The story of how WVM came to be. (Patreon)

(Sorry for the random post, I just wanted to talk about this.)

(I have no clue what all I'll be including in this, I'm sort of just going to start typing and see where it goes. This is something I've wanted to talk about for some time but never knew the best place to do it or the best way to do it. So fuck it, let's go.)

So WVM is 6.5 months old. First release was on Aug 23rd 2019. In that time I've released an update every single Thursday. (Besides this last one, it was the first one I've missed.)

WVM has been insanely successful, something I never imagined happening. I'd like to tell the story about how it all came to be.

The story starts when I was 18 (I'm 22 now). I was living in Pennsylvania with a few of my family members and was deciding about college. It was actually only a few days after my high school graduation when we got a call about my grandmother being sick. She and my grandpa lived in North Carolina, so we packed up a car and went down to be with them. 

I was pretty excited to see my grandpa. I hadn't seen him since I was a little kid and he was always a favorite of mine. A real kind man that would do anything for anybody that always wore a smile on his face. So I was pretty shocked the first time I saw him again, he was sitting by the hospital bed holding my grandmother's hand with his shoulders sunk and his head down.

It became clear really quickly that my grandma wasn't going to get better. My grandparents were the only ones in my family that lived in NC and there was no way my grandpa could take care of himself.

At first we tried to convince him to come with us, but it's not easy to tell a grieving man that's having to watch his wife of 58 years pass away slowly that he now has to leave his home as well. But something had to be done.

With me being at the point in my life that I was, I volunteered to stay with him. I didn't realize at the time that I would still be here now, but it's one of the things I'm proud of myself for doing.

That wasn't the end of the problems though. I had to get a job to help support us but that wasn't anything new. I grew up broke, there were days I didn't eat and days I would sleep in a car/van. Despite that fact I was super lucky to have the parents I had. We didn't have money but I knew they were trying their hardest. They weren't perfect and made a ton of mistakes in their pasts that made it hard for them to find and keep jobs. But I never doubted them, they were doing their best to provide for me.
I'd like to think that's where my work ethic comes from. But anyway, I applied for jobs right away. I got one very quickly as a janitor for a grocery store, within my first week I was moved to be a stocker. About a month later I was lead stocker. I did that for a while, but all of my good employees and friends were leaving because of the store manager. Not to mention my grandpa was getting worse and needed me to be around more.
This is also around the time I got into playing AVN's.

A friend of mine told me about a business he was starting. He offered me a part time position and I took it. I wasn't used to having that much free time. I used some of the funds I saved up to buy a PC. (fx8350, 8GB ram, 1060 6GB)
Due to me having more free time I was playing more VN's. I was having trouble finding one that was exactly what I wanted and thought about making my own.
That led me to search about how they were made. Which led me down many different roads until I found Daz3D. I remember downloading it and playing around with all of the free assets. I was having so much fun with it. I stayed up the entire night just tinkering with stuff and watching videos about it. It was honestly the most fun I had in years.
I ended up blowing my paycheck on some more assets. Those include Shauna and Azel.
Which was pretty stupid of me at the time since I was living paycheck to paycheck and didn't have the money to blow.

I started to form the characters, I already had the story in mind.
(And this was my first time expressing myself through an art form. I've never written anything before or done anything remotely close to art lol)
Every moment that wasn't spent at work or taking care of my grandpa was spent on making Day 1. I made a ton of mistakes but it was the best I could do at the time. My pc couldn't really render scenes with more than one character and struggled when I rendered with backgrounds. But I made it work.
I never thought about making money from it or even having a patreon at all. I was just making it to make it. I heavily debated ever sharing it.
When I was finished with it I made the patreon as a way to share it. I was racking my brain on what I could have as tier rewards and that's when I realized that I wanted to do this weekly. I mean I was going to do the work anyway, might as well share it.
I posted the game on reddit. Then it landed on other sites.

I honestly expected people to hate it, but the opposite happened. I got a few patrons and it blew my mind that someone would actually give me money to do this, and tbh it still does.
I started work on Day 2 and the patron numbers kept growing.
I grew more and more motivated and it still hasn't stopped to this day. I was able to upgrade my PC and now I have two of them. I was able to quit my job and focus all of my time on WVM.
I love my patrons and players, you've all improved my life in ways I'll never be able to properly thank you for. I try my best every day to grow as a developer and as a person. I want to make everyone proud. That's why I took last week so roughly.

I often think back to that time in my life that I was sleeping in the floorboard of an old van with an empty stomach. It motivates me to work as hard as I do. It reminds me of where I came from and the values I have.
I also think about that awful phone call we got about my grandmother 4 years ago. That phone call led to all of this. I know I'm not doing what she would want me to be doing but I hope she would be proud of me. I'm taking care of her husband the best I can and he's been talking about wanting to see her soon. It's really hard some days, it's not easy seeing someone you love deteriorate. I've been through a lot in these past years and I'm super lucky to have the understanding and supportive community that I have now. I owe you guys everything.

I'm sorry for the book, I just wanted to talk about this. I left a lot out due to personal information and all that. But yeah, that's the story of how I got into a place where WVM became possible. I may elaborate on some of these things in the future but for now this is where I'll end it. I love you guys. Teasers and second set of renders coming tomorrow. <3