RL getting in the way (Patreon)

[Abelius]: Hello guys,

Here I am, yet again, to relate my life to you people.

I’ll be honest…: not in my worst nightmares, I would have seen myself in late October, the year 2017, without a playable first version of LOK Rebirth.

When I left my regular job back in June, to focus on the project, I thought it would be ready for late August maximum. I even thought I would be able to return to my almost forgotten good habit of going downtown to skate and keep myself in shape. Hell, I even fantasized about getting myself a girlfriend! ?

And it’s possible that some of you remember a post of mine, just after launching the Demo, saying that we’d reduce our working hours to 8/day…

So much wishful thinking…

Truth is, developer’s life is not as I envisioned one year ago. Moreover, RL gets in the way in forms I didn’t think possible considering that I don’t have a formal schedule now. Days are frustratingly short and even the act of taking your car for a quick checkup makes you lose a half if you’re lucky.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not whining about this lifestyle not being what I wanted. I’m not looking back and I vouch I’ll do everything in my power for seeing this project seeing the light and deserving the level of support that allows us to finally focus on it for good.

However, so much time has passed since June that I’m starting to feel uneasy about my ability to pay my bills in the near future. It’s not a critical situation because I’ve got about six months before things start to get ugly, but the uneasiness it there all the same.

So I’ve decided to accept IT freelance jobs that will occupy about a 33% of my time.

Good thing about that: Those pay well, so I won’t have more worries about my financial situation.

Bad thing: It will delay development. Not so much as if I was working full-time of course, but as we’re also not talking about a part-time job with a well-defined shift, but a task that must be done in several days getting all my attention, those delays will be felt by you if you keep an eye on the Trello board.

And yes, I’m starting this as soon as tomorrow, so it’s very likely I won’t have v0.1 ready for October. ? Just to be clear about it and you can make your own decisions as I’ve made mine.

At any rate, please don’t take this as a plead for ‘Give MOAR money!!’. It’s not. We’re really proud already about our fan base and you have already broken all our expectations when we started the project.

Thing is, Patreon is about the masses supporting lonely creators as they produce niche works they both like. The more known is a project, the more possibilities it has to be supported if they deliver good quality shit. And I estimate about 1200 patrons for LOK:R to be enough for us being our sole source of income.

That means we’ll need to…:

1. Deliver a (playable) game.

2. Publicizing it.

Straightforward steps that should have been done long ago. Some may say even before having launched our Patreon… but I won’t lie to you on that: without your shocking generosity even from the start, I would have found really difficult to take the plunge and leave my job. So it’s kind of a Catch-22 situation (I know about the eternal Patreon debate…)

So, in short, we’re not asking for you to increase your pledge, so the project becomes viable. It is already. We’ll continue doing it. Period.

But a decision had to be made so my RL could also be viable enough.

I know this will be a letdown and I'm very sorry. I just hope in a year's time we're all laughing about these difficulties.