I think we should consider creating a structured funder program, similar to how Kickstarter works.
The core idea is simple: the more you fund, the more rewards and recognition you receive.
This wouldn’t be about pay-to-win or locking content behind money.
It’s about acknowledging support and giving people a reason to contribute long-term.
Public recognition (credits, supporter lists, special mentions)
Exclusive Discord roles or titles
Early access, behind-the-scenes updates, or maybe even cosmetic-only perks
People like to feel that they are part of a project, not just spectators.
A clear reward structure gives supporters identity, status, and a sense of belonging—which is exactly why Kickstarter-style funding works so well.
This kind of system could:
Encourage recurring and higher-tier support
Make funding feel rewarding, not just charitable
Help the project stay sustainable without hurting fairness
I believe opening a discussion around a Kickstarter-like funder program would be healthy for the project and worth exploring.
Yeah ahahaha, but some how it feels lack of it. I mean exclusivitiy is not feelble.
What I mean by that , is to have a other funding methods rather then patreon.
Youtube membership, or a kickstarter funding and exc.
There is already benefits to be funder, but no future promises that they might benefit or something they might like it to see in the game.
Why we limiting ourselves with 1-5-15 euroes and not add 50 and 100 euro limited subscription and pretty special things according to that.For example choose one feature or in game something special to their username as a memory. Maybe a easter eggs ?
For example, I dont see any text or button or a visiual that promotes players to fund the game.
Adding something like, Support us button and giving a clear idea what will this support will go and what is our roadmap would help create more loyal funders.
And example to previous topic seeing Big funder’s ( Vip exc.) names in the shooting stars would surely make them happy and make them more like to stay and controbiute more.
I am aware of its open sourced and people generally do whatever they want to do. But I also believe that we are a team should move in a coordination.
Asking fund will make us lose nothing and even best case if we do it right, I am sure that it will help thrive a lot since 1.0.0 Already published.
We have all of these basically setup. Both in the community discord and the community forum. And also in the game credits listed by Patron tier. Is there some place that is missing?
Already have these. DevBuild and higher tier patrons get mostly weekly early preview builds (and they have access to our internal devbuild system and can play any version of the game). And also every patron gets a mostly weekly behind the scenes progress update written by me.
This is the only thing from your list that we don’t have.
What’s your suggestion on what this would be?
Someone would need to make at least some youtube member exclusive content, because otherwise youtube members would literally get absolutely nothing…
How / where would you set this up? A Kickstarter is a massive undertaking and a big reputation risk if we don’t hit the goal we set. A monthly Patreon pledge for a “one time” feature request would be quite weird in my opinion.
These are explicitly disabled in the Steam version due to Steam policies and I would need to be fully sure we are allowed to link the Patreon in a visible way to change that.
I’m open to putting something like a funding goal on the left hand side that would in the non-Steam version have a more direct “Join our Patreon” button.
I have this silly idea for a Patreon exclusive setting that overlays a massive 50% transparent gold square on top of the game and having PNGs of sparkles pop out in and out of existence with an obnoxious sparkling sound XP [btw don’t actually take this seriously]
Maybe just give them early teasers ? New update coming, make them see early.
It doesn’t has to be a kickstarter, for example in patreon you could add one more subscription that is 50 euros, which enables them to talk with developers personally, get their personal thought, even though you might not be able to fully complete maybe lean on to their ideas ?
The key idea is here to make donators look special, so not only they might help us but also at the same time feel good.
It’s the same idea why people purchase early access, buy in game cosmetics or donate streams.
Cause everybody wants to be seen more, and donating is easiest way to show that “you were here.”
I think more so Hhyyrylainen’s point was that someone physically needs to make that promotional material.
So if you personally are volunteering to consistently make that video material, it’s possible.
I think the promotional situation for Thrive is the same as the development effort: ideas are valuable, but we don’t have a lack of them. What we’re always lacking is effort to actually implement things.
I am pretty sure the mention of Kickstarter was in response to specific one-off content like an easter egg in the game.That makes sense as a benefit for a one-off donation like Kickstarter, but not an ongoing monthly thing.
To be fair, I do this on the Community forums regularly, and I don’t think we’re getting directly paid for that. Though the fact people can do it for free has often not stopped people from paying for it, you’re right about that part.
It could be done with having appointments guaranteed for voicechat or something like that. But assuming we’re also talking about including Hhyyrrylainen, the additional payment would first of all have to more than cover the lost development time.
Yes, exactly. Who is going to take the effort to make that material and post it there? Especially early because most of our trailers are done like only a day before a release, and often finalized just hours before posting the devblog so how could we make early teasers?
Kind of doable, but again who is going to do that? Would I have to arrange a patron-exclusive meeting like each month and spend the time chatting with people who show up?
Also we have the VIP tier already where they can ask up to 7 questions we always answer during release livestreams. So far we only have a single VIP patron who asks those questions. We have more VIP patrons than that but none of the others seem interested in asking the questions they are already entitled to.
The VIP questions at the start of the question sections of all of our streams always highlight our very valuable VIP patron who asks questions each time. So far that has not encouraged any other VIP patron to ask questions.
Yeah, like if someone joined a 100€ per month tier with in-game benefits, would we need to keep making Easter Eggs each month for that person?
And I do this too when I’m feeling up for it. Sometimes I just need to take time off to just ignore any suggestions or questions posted.
But just us two really engaging with the community I think is quite key to keep up some community activity. Just totally blocking any response from the Thrive developers to a fan behind a big paywall kind of seems like not a good idea.
Yeah. I was more imagining that it could be a couple of (like maybe up to 5) super VIP patrons + a developer in voice chat. That would be doable cost-wise at around a 50€ per month tier, assuming not too many people signed up and didn’t expect like an exclusive hour+ discussion each month.
This is also much more doable than custom development work tier because this scales better as a single meeting can have more people. If someone asked for a new small feature, it could be up to like 4 hours of work (or even more as it is quite hard to predict how long any given programming task takes) and to be really feasible we would need to bill like 200€ for such work.
Release it one day late, so donators will get one day early, planned latency.
No you do not have to arrange a meeting but if someone wants to meet with you after donating 50 euros and they want to talk to you deffinitly you should, maybe you can personally talk, guide or give ideas to them.
No you dont have to but there should be social benefit to be a subscriber, for example maybe a steam gift key everymonth, and if someone pass a limit of 1000€ purchase their easter egg could be add in the game like a volcano biome named after them or a random mob spawns after their name.
The key idea is not literally do whatever I said, they are all suggestions but lets not forget main motivation here is to make donation be cool and more interactive with our team, so they don’t feel like others but part of important people in our group. All the examples and brain storms to create this and everything is maybe, and this is probably how I would do it. So basicly donation must feel Cool and give social status.
About mechandise, someone said you guys onto that, is there and post I can read ? Or if there is not lets talk about the idea of selling merchandise, so creating fan base, and gaining their helps will much more easier.
I don’t personally find this doable as our entire release process would need to shift by a day, and it depends a ton on volunteers and the timeline is often very tight at the end. The added confusion from having two release dates would be quite bad I think. But I’m interested to hear what other team members think about this.
Isn’t this the exact same? But only relying on the fact that people might not “redeem” the benefit they get from the 50€ tier.
Latest info is on the Dev Discord, but you’ll have to ask someone else as some stuff happened while I was on break so I didn’t pay full attention to it.
