JohnDupont

The future of the JDMOD - 5 years later

Added 2023-12-23 17:00:06 +0000 UTC

Hello friends.

This month I'm celebrating the 5th anniversary of this Patreon page. It got me thinking about what it has become.

The beginning

I started modding at the end of 2017. I knew nothing about coding, iso t was a lot of fun to learn while making something useful for me and the community.

My first big project was the gallery mod for GGGB. I loved the game, wanted a gallery and had way to much free time during the summer of 2018. The community really liked the mod but I ended overworking myself and losing motivation later in that year, which is how I ended up creating this page. (If you haven't read it, I made a thread on F95 zone that helped me make my decision).

I was amazed by how many people decided to support my work. I didn't expect more than 30 people, but it reached hundreds in just a few months. I have to stress out how more tangible having a member is: far from a like on a post, it's a recurring cost, it's an engagement that can be taken away as soon as my work isn't worth it anymore.

I benefited from a surge of motivation and felt like I had to reciprocate by making even more mods. Time would show that I had overestimated myself.

The decline

In early 2019, I had to help my dad. This lasted a year and a half, after which I found a job. Although I've had less free time to devote to modding, I've invested most of it into this activity.

I also noticed I'd made mistakes when launching the Patreon, mistakes that ended up hurting both my motivation and mental health:

juggling multiple mods is hard. Over the course of a single week, 3 games received a new version from their developer. In spite of my hours of sleep, I released half-baked updates that didn't satisfy anyone, me included.
I had started mods for games I didn't like. I'm sorry for those who love High-rise Climb and The Adventurous Couple.

Since 2021, the number of members has been falling.

It went from 600 at its peak to 200 earlier this year. I believe a lot of members are inactive which makes the drop even more significant.

The effort I put into the mods didn't correlate with the variations in memberships, so I became less motivated and less active. I abandoned multiples mods about without updating their page. I stopped caring about growing the Patreon.

The current state

I wasn't happy at my old job and, a few months ago, I switched for a better position at a better company. It's great, but it comes with responsibilities.

When I started modding, I only felt like it was a way to give to the community and help to the game developers improve the games. That's no longer the case. I'm proud of my work on the ORS JDMOD, I'm flattered that some of the features I made for it are now part the base game, I'm happy to see the base game's code getting better and better. This is the main why I keep spending dozen of hours improving the mod with every new release. The members are still the reason why I try to release it as fast as possible every time though.

After the release of version 0.11FINAL in July, I realized that my work here was no longer as satisfying as it had been in the beginning. I have the impression that it's not appreciated as much anymore. And it's my fault.

The future

A few days ago, I came across a feature on Patreon that measures unique visitors on the page.

It gave me hope. Maybe my work isn't as unpopular as I thought.

I'm not happy with the empty shell this page has become. For better or worst, changes are coming and I'd like to hear your views on what could be done. I'd like to try and increase memberships again.

When you'll read these lines, I'll be spending time with my close ones. Away from Patreon. Away from work. I look forward to reading your ideas and advice, and wish you all happy holidays and a joyful new year.

It's time to thank the people who have supported me since the beginning and kept me going all these years. I'm sorry I don't do it as often as you guys deserve: