A Post v0.017 Heartfelt Thanks (Generally Mild Spoilers for v0.017) (Patreon)

Sup.

So I was originally going to write a warm fuzzy New Year's letter, reflecting on the past year of game development, time with the dev team, the people and fans I've met on Discord, and life in general. Unfortunately, the timing for New Year's was right in that window of the expectations for v0.017. I drafted up a cutesy post that pretty much read like a love note to the dev team and the community for everything they've blessed me with over the past year. I ended up not posting the note because it seemed in bad taste to drop a big text wall when people were waaaay too stoked about the upcoming update. So I left it.

I could have posted it but it but I didn't want people to ignore the sincerity of the message just because they were excited about the update. In retrospect, it's probably best that I didn't because it turns out I had more to be thankful about after v0.017 dropped.

v0.017 Reactions

First off, the reaction to v0.017 has been overwhelmingly positive. And when I say "overwhelmingly," I'm not talking in a statically fashion-- I mean in a genuine emotional reaction from the community to the team and myself. Going into this update, we had a huge amount of development time--something that I expected to negatively affect our Patreon supporters. I was expecting to see more people become frustrated with the wait and drop support. In fact, this was anticipated and I knew that when we made the decision to do v0.017 the way that we did (in one lump rather than two updates), we were going to risk losing people. However, it was incredible to see the faith this community has in our team and hopefully the wait paid off. Not only did we not lose people, we actually gained support over that development period. I know waiting that long was nerve wracking and I know many, if not all of you, asked yourself if it was going to be worth the wait (or maybe more appropriately: "what the fuck is taking so long?")-- but I hope it was worth the wait and that you saw the justification on why it took us so long to do this one.

Without giving details, v0.017 was without a doubt the most emotionally intense rollercoaster update we've seen with the most character development and changes in the story crammed into one single update. I mentioned on Discord recently that we almost HAD to stop at the end of it and take a break, just to catch our breath and really process what the fuck just happened. Had we only done the beach scene and then stopped, it would have lost it's momentum. Many of you have sometimes expressed not remembering what happened in the previous update. We simply couldn't risk that happening at this particular crossroads in the story--the story needed that momentum for everything after to hit like it does. In retrospect, I hope you see why we delayed it and did it in the fashion that we did-- despite it taking longer.

That being said, I've never seen such an influx in Patreon support. I've never seen such gratitude and genuine emotional outpouring from an internet community in my fucking life following v0.017. I woke up the day after v0.017 to have 79 DMs on my Discord, tons of personal stories about reactions to the game. Tragically, I think it's easy to associate internet comments with trolls. I've seen other game developers' reactions to their communities on forums and I'm honestly in awe because of the support I've received here from the community since the beginning of this. After expanding the team this year, that feedback has continued to grow to include the other dev team guys, people that I respect and care about deeply. My life has changed because of these guys and I'm proud they were accepted and welcomed into the community.

In general, this is my long-winded way of saying thank you. Not only for the past year (and before for you old-timers around here); but for the reactions and support to one of the most controversial updates we'll have for this game. I've never told a story like this before and it's such a crazy feeling to have such a large audience that just trusts the writers so much that you remain open to every curveball we throw at your guys.

So thank you for making this an experience for us, too. The stories, the reactions, the speculation, and all the feels. We're kicking off another year of this thing and we hope you're down for the ride. 

-Aaryn