UPDATE: Powering Through A STEAM of Decisions!
(As posted on our Patreon page)
Hey Everyone,
Heavy sigh
Yeah, I still breath and no, I’ve not suffered any medical issue or disappeared on all of you! No, matter what happens, short of death, there is no way (unless you all chased me out of Dodge with pitchforks and torches) that I would completely abandon all of you… and, even if I
DID die, the wife would post in here to let all of you know that I had or one of the guys that I work with (Epadder or Sierra3) would.
So, let me explain what has been going on over here and why for the length of time it has taken to post an update… You better relax, this is likely going to take some time, so get nice and comfortable… and hold on to your seats.
As some of you may know, on July 16th a particular incident took place that rocked the Mature Gaming Community, when a small group calling themselves ‘Collective Shout’ managed to convince Visa/Mastercard and PayPal to issue a memo to banks and payment processors to have Steam and
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to start policing and restricting
LEGAL content from their online stores.
Suddenly over 20,000 games and their creators were faced with illegal censorship, based not on
LAW, but on the personal morals and ethics (hard to believe they have either themselves, personally) of banking CEOs; regardless, suddenly things that are currently LEGAL became rejected and policed… and no longer allowed.
These new rules would make
ANYTHING from the “
Wicked Choices” storyline and games something that would be
BANNED in any store or any 3rd party website (like Patreon, etc.).
In one large brushstroke, the ability to make and sell our games was suddenly stopped.
When I made my last post to all of you, I wasn’t even aware of the full ramifications and as the days that followed, it would become much clearer that everything that I had been working on cannot be used… that it would never be allowed under these new rules and restrictions to release; and not just “
Wicked Choices: Bed Chambers”, but “
Agents of Karma”, “
Book Two” and “
Book Three” as well… without the rules being changed back, or an alternative payment system was instituted by these sites and stores to get rid of these stupid rules, those games wouldn’t be able to be sold either!
In short, there was no way that the stuff that I had been working on would be able to see the light of the day.
This was unacceptable to us, but we couldn’t change the story… it would be impossible to do, as the story completely hinged on the elements that was now being ‘rejected’ and it had been so wrapped up into the mythos of the story and everything would fall apart without it.
So, after much discussion about what to do…. Such as: Quit completely? Wait till everything, hopefully, blows over (which it doesn’t appear will)? Change the storyline completely and end up making a watered-down piece of crap? Or, just start a new series?
I didn’t want to start a new series… not without the last one being done. I have 150 years of the “
Wicked Choices” timeline planned and plotted out already, going
LONG PAST the ‘
Age of the Antichrist’… and some of the elements of the Antichrist couldn't now be stripped out of those series, without throwing all of the main backstory (the Antichrist’s story) into complete chaos and doing so would be
CRIMINAL to me… as events in those games are results of the things that happens in the Antichrist’s series.
Thus, after thinking about it, the only thing I could come up with was to
BACKTRACK in the universe of “
Wicked Choices”, create a game and story that would predate the Antichrist storyline… a
PREQUEL that would open the door for the Antichrist, as well be a tie-in to “
Wicked Choices: Bed Chambers” that we could work on, keep free from the content that is now being rejected by Steam/
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and others and hope we’d be able to return to the original storyline (because hopefully an alternative payment processing or these new bullsh*t rules would get dropped) by the time we were finished with this new
PREQUEL.
However, this would mean me having to complete come up with and write an
ENTIRELY new story that I hadn’t developed, it would mean
AVOIDING topics and subject matter that, while
LEGAL, was now considered
TABOO and
BANNABLE… it would also
NEED to keep the same
FEEL of
WICKED CHOICES and be
WORTHY of being part of that universe… and it had to be
GOOD and
ENTERTAINING for all of
YOU!!
So, I went to work… crafting an entire new storyline, plot and game that would satisfy our strictest goal of making it feel worthy of being in the
Wicked Choices universe and the other criteria that we now had to follow to still be allowed to sell and distribute it, under the new rules… and this wasn’t an overnight process, it took several weeks… trying to find ways to tie it into the other games that we still had yet to do, while making it unique and something fun for people to play.
It is
NOT easy to come up with a new game… figuring out plots, different storyline paths due to choices made by players, figuring how choices and story would tie into the future games, design the game mechanics that would need to be employed, new artwork, all new characters and their backstories and how they will fit into the
Wicked Choices Universe, Game UI, come up with an entirely new Patreon Page and artwork for it… needless to say: A
TON of planning, considerations and work… a nightmare to do when you have to do a quick about-face, setting down everything that you’d been working on and abandoning it… even if temporarily.
Bad enough, it wasn’t the first time we’ve had to do this, when we decided to no longer use Unity for “
Agents of Karma” and Epadder went to task to learn how to work in Godot/Redot so that we could do what we planned to do for “
Agents of Karma” a freaking year ago!!
Anyway, to speed up the process in the storyline, plot and pathing department, I decided to partner with someone that would be a co-creator and be able to help me keep my sh*t together and plot out a solid 12 chapter game, complete with paths, choices and storyline continuity… so, going to let you know that with this new game we (Epadder, Sierra3, the wife and I) will have a new credit to our team…
xAI’s Grok.
Yeah, that’s right, I used the AI created by
xAI to help me speed up the process and will be giving him/it credit in this new game… so, if you are against AI,
TOUGH SH*T, this game won’t be for you. I
HONESTLY wouldn’t have been able to freaking do what I’ve been able to accomplish in the timeframe that I've done it without
Grok to help me make sure that story continuity, storyline pathing and all new (unbannable) events could be crafted for everyone.
That said, the new game will be a
PREQUEL taking place just before Daryl Crawford Sr. passes away and Daryl Crawford Jr. is excommunicated from the family business, as well as loses control of the family, and its assets, with all of it going to the Antichrist.
Its subject matter for this new game will be the first step to Daryl Crawford Jr.’s goal that will be central to “
Wicked Choices: Bed Chambers”, as he tries to establish his own place outside of the protective bubble that he lived in while working under his father.
In “
Wicked Choices: The Legacy of Pan”, you will be a
NEW PROTAGONIST (Bohdi Johndal) who must team up with a couple of girls who are video streamers, forming your own mini-Scooby kind of group in a Supernatural Style-Esque game that will have you performing detective work, interviewing eyewitnesses, romancing and trying to uncover what has descended into your new home of Garnet City and wreaking havoc in it… by whatever means necessary at your disposal.
So, I haven’t abandoned you, or our series… we just had to side-step some unnecessary bullcrap, work like crazy and have been steadily creating the new characters, locations, sets, outfits, artwork, story, advertising and everything else that needs to be done, because we had to shift gears.
Additionally, with the money made from this new game, it is my intent to use the portion of that money to pay the exorbitant Authorization Holds (or what I call
EXTORTION FEES) that an Internet Merchant Account charges against clients who opens their own online store for potential chargebacks…
…that’s right, we are going to open our own Internet Merchant Account and Gateway and online store to sell our games, using the same processing house that I secured for Renderotica and who specializes and deals with adult content (i.e.:
PORN), not just for Renderotica, but also for the majority of the adult websites and Las Vegas businesses.
This is going to be our answer in the event that Steam and others continue to bend the knee or continues to enforce creators to remove
LEGAL ‘Mature Content’ from their games or prevents the sales of those games.
So, I
DO have a plan for a way in which for us to return to our original business plan and completing the Antichrist’s series, but to do so, we are going to need several thousands of dollars in which to have in Authorization Holds, as well as pay for the Gateway, SSL, Credit Card Processor, Web hosting and server (which we will own ourselves, so groups like ‘Collective Shout’ can’t pressure the server company into shutting us off)… in short, I’ll be going back to owning my own online store and website.
If Steam won’t sell our stuff, we’ll sell it ourselves and hope that people and all of you will come to buy from us directly!
At any rate, we are not allowing ourselves to be defeated by this new situation… instead we will be creating the
PREQUEL game and use it as a means in which to entertain all of you, generate the income that is needed to purchase our own Internet Merchant Account and get back to the original series without someone trying to control or shame us into submission.
And, as you will see, by watching the trailer that I created (which had to be hosted behind the paywall because of ‘nudity’ or can be found for free viewing on our X page), for the new game, that I’ve also been using the time to learn
NEW THINGS to help make our games and storytelling even better for all of you… while the trailer isn’t perfect (since I am still learning the processes, but getting better and also learning how to video edit), I am pretty proud of the results and excited for our future… and we hope you will be as well!!!
Anyway, this is already four pages long now and I honestly
REALLY need to get back to work here if I have any hope of getting something out to all of you soon; but
YES, we are working;
YES, I am doing
MUCH BETTER health-wise (which we can get into another time)… and though we’ve been frustrated, I’ve been busy, but better; and
NO, we’ve not died or abandoned anyone.
Much Love,
Jack and everyone at ASLPro3D
Announcement Trailer for "Wicked Choices: Legacy of Pan"
