Also: please note that this is not an appropriate forum to start discussing potential games, and potentially prejudicing voting (however it will take place) one way or another. This should have gone without saying, but I am being very explicit now in an effort to prevent misunderstandings. I will be moderating comments and deleting references to individual games if they should come up.

Unlike in the past, we are going to run the fundraiser in a very tightly constrained way. This means that there will be less freedom in the options (to a degree), but it also means that the results will be much faster.

Frankly, I really don’t like the old system that takes more than a month to get a voting result, by which time the summer is ended and I have to wait to do the challenges because of the need to prepare (and then teach) the next academic year’s curriculum. I expect readers don’t like having to wait, however good (or bad) the content is. So, even if it means a shorter fundraiser, I’d rather take that option with the positive trade-off of doing these things BEFORE the end of August.

Here is what I am thinking (note that this is a work in progress so some details have yet to be worked out):

We’ll run the fundraiser for 2 or 3 weeks, in which time people can vote for a selection of games chosen by staff members. We are not sure how the voting will work yet, but suffice to say that we will make it as open and fair as possible. Based on the amount of money raised, I will play a number of games from the list. I am not certain how to do this yet either. I have two options to consider:

1. I agree beforehand to play the top three games, and people then vote/donate for games to try and get their favourites in the top three.
2. We have a list of games and at certain voting targets we unlock them, starting from the bottom up.

I think we are more likely to go with 2 because it avoids a number of potential problems that occur with 1, and also allows us to set an ‘end’ to things before we get more money than we can conceiveably use over the next year.

As reported, we are considering having me livestream my complete playthroughs of all fundraiser games. This will ‘prove’ to people that I am playing them, and may even prove entertaining for the literally tens of viewers that we will have over the course of hundreds of hours of misery.

Information time. Reader funding is used for a bunch of things:
– Utility Software (such as our audio capture software)
– Hardware (like microphone booms, pop reducers, headsets)
– Games (for our reader giveaways and for a contest we want to run this year; also for the two games that we raffle yearly to staff (the only payment they receive).)
– Hosting/Domain Registry/WhoIs/Internet Stuff (to a variety of companies and individuals who handle our domain, our WHOIS registration, and our serverside behindthescenes things)
– Business Crap (basically what we pay the tax guy every year to file for us and renew our state stuff)
– Shipping/Office Crap/Misc. (A catchall for everything from the cost of shipping a book to the commission of a graphic)
– Stuff I Forgot to Include Above (I would tell you what this includes, but I’ve forgotten.)

Finally a disclaimer: even if the site never received donations, it would keep running. If you don’t have the money, don’t worry: we’re not going to close. Don’t feel guilty! I would find a way to pay for it out of pocket, having had lots of experience with doing just that. The reality is that the site usually runs into the red now and again, and I just make up the difference. But, having donations does help, and it means we can do more. I really want to bring back contests and giveaways (they help increase readership), but that is a financial burden that I can’t generally take on myself. In other words: more donations more frequently gives us the ability to do extra stuff that we could not ordinarily do. But even without donations, the site would keep going.

(To an extent, the same thing is true about content. Even if we ended up cutting columns, the podcast would keep running.)

Okay, I think that’s everything. If you have any questions, or suggestions, feel free to post them below. I can’t guarantee that we’ll do what you suggest (in fact, we probably won’t), but we’ll certainly consider it when it comes time to finalise our fundraiser plans.

Oh! Expect the fundraiser to go live in a week or two at most. I want it to be done around the beginning of July so that I can produce the related content over the course of July and August, and get a summer contest and give away in as well.

“Chrono Crap”. Yet another time this show has made me spit coffee. I need to stop drinking that stuff when I’m listening XD

I’m with ya on the Japanese appeal of ‘because they can do it’. Most of my planned purchases this year involve Xseed titles that I’m backing primarily because they exist. Don’t ever change Japan. Please.