Various updates in Summer 2024

IF YOU THINK NOTHING IS MOVING AROUND HERE CONSIDER THESE TWO RECENT UPDATES:

JULY 4 - update to the 2022 PBR collection added a batch of eight new materials, expanding the total asset pack size by about 7%.

AUGUST 1 - MASSIVE overhaul of the textures in TACC2018 with a few new materials and some 70% of the existing ones improved on in various ways. 

Mid or late August plans include small updates across existing 3d packs, a completion of the TACC2018 update filling in the remaining 30% that still needs reworking, and the release of two entirely new asset packs (European texture set, Middle East 3D Pack) plus launch of Crowdsourced Adventure [both website redesign and initial playable content in some form by end of the summer. [As in, all of this is aiming for the next three weeks!]

OTHER  NOTES:

There have been just under $10 in sales here this summer. I did see how the inclusion of the 2022 pack in the recent aid bundle managed to boost attention across the profile while also assisting children affected by war, and it did so, but that is now over and activity has subsided to a typical low level. 

I've opted to spend approx. $40 this month promoting the upcoming LABOR DAY SALE and it could be huge but my expectations based on prior events, are fairly low. Just because I've posted about all this in many spots across social media, my own websites, itch.io, and even spent on ads, drawing in a projected 1400 new visitors in a buildup that hits a peak on the sale day itself... and that cost, those hours of effort are TINY compared to time put into game dev, asset pack updates, etc. I am pouring several hundred hours into all that this month. I shut down Etsy on 'vacation mode' even up until later in August because I wanted to be able to do that and not be burned out doing it and also fulfilling and shipping multiple Etsy orders each day. 

So I have focused a 30 day duration on Itch.IO, purely this platform, this shop, beginning on July 30, ending August 30, and I am really hoping it isn't a colossal waste of a month of work. 

Any support you can offer in purchases, ratings, reviews, comments and useful feedback on the Labor Day sale event or leading into it, that would be AMAZING and I'm thankful to everyone who has been so supportive of this thus far. 

During that sale [a single day - Sept. 2, 2024] you will all be able to get a bundle with ALL OF MY ASSET PACKS for $1.75. This is years of work pooled into a gigantic collection of awesome stuff for less than the price of a fast food hamburger. I doubt the deal's ever been this good or included this much, as the 700+ additional asset files headed into that over this month will make this the cheapest price per asset file ever seen on this profile. About 4k files for a total price under $2, or over 20 asset files per penny spent. The only reason it is as astoundingly good a deal as it is is because you're jumping in so early - in a year or two when many of the included in-development games are actually done and the asset file count exceeds 7000, people will likely be raving about how they got it all for like $3-$5 and you'll be one of the happy earlier buyers who got all the same stuff for less than $2. 

And I do believe this is an amazing collection even as it is now with updates ongoing, many things not yet fully in position, and I would not be putting this much work in if I didn't genuinely believe this was valuable material that many indie developers could find EXTREMELY useful. I do believe that in a year or so there'll be thousands of people visiting this profile daily and dozens of sales each week, with 100+ ratings and reviews and comments. I believe it'll happen as I have seen it twice before. On eBay. On Etsy. Both began with drastically underpriced piles of stuff that went even more drastically cheap during sales. And in both cases years passed and no buyers showed. Then somehow one took a chance and was amazed that I exceeded all expectations and gave them a mountain of amazing creative work for literal pennies. That review led to more buyers and then more and more every passing month. eBay and Etsy both ran into issues by 2023. 

The pricing had spiraled up almost tenfold, there were hundreds of rave reviews, thousands of people looking at these shops at all times, hundreds of followers. And I JUST COULD NOT KEEP UP WITH THE ORDER WORK. So customer service eroded and pricing grew and eventually review scores took hits here and there. Not five stars all the time, sometimes 3 or 4 or worse, one. Because I was struggling to keep pace with the sheer volume of purchasing activity. Some items shipped late and some gaps occurred in communication. And the more busy it got the more orders I felt were failures and needed to be refunded partially or fully as an apology for delays. 

BUT the point of that is that insane snowballing phenomenon is about to happen here I think over the next 12-15 months. Which might work finally for the first time with product lines that are amazing but also digital in format. On eBay and Etsy I had to ship a ton of stuff. There was printing and custom artwork and packing and shipping and there was a lot of thought and care on each order as an individual thing. Materials costs too. But if the focus is on digital collections - indie games and ASSET PACKS then I can focus my time on not so much fulfilling individual custom orders but building on a mass of creative, cool,, and useful stuff accessible to EVERY CUSTOMER, and that can scale up to be HUGE is SCOPE. I see Itch.IO and I see more than a million games already posted by several hundred thousand people. I see Steam and there are MANY MANY Steam gamers. I see Unity, Unreal, Godot communities of indie developers each in the hundreds of thousands of people. And if over the next few years I can manage to sell a full collection to say 0.25% of the indie dev community that is probably $60,000+ right there, never mind game sales. And I can keep making stuff with that sort of income and donate a lot too even then.

Which, quite bluntly, I would love to do more. I feel my fascination with 3d art, graphics work, etc. is not in itself a noble cause as such, not like a teacher or doctor or firefighter. It's not a thing that turns lives around, saves people from dying. The amazing thing about charity though is it allows anyone with some cash on hand to change the world in a really helpful way. I know some groups like the Against Malaria Foundation, some of the most efficient and focused charity groups are able to save human lives on average a person's life saved for every $200 donated. That is so cool - say a child or teenager avoids a preventable but deadly illness for $200 and lives for fifty extra years because of that $200, that is a year of life given and the price is $4 for a full year of a human life that is allowed to happen because of JUST FOUR DOLLARS. To me it is worth it! I want to do more of that sort of thing! Plus I get to do what I love and make a statement in the creative work itself now and then, not just entertain but also leave people with the occasional thought about how we should treat each other and how we can live a life that matters and that we can feel better about having lived when it is all over. Because our lives will end, and we don't really exactly know when. So the question of, did we live those lives well when we had the chance, while they were there, that's a huge issue for us all to consider... we must look at those around us, everyone and see they are much as we are and as such should be treated well. Even those beings not human [animals] ought to be treated with some decency where possible. In the end, isn't that the core of faith, of every tradition of religion and philosophy at the simplest and purest core? That our lives aren't just about us [individuals] but about love and the value of all life together, whether we have the sense that a God is part of that broader mass of conscious experience or not. 

You may take issue with me. I am a broken and defective person with serious mental health issues. But at least I am not numb to that need the world has for real help.  

I still care and I still feel for people. I hope you all do too. It hurts sometimes, knowing the sheer suffering that exists in our own lives and all around us. But facing that darkness and caring enough to do something about it is part of what we are and should be as humans. 

Anyway... If you wish to share that note, or if you want to promote that itch sale I am setting in motion, or the upcoming web games 'Crowdsourced Adventure" or "Astounding Worlds" I am also going to offer the deal seen here: https://crowdsourcedadventure.com/help.html which for you would involve posting an image link somewhere, anywhere publicly online, then emailing me with a link showing where you posted it, and for each such link I'll give out at random an asset pack from my profile or, in rare cases, actual if low value Amazon gift card codes. The first 400 such links posted result in a reward. A single person can post multiple links across, say, multiple social media accounts, forums/bulletin boards, personal sites and blogs, etc. Every link of that sort will have some sort of reward sent to you. The idea is to take this viral but that does require a first wave of people taking advantage of it to get it rolling so... yeah.