Ryan Smith on 4/1/2014 at 17:01

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One day recently, a friend of mine showed me a link to a website called Patreon and in a nutshell, Patreon is like kickstarter without a deadline on when you must reach your goal. I have a page of my own on there which I currently use as a fundraiser for my sound design, which you can find (http://www.patreon.com/RyanSmith) here.

Patreon is better than Kickstarter IMO because not only is there no deadline on when you must get the money by, but also, content creators will be funded by their patrons whenever they release new content. And this "content" can be specified by the person running the fundraiser. If you're a musician, you can get paid per video you release. The people who pledge money to a content creator are considered "patrons" and can change how much they pledge at any time. It's very indie-friendly and I would recommend it to anyone.

Getting to the point:

Ever since we all learned that Garrett in Thief 4 will not be voiced by Stephen Russell, there has been a great wave of sadness and disappointment throughout the entire community. But we don't have to let that spoil our hopes of hearing his voice as Garrett again, because I have a plan and it is this:

We set up a Patreon page of our own where we as a community can raise money to commission Stephen Russell so that he can continue to voice Garrett, Benny, etc, except he won't be working for some corporation that has control over what he says and how he says it. Instead, he'll be working with the community, where his work will be much more welcomed and appreciated, and much more widely used in fan levels and campaigns. Think about this for a moment:

Stephen Russell is a hero to taffers everywhere, a brilliant voice actor, and a very decent human being. To thank him for all the wonderful work he's done and then see him go, never to return, would be a tragedy to many of us. I'm sure he feels the same way. The thought alone leaves many people feeling empty inside, as if there will never be another Thief as we know it again. We don't have to let this become our reality. We CAN do something about it, and my job right now is to help people become aware of the fact that we as a community can do ANYTHING we seriously put our minds to. If we can make Thief 2X and fan-levels that rival the original games, there's so much more potential that we have yet to discover about the amazing things we can pull off.

Someone in the community must be able to contact Stephen Russell directly and without too much difficulty to tell him that we are prepared to support him wholeheartedly in this endeavor. We want our Garrett back and we are prepared to fund this campaign ourselves so the master thief won't have to pick pockets in the street to make this happen. :joke:

Someone will be in charge of managing the Patreon page itself, someone will need all the necessary contact info to connect Stephen with the community, and someone will be responsible for approaching him as a Community Ambassador if necessary and show him our proposal. As for the rest of us, our best way to help out outside of pledging to the cause, is to spread the word and unite the Thief community. We're all going to be in this together. You don't have to help if you don't want to, but let's show the world what we Taffers are made of and what we can pull off when we're motivated by an idea. :)

There is a poll on this thread and our goal should be to get at least 50 votes in favor of this mission we can call "Thief: The Return of the Dark Project." 50 votes should be enough to convince Stephen Russell that yes, we want him back, and we're rolling out the red carpet, so to speak (in other words, we're prepared to fund the voice work that he would do, so the time he invests into this will be well worth it).

If you want to see memories relived, nostalgia fulfilled, and our good old master thief back in action, vote yes, and get ready for an exciting year! :cool:

Let 2014 be the Year of the Taffer! :thumb:

Ryan Smith on 4/1/2014 at 17:36

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Can you explain more on that?

Ryan Smith on 4/1/2014 at 17:57

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This isn't a fan mission we're talking about here. This campaign won't be made using DromEd. This fundraiser serves three purposes.

One of the more practical goals is to have more voice clips and dialogue to be able to use in fan missions that come directly from the original VA, in this case, it's Stephen Russel. The clips won't be made just for one mission or campaign in Thief, but available for everyone to use.

Another, more sentimental goal is to bring Garrett back into full swing and to spend more time with the community to show how much he's admired and respected by the people on TTLG (without encroaching on his official work schedule).

And the third is to demonstrate to the rest of the world, beyond the cult following, that when enough people come together and work towards a common goal that is backed by faith and fueled with a burning desire for it's attainment, there are no limits on what we can accomplish, save for what we believe we can't do.

Someone has to speak out and stir things up, and it might as well be me, because if I don't at least make the attempt to make people aware of the possibilities that exist right now, who will?

That said, there is a process to getting this started. I don't know all the details, I don't know how exactly we're going to pull this off, but believe me, we'll find a way. People will have doubts about this project, some people will say it can't be done "because." But if you compare the people who think they can to the people who think they can't, who do you think is more likely to be better off? :)

We have a chance to do something really big here, we may as well seize it now while we can.

Ryan Smith on 4/1/2014 at 18:08

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That's fine, I appreciate that you took the time to look at this. But there are people who want something like this to happen more than anything, and I'm one of them.

Renault on 4/1/2014 at 19:03

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I'm curious to know the specifics on how you see this playing out. Once funds are raised, would SR head into a studio one time and record a whole series of typical comments that would be used by mission builders in the future? Who would decide what comments are recorded? It all sounds a little too generic to be of use to FM creators.