Introducing the Crayta Creators’ Programme!

Be creative the way YOU want, and earn BIG while doing so.

Way back in May 2020 we shared a blog post that outlined our initial plans for empowering our creators to earn money for their work in Crayta. We talked about the ethos that underpins our approach, explained why we’d made the initial choices, and pointed out that this was just the first phase of a package of creator incentives that would perpetually evolve to meet the needs of our community as it developed.

Now is the time for the biggest evolution of that plan so far!

We know that Crayta is going to grow hugely in the coming months and years so this is a perfect time to get involved and be one of the creative pioneers on the platform.

We’ve loved seeing the stories of success from those of you who have done well out of our monthly $25,000 prize fund — for some of you it’s meant that you’ve earned tens of thousands of dollars and even been able to do things like pay for a family member’s health care, give up your job, move house or buy your first car.

But we always listen carefully to our community and we’re aware that the current prize fund has started to limit the opportunities for creativity, and doesn’t always reward the most deserving games or experiences either.

However, we have to carefully balance a lot of different considerations when it comes to giving out the cash so now that we’re in a position to be able to increase our creator rewards significantly, we’ve thought long and hard about the best way to do that.

We’re not interested in just throwing money at people, as much as we know you’d love that concept! We’re here for the long haul and we want to create an environment where every type of creator feels like they have the potential to be inspired, supported and rewarded for their work.

We also want to make sure that Crayta is a place where people can grow and develop in whatever way and to whatever level they choose. YOU decide what you want to create, not us, but we’ll be there to support you and reward you along the way.

So we’re thrilled to announce that as of 1st October 2021, we’ll be launching the Crayta Creators’ Programme!

The attention-grabbing summary of this new programme is this:

• Bigger-than-ever monthly creator reward pots of up to $200,000, rising to up to $400,000 in a few months, plus quarterly creation competitions with 6-figure cash prizes
• New-and-improved tutorials, support and feedback processes, giving you increased access to the U2G team to help develop your skills
• Multiple ways to express your creativity — go free-form and build what you like, or focus your efforts on our more directed challenges
• Multiple ways to earn — try out for some occasional bonus cash, or aim for a regular predictable income

Sounds good eh?! We certainly hope so, but let’s now dig into the details of the various parts of the programme, and help you work out which route will best suit you.

Crayta Creators’ Programme — tell me more!

The Crayta Creators’ Programme is broadly split into two halves, each with three opportunities to flex your creative muscles. The first half is a set of monthly ways to earn, with creative freedom to pretty much build what you like. The second half consists of occasional one-off ways to earn via jam-style events, but with creative themes or goals defined by us.

The monthly programmes will be mutually exclusive, meaning that each creator will only be taking part in one of them at a time. They’re designed to identify upcoming talent, while encouraging and recognising growth and skills development. The occasional events will be open to all and will allow everyone to throw their efforts into something different, just to keep things interesting.

So this is how they all stack up…

Monthly Programmes:

• Crayta Spark
  Up to $50k a month
• Crayta Ignition
  Up to $100k a month
• Crayta Lift-Off
  Up to $200k a month (coming soon)

Occasional Events:

• Game Jams
  $50k prize pots
• Build Jams
  $50k prize pots
• Quarterly Creation Jams
  Six-figure prize pots tba (coming soon)

MONTHLY PROGRAMMES — PREPARE FOR LAUNCH!

Crayta Spark

Crayta Spark is essentially an evolution of our existing Prize Fund, but with much broader chances to win and with more influence from the U2G team. Previously this was purely driven by data but now we’re going to be adding a variety of other criteria by which we’ll judge a project’s prowess, including things like technical achievement, aesthetic quality, originality and collaborative elements.

Each month we’ll be giving out various bronze, silver and gold awards (worth $1k, $2.5K and $5k respectively) with no fixed number each month, allowing us to reward whatever we think deserves it. As a team (drawing in people from across the studio) we’ll judge all your published creations then highlight them in a monthly video as we do now.

We’re hoping this will give us a much better way to ‘talent spot’ and recognise creators coming up through the ranks, as well as help us to motivate you to improve and succeed in whatever way you want.

Note: this means that the final month for the existing Prize Fund will be September 2021, with the last prizes awarded in early October as normal. Any projects that are published during the course of September will be eligible for the first month of Crayta Spark.

Crayta Ignition

Crayta Ignition is a new monthly application/invite-only programme that allows more experienced and proficient creators to spread their wings or experiment without having to limit what they create in order to win something every month. You’ll be offered a 6-month contract at first and paid a monthly $3,000 to work on what you like (within reason!) and will also have lots of access to the U2G team, to get feedback, help and support as you grow your skills and hone your work.

Note that as we get this up and running, we won’t be filling all the places straight away. We’re planning to accept 5–6 creators per month for the first three months and then ramp things up after that so please be patient if you apply. Convince us you’re worthy of being included in the first batch of test-drivers!

Crayta Lift-Off

We’ll reveal a little more about Crayta Lift-Off in a couple of months but as you can see above, this is going to be an even more substantial pot. The goal with this programme will be to allow people to sign up for contracts that will give some of our highest level, most ambitious creators and teams the potential to give up their day jobs and become full-time Craytans! More coming soon!

OCCASIONAL EVENTS

If you’ve been with us a while you’ll know that we regularly run both game jams and build jams. Historically they’ve been just for fun and bragging rights but now we’re able to put some serious cash prizes behind them too.

As mentioned above, the occasional events are opportunities for everyone to be creative without the terror of a completely blank slate! For our jams we’ll continue to set themes, goals or challenges to get you going, then you’ll have a week-to-ten-days to come up with something fun and inventive to meet the brief.

As before, the game jams will be for you to make, er, games… but we’re also going to start challenging you to make other things in future too. Watch this space! The build jams will continue to be for creating packages and other useful reusable builds and environments, and will allow you to get rewarded for adding value to the game for everyone who comes along behind you.

These jams will run roughly every other month but they’ll also be joined in future by our brand new Quarterly Creation Jams. Again, we’ll be sharing more info about these soon, but they’re going to be large-scale collaborative creation competitions with 6-figure cash prize pots that we’re sure are going to generate some of the most impressive stuff we’ve seen to date. We can’t wait to tell you more!

Conclusion

As we said right back at launch in July last year, our plans to reward our community and allow people to earn money from their work will continue to evolve over time. We’re looking for your input now more than ever to help us set just the right balance in our creator economy so don’t be shy about telling us what you think as we trial these new programmes.

For now though, we reckon we’ve put together a really great set of new opportunities with the Crayta Creators’ Programme. Regardless of whether you want to build loads of small-but-fun games, tackle bigger more ambitious projects with a team, code varied and powerful packages for others to use, or come at things from left-field and create unique interactive experiences that we’ve never seen before — we think you’ll find a way to feel valued, motivated and appreciated.

As we said at the start, this is definitely the perfect time to get in on the ground floor of what we know is going to be a massive community of creatives, all making and sharing some amazing experiences for an ever-growing audience of players. We’re really excited and we hope you are too!

Prepare for lift-off!

For more detailed information on each part of the Crayta Creators’ Programme, please head to the developer portal here.