Wow, March already? (Patreon)

Hey, folks! I'm always hesitant to post here, because I don't want to spam you. I can't thank you enough for your support; things are pretty bad right now, and it means a lot that I can count on all of you to survive. At the end of last month, we only had 4 cans of food in the house. Not a great situation!

I was also working 18-20 hours a week on freelance work (playin games for review, writing those reviews, recording and editing footage, and all that stuff). I only really had breaks when I was rendering video or the coffee hadn't kicked in.

Anyways, I just published the piece I'd been meaning to in February. I squeezed in some time on the backer request games, but man, let me tell you, Final Fantasy XV is a ~huge~ game. I'm having fun, and I think I have some Good, Deep Thoughts to say about it, but I want to finish the game before I write about it. Should have plenty of time to play in March, as I don't have any freelance work forthcoming.

I did get this piece published:

http://thesto.mp/post/171411070527/death-of-walking-sims

It's a little piece exploring why walking sim sales have dropped off a cliff lately, and how the genre might be evolving to combat that. I think the traditional walking sim is pretty much dead at this point.

In case you missed it, some friends and I announced Paratopic. We've been teasing it off and on for a few months. It's a little adventure game proof of concept type thing. The hope is that if people like it, we can build a follow up that's sort of an Alan Wake + Silent Hill + STALKER kind of thing.

Progress on my main jam, Game One, is still happening. Last week, we had 6 players in the underground labs I've been building. It's a really cool map: there's a firestorm in the desert above the level, so players are forced underground, where they open up parts of an underground base. It takes a lot more cooperation than your average video game. We finally found someone willing to work with us on art design.

Finding funding for Game One is going to be a challenge; it plays great, the loot system is awesome, and stuff like that, but the sad truth is that Kickstarters sell based on art, not gameplay. I can't think of a single Kickstarter that anybody backed because "wow, this whiteboxed gameplay level and these temporary art assets are amazing!" Since I'm NDA'd on all the AAA games I've done design consulting on, we can't do the "I invented and wish to make a throwback to [game everyone likes]" thing either.

It would be cool if I could stick it on Kickstarter and go "hey, we need about $5 million dollars, and if you fund this, we won't include loot boxes in the game!" but places like reddit A) don't understand how expensive games are and will think that's too much, B) only support games if the art is amazing, and C) decry games with loot boxes; they don't support games without loot boxes.

Enough worrying though; we're hoping to have the demo done in early April, and we're gonna show it to some industry friend types, and then we're gonna take it to publishers, and if that fails, Kickstarter. Hopefully someone will fall in love.

I want to try to see a doctor for this heart problem, get a new eye prescription, get at least one treatment at the infusion clinic, and maybe even see someone for an ADHD diagnosis (last doctor I was at said that I needed an 'official' one because he was only a general practitioner and couldn't give it to me). I'm hoping getting all that taken care of will allow me to be more focused and efficient, getting more stuff out.

I really want to do video content again, but I need to figure out a way to make myself sound good, and I haven't quite got that one down yet. I hope to have a new article up early next week, maybe sooner, over on Stomp.

<3 you all, thank you for keeping me alive.