ads anyway).
 

Johannes

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Why does he have such few view? I can only speak for myself but his videos are simply too long. I'm just not up for watching an hour long interview of a game designer, neither the designers or Matt are interesting enough for me. Then again I'm not watching any other youtube gaymer guys either with so dunno. Or if I do watch something it's usually something humorous rather than something serious. Matts interviews don't really pass for light entertainment like a internet celeb dudebro cracking jokes about whatever, on the other hand they still feature lots of downtime where relatively, nothing important is being said. If you take a professional well done documentary about a subject, be it the making of a game or a music record, movie or whatever, of course the dozens of interview made are cut so that only the relevant, most interesting pieces are shown to the viewer.

TLDR, Matts videos are not funny, and they don't contain enough information per viewing minute.
 

AN4RCHID

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If people like Angry Joe are literally weeping on camera about Youtube's monetization, I'm guessing Matt doesn't make a lot off his channel.

I'll drop a buck in the guy's tip jar. He does consistently good interviews. Anyone who knows how to operate a computer should be using adblock anway, so Youtube's monetization is irrelevant here.
 

J_C

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And I mean interviewing people like MCA or Tim Cain is something most RPG fans would gladly do for free to instead of expecting to get paid for their time.
Sure. But when you do the interviews as a job, you expect some money after it. Interviewing MCA is one thing, doing hour long interviews with dozens of developers, researching their work on a weekly basis is another.

It's like reviewing games. Gamers who are not working for magazines always say that how awesome of a job it is, you basicely get paid for playing games. Sure, it is great that you constantly have to play games, even shitty games, and you don't have time to play the games you want.
 

Jvegi

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Wow $88 a video that's not bad at all. Especially for the amount of people he has watching him.
It's very misleading. This number doesn't take into account limits that people set up.

I hope it will work out for him, even though his whole concept is basically broken. Reviews are shit and interviews, although mostly very interesting, have one glaring flaw. Him.

Love you Matt, like your videos. But mass appeal just isn't there.
 
Self-Ejected

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It's like reviewing games. Gamers who are not working for magazines always say that how awesome of a job it is, you basicely get paid for playing games. Sure, it is great that you constantly have to play games, even shitty games, and you don't have time to play the games you want.
...which is a completely different situation from what we have here. Unless I'm mistaken, what you do for a living is teaching? I thought Matt Chatt was just your hobby and not your job.
 

Infinitron

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You do realize this is actually nothing new, right? He's been asking for donations on Paypal since forever. Most content creators on the Internet do, because why not?
 

J_C

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It's like reviewing games. Gamers who are not working for magazines always say that how awesome of a job it is, you basicely get paid for playing games. Sure, it is great that you constantly have to play games, even shitty games, and you don't have time to play the games you want.
...which is a completely different situation from what we have here. Unless I'm mistaken, what you do for a living is teaching? I thought Matt Chatt was just your hobby and not your job.
If you are talking about Matt, yes, he is teaching for a living. But that doesn't mean he doesn't want money for spending his time on doing interviews. Just to pull a paralell with my case, I have a full time job, but write reviews as a hobby. But that doesn't mean that I don't get paid for doing that, even if I like it for the most part.
 

Irxy

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I prefer text, don't have enough spare time nor patience to watch and listen to them, considering that only 5% or so of any video is of any interest to me and everything else is just water.
Even replacing Matt with boobs or catz or whatever won't change that.
 

sea

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The idea that someone shouldn't be compensated for doing (good) work on the basis of "it's a hobby" is really kind of sad, especially if there is clear demand for it. Matt obviously puts hundreds upon hundreds of hours of work into his series (and his web site as a whole), and I don't blame him at all for wanting to generate enough money even to just keep the thing going.

I guess everyone wants something for nothing, but the real world doesn't work that way. It's really easy to have that mindset until you start being a content creator that has to pay bills as well.
 

l3loodAngel

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As I see it, the only people complaining about reward for work are those who:
1. never did something worthwhile, that other people would voluntarily pay for. (sour grapes)
2. always devalue other persons' work. (But it's supposed to be a hobby!! or But you should be happy to do interviews with people!!!)

Therefore, I would encourage those who complain to open their youtube channel and show us how long can you go on the merit of interviewing Richard Gariot and the likes.
 

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