Nibellion closes up shop: projects, products, and Patreon

Matt Demers writes PlusHeart to explore how people have been able to find their place on the Internet, connect with other people, and make money from their passions. It covers a lot of the gaming space, from Twitch, to social media, to esports.

The intersection of passion projects and products is interesting to me because there almost needs to be a switch that occassionally gets flicked. You can't constantly be in "passion" mode, and you also can't always be in "product" mode, either; the emotional authenticity and business practicality need to complement each other.

A screenshot from Mob Psycho 100, an anime from which Nibellion took his avatar.

Earlier today, games news aggregator account Nibellion announced that they'd be calling it quits and shuttering their operation. As far as I know, they were a single-person shop, but spent a lot of time presenting gaming news in a format that has a lot of value on Twitter: straightforward, simple, and fast.

I didn't follow this account, but every time an industry convention or event happened, it was inevitable that posts of theirs would trickle into my feed. They apparently had a Patreon, where they have a post (unfortunately not public) explaining their decision. I've grabbed relevant text from a screenshot on Twitter:

Unfortunately, I was not able to create an interesting and sustainable Patreon which is evident in the number of Patrons stagnating during the first weekend and the first (of many) pledges being deleted during the first week. I have miscalculated the value of my Twitter activity and realize that it is nothing worth supporting by itself for the vast majority of people. It is not me who is popular, but it is that work that is useful. It is not valuable by itself, but a comfortable timesaver, and I get that now.

The conversations I had about this agreed that this statement is pretty self-aware about the nature of aggregation and how difficult it is to make that a product in itself. Despite that, though, it felt very easy to focus in on a missed opportunity — or at least a severe over-estimation.

Looking at their Patreon at the moment (3:30PM EST on 10/31), they had close to 1000 patrons. If they were considering this a failure (in terms of stagnation), and then further discouraged by user churn, I feel like expectations may have been much too high.

This cancellation comes after a month of the Patreon being live. Reading that the discouragement started after “the first weekend”, like the post mentioned, it was hard not to feel a bit frustrated or even angry by how quick this was being given up on.

Browsing their locked posts, it looks like they both provided summary posts (which, I mean, you're summarizing an aggregate), and 1-2 opinion pieces. This feels a bit strange, mostly because I feel like Nibellion’s appeal was how simple and straightforward his work was: it was often a statement headline without editorializing. Changing that expectation (or at least nurturing a new aspect of a product) takes time, and it seems like the patience just wasn’t there.

As much as content (in general, not just gaming!) has shifted towards personality-based work, developing that is hard. Being able to understand what your voice is, and how it can be used takes a lot of practice, testing, and soliciting feedback; if you're not careful, you can stagnate into one style of work forever, and that doesn't lead to growth and scaling.

It's hard to talk further about this because I don't want to judge too harshly; I'm not this person, and I don't want to stick too much on the "you had something other people would kill for, so why did you give it up?" kind of shaming that removes them from the equation. That doesn't feel fair, nor does it really do anything productive with the event. However, a lot of what stuck out to me about this is considering "how much did they think about their project as a product?"

I've written about Patreon in the past, and I think that the idea of viewing it as a second set of tasks in addition to your main product is useful. Not only do you need to keep up what people love, but you must also have the confidence to be able to create exclusivity and gate content to the degree that people are motivated to subscribe.

If the Patreon isn't producing encouraging results, it stagnates, and that stagnation can create a death spiral: if there isn't feedback that makes you think your work is valuable, you can end up feeling guilty that you're asking for money at all.

This is kind of the folly of the creator landscape that leans too heavily on “passion = good”, or tells people that treating their project like a product lessens authenticity. That kind of "selling out" is kind of essential at a certain point of scale, because if the goal is to make something like this a living wage, you can't bumble into it — eras of creating, like blogging, YouTube or Twitch can give that impression, but if you truly want longevity, that kind of thinking needs to enter the equation.

We can’t fall into success with these kind of things anymore. It really doesn’t work.

In Nibellion’s case, I think the self-awareness of his admission is a bit undercut by the length of the effort. I think that’s what creatives like myself (and the people I’ve discussed this with) are laser-focused on, because it enables unproductive projection. There’s way too many “what-ifs” and possible solutions that we don’t have the proof for, and it feels unkind to just say “Wow, how spoiled. They didn’t even try.”

However, if other creatives are approaching the same situation of not having obvious value to their products that can translate into Patreon models, that can be focused on and explored. We can ask questions about why or how that thinking happens, and what might not have been present.

We can argue that art, niche journalism and podcasts are the most visibly successful patronage models, because it’s obvious what you do with them: take something people want that has a high production value, and gate it behind a purchase or a timed unlock.

For other mediums, we have to be a bit more creative:

• How would you support a Twitch stream with Patreon if a typical Twitch stream is the same for patrons and non-patrons? Can you create big enough incentives when people could just subscribe through Twitch?

• How would you make an aggregate that’s focused on simplicity, readability and speed into a more premium product? If you’re summarizing headlines, how does that show expertise that people would pay for?

In both of these cases, the Patreon content involves creating things that aren’t what people are appreciating the most from you. Of course that’s going to end up rough. It goes beyond an NSFW artist “going clean”; even in that case, the fundamentals of the platform itself still work. In a weird way, it comes back around to speed: the amount of time it takes for someone to acquire your content, consume it, and then perceive its value to them.

With an aggregation or a speedy repost of an industry announcement, the utility is clear: I now know that my favourite game series is getting a sequel, and when it will come out. The content that sustains people and creates connection is slower, longer, denser, and requires more patience and understanding in order to reach that “this is valuable, and this creator is valuable” conclusion.

That difference may not get easier any time soon, but the blunt, honest discussion and detachment needed to consider the product may keep creators from getting blindsided down the road.