Starting… uh, last week, we made a bunch of improvements to the RPS Supporter Program, the super special subscription service through which insanely cool RPS readers can directly support our writing and reporting. The trap? Haha! There isn’t one.
Before I get into the details, I hope you’ll allow me a little context dumping, because My God some of these things have been bothering me for ages. It’s probably no secret that the team at RPS, especially on the editorial side, has had to work hard lately. One casualty of this has been the support program, as refocusing our attention elsewhere has resulted in fewer exclusive articles and a general lack of management. Thanks to occasional inspiration and Sin Vega’s excellent Scout Report series, we’d kept our promise to publish new fan articles every week to the letter, but for a while now it felt like we’d only found time for the bare minimum.
This had to change. Besides the fact that a minimum offer wouldn’t do much to attract new subscribers, we should absolutely offer more to existing supporters: those who can get the vast majority of RPS writes for free and who are generous enough to fund us anyway. To that end, here’s what you can expect from the program in the future:
More fan-exclusive messages, in general
Premium tier supporters will now see more frequent posts for their eyes only, starting with last week’s double hit of Sin-penned crabmeat impressions and my ode to a magnet. Expect additional news and nonsense from a wider range of RPS Treehouse, on a wider range of topics, as well as a continued spotlight on indie games from Sin itself.
Likewise, we will also revive the ancient practice of republishing old Supp posts so that they are readable for free for everyone. This won’t be the case for all exclusives, not least because some of them will be tied to specific events in time which would make them a little weird to read 12 months later. But we’ll take a curated approach to this, so non-subscribers can get a taste of our best fan words.
Even more ad-free browsing than previous ad-free browsing
Hiding ads has always been a key benefit of being an RPS supporter, although until last week we didn’t have the back-end technology in place to extend this to the more recent development of sponsored content. Now we do. If you’re signed in to RPS with your Supporter account, you should never see sponsored content (unless you find and click a direct link to it), and if you do, you can email Julian to fix it. And, of course, the Standard and Premium tiers will continue to get the same ad-free browsing they’ve had for years.
Letters from the editor, for real this time
This was way before our current staffing levels, but no, we didn’t publish monthly education letters when we really should have published monthly education letters. Julian and I will share responsibility for solving this problem, making sure supporters are the first to know about interesting RPS gossip, explanations of our thinking behind certain projects, or just how everything has been going lately. I hope this sounds nice, although you may have to forgive the fact that none of us have the job title of editor.
Cut content and behind-the-scenes looks
While a big part of this refresh offering is bringing back the old ways of the supporter program, we also want to do something new, as well as a little different from what you might get with subscriptions to other gaming sites. Chief among them will be more BTS-style articles, which will add to the aforementioned increase in exclusive, more conventional, gaming-focused features. These articles will either reveal insight into how the RPS sausage is made, or replenish the cutting room leftovers that some of you sickos actually like to read about.
More regular roundups, in case you missed all that
At the end of each month, we’ll round up all the Supp-exclusive articles we’ve published into a handy, readable list (and a bit like this one). Supporters, you’ll get a one-stop, handy rundown of all the pieces you may have missed, and Supporters Yet to Be… well, I mean, look at all the awesome shit you’re missing.
Prices for Standard and Premium tiers will remain unchangedand while these are all the confirmed improvements we have to share at the moment, they are not necessarily the only ones that could be made in the foreseeable future. I am going to carry out an investigation to, among other things, find out what You I’m waiting for the Supporter Program, and I’m also looking into offering more game codes/winnable items. We operate in a very different industry than one where we might routinely pull hundreds of free games from publishers, but while I can’t promise to get that benefit, I promise to try*.
It’s a pleasure and honestly a relief to share this news; I presented several of these changes to management almost a year ago, and it’s exciting to see them finally take shape on the site. More than anything, I hope the Supporters enjoy them, a little as much as we enjoy the patronage. You are not registered? You too can support us here.
*Now I can’t do anything about discounts on RPS products, mind you. This Teespring store is deader than an entire library of Bethesda skeletons.
