Projects and Finances - A Constant Battle (also titled: The Project Manifesto)

A lightly curated stream of consciousness shall ensue. This is separate from the Devlog on the release for tomorrow (to go along with Demo update Version 1.30). If you're reading even this far, you're one of the "invested" ones, showing engaged interest in my project. Thank you for the time you're spending on it. A warning for what lie ahead however, reader. Everything written is all safe for work; there is just a whole lot of it.

TL:DR is section 4 below if you want a summation of below, which is broken into five sections for convenience.

-- 1 --

-- Preface and Setting Up the Case --

The world of ART:WAR and its nuances were drafted, tested, tested again, and may or may not have killed more than one entire D&D party on the way to where it is over the last 20 years. The RPG I'll be adding to this cool little randomizer I've made aren't after-the-fact inclusions, either. From tip to tail, there's a plan for everything already. The only part I'm improv-ing is the actual box-to-box writing (at the moment).  All of the bosses are -ready-, combat- and testing-wise; again, I just need the time to focus on implementation of things. The world is scratched out by hand on several contiguous sheets of 2x3ft drafting paper. Frindall has -four- iterations of character sheets as an NPC. Names of several characters and items are references to jokes with a specific party that another will never understand.  Literal thousands of pages - I'll see if I can get some good pictures soon - of the literal fifty pound stack of binders.

I've been fiddling with it as many different media formats over the years, actually. The book felt too slow, the D&D games had a tendency to go 100 sessions good and then drama starts somehow (no throwing shade; it's just a curse of bringing so many theater kids together - friction only happens when there's things to bump against), I could never fund a blockbuster -or- a Swede film, and, well, I've loved game design forever. 

My first RPG maker game, over a decade ago, was set in this same world. I actually sold a few copies to friends around school and had average reviews. My grandmother would become angry when I asked to play Battleship a new, different way at age 4, or coming up with more extreme Hide and Seek variants for the neighborhood in early school years - think team flag football, but with camo. We'd be twelve kids out there at once, in asymmetric teams of three seeks to nine hiders. Halo:CE mods where frag grenades were landmines and plasma pistols never stop chasing their target, but slooooooooowly. StarCraft custom games (one almost did well, but "The Thing" kinda monopolized the genre I was in, there). I was there for it. I lived for it. There are several entire playsets of a card game I collaborated with a few friends on floating around (and it -is- "coming back" one day, all things aligning as they need to). I was merely but a child, however, and no matter how hard you tried, you couldn't make a living off mods in that post-shareware era. Not allowed.

I've been involved in game development, mostly as quiet student and occasional afterschool tutor (in the form of teaching my D&D players how to play every nerd game alive), since I was but a baby child. It's a powerful teaching tool, games. They're the most interactive form of art available. Who wouldn't love that? If I could make games all day (and be allowed the flexibility to do weird things) I would work for free. I do work for free and I do make games all day already, technically, and will continue that as long as I possibly can. But I am no loon. I'm counting the dreaded days until I have to slow development back to a crawl so as to sacrifice my meat vessel once again to the green demon. The almighty "S with lines in it" that decides all our destinies.

-- 2 --

-- Why Now, Then? What Now, Then? --

The sudden and unannounced going public when I did (coming up on a month ago next week. Wow. Time is flying by so slowly) is because I've been working the 9/9/6 on it for quite some time more than that (four months now at least). I finally have the time to dedicate to it. I'm trying something different - focusing on what I -want- to do instead of just doing things to survive a little longer. No job to tie me down for hours, no need to work anywhere else just for now. I hope my productivity is proof of my intent; evidence that I am not just trying to cash in on this. This game is getting done, and not on Star Citizen time. While I want for nothing, however, we live in a system. I can't simply develop and release this entire project for free (as I wish to) and expect to survive the ordeal. Somewhere, money gets to take center stage in -my- production. I cannot last forever, and not intelligently planning for tomorrow is how Star Citizen happened.

I have considered quite a bit (since well before I began this project proper) the benefits versus costs of attempting to sell, or kickstart, or go-fund-me, or by some whichever means. There are a lot of things I'm just itching to release into this sandbox for you all to play with and explore; my hands simply won't work fast enough to get it all out. This is no Dwarf Fortress or Kenshi, but I strongly resonate with their developers. I refuse to allow the great name of Goblin artists everywhere to be tarnished by subpar efforts. ART:WAR will be worth more than a Jackson, and that's even if it's free.

Funding, option One: The $19.99 "MSRP", I genuinely believe, would be a fair price for the full product if development continues down that path. It helps if I ever have to speak with a publisher about funding to have a well-established and well-considered target price and sales goals. Even if it -does- end up taking me a decade to finish the game, it must be finished. Now that I've started, I've been totally absorbed by my workflow. I'm eschewing playing other games and more social events than normal not because I feel rushed or pressured, but because I'm bored by the idea of not telling these stories. I've spent 20 years chewing. I'm tired of it (the wait, not the stories). Frindall and the rest need to either start paying rent or get out of my head already.

That all being said, if I could instead fund development through option Two: Patreon. It would allow me to release everything for free (as I would prefer, honestly). Van life is very inexpensive, and van life by choice (for years now, don't take this as a life crisis or cry for help, please) is refreshingly minimal. Not Mercedes Sprinter van life, either. Transit Connect I Built Myself van life. At 600 a month I would have excess income - money that would be getting squirreled away for Steam fees and rig upgrades and things. At over a grand I'd start having to give it away. I don't want it. And I'd provide receipts if necessary to prove that statement. 

A Patreon page would likely be similar in update schedule to everything else. This allows me to only need hard internet access once a week, so I can spend more time in a National Forest or Land Management zone -and- at my workstation simultaneously, for instance, or drive cross-country if I need to be somewhere for something. I would also never ask for more than a fiver a person (Patronage of the Public over Purchasing of the Investor, and all that). Art is a stream of sensorial data, an experience. You never know what you're gonna get... Or make, for that matter. Experiences should be as free to be themselves as possible, like a coursing river. Anything gunky upstream can corrupt the entire rest of the body quite quickly.

I'm sure a third option exists. I could probably sell a pitch to a publisher or developer given my track record so far, but I also have a permanent "REFLECT Corporate +100%" effect. I can't shake it. I couldn't let someone else fudge my work up and then be able to point at me for why it sucks. If it sucks, let -me- be the only reason. Otherwise, I'll know forever it was that fudger's fudging that fudged the game, and I don't need that fudging negativity in my life. They would want me to change things I can't and let their teams meddle in my process with calls and emails and... ~collaboration~... and... ~~deadlines~~... and...  ~~~advertisement~~~. And ~~~~microtransactions~~~~.

I feel icky actually pushing my art on others. I would much prefer a natural accumulation of people actually interested in the project, and will likely not put overt advertisement out myself. A personal message here and there, perhaps, but no paying Facebook to blast it at the Boomers, even if corporate influence is the angle I end up having to take. I know my limits well. I'm no social media guru.

-- 3 --

-- The Justification Part (not excuses, surely) --

My reasoning for not just opening the project with option no.2 at the fore is the absolute baby-faced-ness of my "development studio" and my total anonymity as an artist.  I'm a rather hermitous Goblin, but even I know someone shoving something in someone else's face and asking for money right of the rip, no proof of concepts or reliability of service, is not a great look. I can easily count on some people actually paying for a full release (even if it is only to sit never played in their library), but I don't have the data to confidently say I could get a Patreon running smoothly to achieve the same effects. This reveal, and the choice of pricing structure, was the cautious presentation of a brand newbie Gobbo's first official works on file, where they erred on the side of considerably cautious caution, not cement shoes holding them in place on the matter.

Due to all this, I appreciate the feedback I'm getting this early about everything - it lets me fix things much faster and address as many community concerns as I can, while also showing community engagement, not just faceless download-number-go-ups. Ultimately, it's going to be the community that supports the game one way or another. I'll leave it up to them. Additionally, notice the bugfix logs are full of people's names as a living, expanding credits for game testing, because I'll rarely be able to catch as much as the Public on that front. That's the kind of development team I really want, after all. People who are interested enough to check it out, spend their time to send me a bug report, then spend even any smidgen more of their precious time waiting to see the project get better because they helped. Squishing a bug is as important a service as any other in gamedev (in this case only. Don't be mean to things. Even if it stung or bit you it's because that's it's fight or flight response, not because it didn't like you. You just scared it. But code bugs? Code bugs...).

 I was actually genuinely terrified it would crash everything all at once or people would consider the whole thing a wash for some reason. My workstation laptop might be a little physically broken, but it's a relatively hefty system under the hood. There were so many things I could never account for that could have happened (for example, I didn't know how the generator would look or feel on another rig. I'm aiming for compatibility with Android devices, so I tried to ensure the entire generator remained rather low-power on purpose, but you never know).

-- 4 --

-- As Such, This Is A Proclamation Of Several Things --

        (or, "Too Long Didn't Read")

One, I have not opened a Patreon yet. If support for this idea appears in the community, I would open it after going over the conditions of the new social contract with everyone first and making sure everyone is on board the Martha with me.

Two, I -want- to allow everyone a chance to see the project in full for free, but I must also live to do so, and making this my "job" rather than a "hobby" would mean the world to more than just myself, actually. And I'm genuine in saying I only want enough to keep this going, nothing more. I'm not producing art because it makes money - if that was my motivation, I wouldn't be having fun doing this.

Three, I'm not pinning anything down specifically about the future (in regard to everything but this TL;DR). I am open to conversation on the topic of funding or any questions about the project or process. In the end however, one of the three things in section 2 is going to occur, and it's more up to the community than me which one. I really, really despise option no.3, and no.1 is the result of nothing changing from the current course. Vocally and loudly so, no.2 is my preferred. It lets the most people have fun with the end product for the lowest total cost.

Fourth, and as a final actual point in this essay, a clarification on some of the game's functions. Cities will be the hub zones you can turn quests in at, start main quests, et cetera. They will be connected overland and otherwise through a series of maps (between each hub and the three other cities it is linked to) wherein the actual gameplay will take place, and all the fancy-shmancy background stuff that the generator made happen will get to be front and center instead of hidden in the shops and buildings. Each city has a different vertical-slice concept for these maps inside the Raven's nest, the Secret, and the Memorial Zone. Most of all these maps are already drafted as well; don't worry. I understand how much work I have put forth for myself. We're at 340 maps already implemented, you know. My log shows 1600-ish (sometimes it lies) for the full game release product. Yes, higher than the limit in-engine. I have 4600 variables stored in the background. The limits a Goblin didn't set mean nothing to a Goblin. The game part is built, I'm just putting artsy touches on things now, like tooltips and game-function-requisite maps. I like the challenges I've set forth for myself here. I am, after all, an extreme masochist when it comes to a good challenge (I played M:TG standard during both Fairies and Caw-Blade, and in Modern during the era of the Hollow One and Death's Shadow I played 5c Scapeshift. Bring on whatever -you- call pain).

-- 5 --

-- Parting --

I feel like I am just writing modern Voynich Manuscripts in some ways, but in others I guess this is just what it feels like to be doing something you actually want to do, free of restraints. There are so many more stories to tell than the ones I have for ART:WAR. No noise, no worries, no stresses, nothing but unbridled creativity in this Goblin's skull now. There's a Roguelike one friend and I have been milling about with a cool gimmick, there's a tactical strategy RPG with a southern-punk band already willing to do the entire soundtrack, I want to do a motion-sickness-inducing bouncy-physics-shooter just for funsies, a whole load more chapters in the ART:WAR series (from other campaigns I ran about the futures and pasts of the "retell" story)... I'm just here to enjoy the ride. Life does weird things, so be just as weird right back.

           - - - umamigoblin