Patreon and Public Release Launch Day

Hi everyone,

Thank you for joining or staying with us while we’ve reorganized and shifted to a new, collaborative approach to this project. It’s such a great feeling to see it pay off, with the first (and long-awaited) new public release going out today!

The release was a team effort from some amazing and dedicated creators. Many of the team are working professionals in their areas of contribution, who also love our characters, story and gameplay as much as you do. They’ve turned their talents (and a large numbers of hours) toward making this game something special.

Thanks to you, we’ll be able to keep that going with paid commissions to keep the game and story updated with regular, fresh content. I hope to have regular discussions with you about this, so your ideas, thoughts and opinions can become part of that development.

I want to address the concern I’m sure many supporters have - that PE’s patrons have been paying for development during a five-month lapse in which there were no published updates or posts on Patreon.

By now, most of our community know that April Ryan, who was chiefly responsible for PE’s development for most of the last two years, had to take an extended break to handle a personal crisis. Since our former Patreon site was April’s, communication there lapsed alongside updates. I wish the rest of us had been in a better position to pick up where April left off, but it took a long time before we were able to gauge if and how April would be returning, and to organize our group of freelance contributors to resume updates without her.

Given the length of time April has been involved, and the thousands of hours she invested in the project, we owed her the benefit of the doubt. I fully support her and her decision, even as I also acknowledge that a months-long lapse of communication was the wrong way to handle things on Patreon.

April, however, was not the only member of the project’s dev team. While she was gone, writing and development on the story continued, and none of that effort during the project’s silence will be going to waste. A huge piece of one content area, The Club, is now in with this update. The remainder, along with completed areas of the Cheerleading arc, are due in the next few versions.

So what’s to prevent April from leaving and putting this all in jeopardy again, you might ask?

While I’m very glad April is back, and still an extremely valuable part of PE, the team and the project have morphed considerably in her absence. Taking into consideration that April might not have been able to return, we reorganized entirely how we plan, develop content, publish and communicate. We don’t really need to depend on any one person to keep it on track anymore.

While I’ve taken on the role of project lead, we’re now a team of contributors with shared online content and tools, and a collaborative process of planning and decision making. In the month since, we’ve also added several more team members, including both coders and writers, to further prevent any area’s success from falling to anyone alone.

This public release starts a regular rhythm of updates, with more content and features already written and being written. I invite you to see for yourself what we’re doing and what we’re up to, ask questions and offer your inputs, since our online tools are publicly open and available to look at.

Going forward, I look forward to having frequent conversations here on Patreon to get your ideas, feedback and thoughts on where we’re going. Thank you for playing our game, being part of our community, and giving us your support.

XOXO,

Saoirsa