fundraiser
What is this?
HaxeFlixel is planning a fundraiser. Our founder, Alexander Hohlov, AKA "beeblerox" lives in Russia, and because of the difference in purchasing power between Russia and the West, he could live for 1 year on just $6,000 USD. In fact, this would not only allow him to quit his current job, it would actually be a step up for him in income.
We saw an opportunity to raise this money for him and make his job description simply, "work on HaxeFlixel", for the next year. It would be a great way to thank Alexander for creating this project and also an excellent opportunity to improve HaxeFlixel in general.
The plan
HaxeFlixel already has a patreon account, and so far we are collecting $151 a month and have a small chunk saved up already. However, Patreon pledgers can cancel at any time and we want to guarantee that we have all the money we need. If beeblerox is going to quit his job, he needs assurance from us that it won't dry up after six months.
The HaxeFlixel owners and LevelUpLabs, larsiusprime's company, have pledged $3,000 USD already. So we only need $3,000 more from the community to make this happen.
Because of international tax treaties and local laws, the best way to make this official is for Level Up Labs to hire beeblerox as an independent contractor with the job description "work on HaxeFlixel and release everything you do under the MIT license" -- this will be formalized in an actual contract. Level Up Labs has done this several times in the past on a smaller scale as "open source bounties" for the Haxe community. Furthermore, Level Up Labs is a United States limited liability corporation, has hired Russian contractors before, and is experienced with all the paperwork and reporting involved. So it seems like a good fit (but do let us know if anyone has any objections, larsiusprime is the one writing this so he's not exactly unbiased :P)
As for actually collecting the money, we are looking towards either KickStarter or IndieGoGo, and the project we will be pitching will be an improved release version of HaxeFlixel, most likely a major non-breaking-changes update to the current point release.
If you want to donate right now, feel free to pledge on our patreon account - we will continue to use this as a supplement, and if you write a note with your pledge that you want all the money to go to beeblerox (instead of ongoing incidentals like web hosting and saving for rainy days, etc, which is what we do right now), we will honor that request. The reason for using KickStarter/IndieGoGo is to collect a specific amount of funds that aren't tied to monthly pledges. We will post more details as we get further along with the plan.
The project
What specifically do we want to do with HaxeFlixel?
Beeblerox has written some early notes. We will share more details later as we move to more concrete goals. But in general, it will be the same sort of continuous improvement you have seen over the past few years, but at a better pace now that we can move from "all volunteers" to "all volunteers + 1 professional".
How you can help
Donate!
Either pledge right now at our patreon account, or check back and support our crowdfunding campaign when it starts.
Follow HaxeFlixel
Follow the HaxeFlixel twitter account to get updates on the fundraiser!
Spread the Word!
When we have more details, and when the fundraiser itself launches, please help us spread the news through social media, your friends, and the gamedev community in general!
HaxeFlixel developers
Are you making a project that uses HaxeFlixel? Send us a screenshot or some footage and your permission for us to use it in the video for the crowdfunding pitch. Or send us copies of your game to give away as pledge rewards!
- Send us footage of your game
- Send us screenshots of your game (1920x1080 please)
- Donate copies of your commercial game (Keys from Steam, GOG, Humble, Itch, etc)
- Donate copies of your free game (link to download page?)
- Provide written permission for us to freely use any of the above you supply to us in the fundraiser
Technical details for video footage:
- Resolution: 1920x1080p
- 30 or 60 FPS
- Audio track optional
- Host publicly on dropbox, google drive, & post a link (basically any non weird/shady file hosts will do)
- Post your link on this issue
To submit a game:
- Free or commercial, both are welcome
- Provide a public download link for a free game
- Provide keys for a commercial game (Steam, GOG, Humble, Itch, etc)
- Any amount of keys is fine, even just one (we can do limited quantity pledge tiers)
- For submission details see this issue
When does it start?
As soon as we can! Really we just need to work out the details of the pitch, pick a crowdfunding platform, and put a video together. larsiusprime has experience doing Video trailers & editing from his work at Level Up Labs, so he's volunteered to do the video provided we can get enough footage together from example games.
If this was a big, $30-$100K project we'd probably spend a huge amount of time planning every detail, but since it's a pretty modest ask, we're just going to do something simple and straightforward.
If we can move quickly enough, it would be nice to see this ready to go in just a few weeks.
What if we make more than $3K?
For now we're keeping our expectations low :) But if we do bring in more than planned, we should have a plan for what to do with the money so that we can be transparent and responsible. Before the project launches we'll have a specific plan. Depending on how much extra comes in, we'll either give beeblerox a raise, fund other HaxeFlixel contributors, fund feature bounties for HaxeFlixel and/or the Haxe & OpenFL ecosystems in general, or some mixture of all of those.
But we'll cross that bridge if we get there.
What about transparency?
We'll do our best to be responsible stewards of your money. We'll provide copies of all relevant contracts, invoices, receipts, and other paperwork (with sensitive personal information redacted) whenever they are generated, and will post them here publicly for the record. We'll also do our best to put out news updates on the HaxeFlixel website so you can know what we've been doing.