Thank you to everyone who pledged or upgraded in the last 24 hours. I'm so grateful to you for keeping this going.
Every time I've done a funding drive it’s terrifying, you never know if this time is the time it doesn't work. It always feels entirely possible that this one is the last one.
But more, is how immensely vulnerable it makes me feel. It feels like baring your life to thousands of people, some of whom are heavily judging you.
Sure enough, in the opening minutes of releasing the video, there was a flurry of haters who wanted to make their day better by talking down to me. All since deleted, because they're littered with misinformation about the situation, or how YouTube works. That others are quick to give oxygen by upvoting.
It feels so personal, because these people are so determined that I don't deserve to make a living like this.
And it is SO hard to not let those comments ruin your afternoon. And even harder to remind yourself that they're a tiny, tiny minority of the 28,000 people that have watched the video. In fact, a much bigger minority have decided to become a patron.
Thankfully, those legends will have the longer legacy. In a week, when the angry comments have stopped coming in, their patronage will inspire me to write new videos, by lifting the weight that was dragging me down.
Today, I had the welcome distraction of running a Social Games Lounge at the Norwich Games Festival. It was nice to teach games to regular folks - and remind myself what works and what doesn't.
Photo taken before we opened, when we still had a moment free!
It wasn't quite as social as I'd hoped. The lubrication of alcohol at a festival had made our tent lounge really effective at allowing to join groups of friends together. Today, we only managed to combine families a few times, but when we did it worked so well. (British) People are inclined to want to play with their own, but when encouraged they all got on with other families, and were too polite (British) to say no.
The big hits of the day were Just One, Herd Mentality and Flip 7. Wavelength was a big attention grabber, but it's an annoying game to understand and it didn't land for everyone.
Since it was the school holidays, we had more kids than adults, and we saw many games of Stomp The Plank, Dragon's Breath and Spaghetti, which all went great.
The minor regret is we didn't have much for two players. You want something you can teach in a minute, and I didn't have much that fit that criteria on my shelves at home. We ended up playing Flip 7 at two players, which works fine.
Now I'm on the train to Birmingham for the UK Games Expo. I'm excited to be engulfed in a passion for games. To remind myself that this hobby is growing and growing. This year I'm just walking the halls, researching games. But next year will be the release of my game. And I hope to host a live show.
If you'll be there, please look out for me and say hi - I'd love to meet you!
See you next week for a newsletter. And coming soon on the channel, we'll have a return to single game reviews - first time since Cascadia! But which game deserves it?
Actually yours,
Jon