A Somewhat Overdue Thank You... (Patreon)

So I learned something in the past few weeks about saying thank you...

In contrast to a lot of posts on here that are directly related to game development, this one is a little more personal and I wanted to take the time to dedicate to it. The month of October was incredible for Straight!? and the support from the community after the release of v0.20 was completely overwhelming.

I’d had a conversation with Blayke right around the launch of the update due to seeing a fairly large spike in the Patreon donations shortly after I officially made the announcement about v0.20 going live sometime in October. Usually, I see a lot of subs pop up around update time and they donate for that month then drop until the next update. So I had assumed that the initial rush early in the month was that particular demographic-- they were just subbing early this time.

Nope.

I severely underestimated the number of downloads for this.

The days following the most recent release continued to climb. I was unable to keep up with even combing through the automated emails from Patreon about new subs. At one point I just had to walk away because I felt like I was running out of ways to acknowledge how grateful I was.

Update 20 took forever. It was much more difficult than I imagined and the number of personal obstacles that I had to overcome during this particular period of time were staggering and made it particularly difficult to keep myself focused on the characters and the required emotions. I feel when I write so distractions wipe me out pretty quickly.

However, this community has remained supportive and vigilant since this game was created. I was worried for the amount of time this update took and part of me almost feared sharing it-- was it worth that long of a wait? I don’t know. I do know that it felt right once I put it out. I just wished it hadn’t taken so damn long.

But people waited and they encouraged others to do the same and I appreciate that.

So I started drafting a post that said thank you in between answering emails and DMs. I wanted it to be eloquent and heartfelt. I wanted it to convey exactly how grateful and blessed I am to have the support for this story and how lucky I am to have the people I have with me along on this journey. But my post fell short. It was a jumbled mess of random thoughts and emotions. It was a long list of two sentence paragraphs with no transitions.

So I didn’t post it. It sat in my drafts folder and my overwhelming sense of gratefulness went unheard.

But the more I reflected, the more I understood that my jumbled way of saying thank you was genuine and authentic. Because sometimes strong emotions are a flurry. Intensity isn’t eloquent. And sometimes language fails us when we need it most but that doesn’t mean the thoughts and feelings weren’t there in the first place. And sometimes I'd rather do something poorly than not do it at all. 

So thank you for the support and the encouragement. Thank you for taking this project seriously despite the genre that I put it in. Thank you for waiting and believing in this.

Sometimes the best way to say thank you is an authentically jumbled mess.

-Aaryn