Storytime Post (Patreon)

maybe you’ve already wondered for quite some time: Who the hell are Steve and Guuii and how did they end up on Patreon sparking your interest? 

Well, welcome to storytime.

In this post we want to formally (or at least more so than before) introduce ourselves.

We realized that for you guys to understand our vision and goal for WildLife it might be helpful to know who we are and where we come from.

So lean back, take a sip of mulled wine (or whatever it is that you guys drink this festive season) and enjoy a trip into history:

Our story starts in 2010, when Steve and Guuii started studying at an Academy for Games and Movies.

Steve, who already exceeded his teachers’ knowledge with Maya (3D program) started studying Film whereas Guuii strived for a degree in the diverse arts of 3D animations for games. 

They started spending their free time at the academy working on different projects in a shared room provided by the academy. One of these fateful days they glanced at each other and realized: together they could do great things. Shortly after their eyes first met, they started working on private side projects.

In 2013 when they were both about to graduate from the academy, they decided that for some reason it would be a lot of fun to make a Disney/Pixar-style 3D sex short movie. And let me tell you, fun it was.

After celebrating their graduation wildly (as one does), Steve was hired by MPC and moved to London where he was pretty quickly promoted to a “Technical Director - Lead”. 

Guuii started working as an animator at a game studio in Berlin and doing freelance jobs on the side.

They both put in time and effort, striving to become better and better at what they loved so dearly.

After slaving away for quite a while, defining their arts, it was finally time for Steve and Guuii to meet again after having missed working together for already too long. Guuii booked a flight to London, stood in front of Steve’s door and again, they looked at each other and started yet another project designed for adults:

Jizzney Productions was born (never was a pun more intended).

Remembering the fun they had creating the unnamed Disney-3D-porn and realizing how much better they had become since graduation, they locked themselves in and spent two weeks creating several porn shots inspired by Disney. Interested in the world’s feedback, they released them on tumblr. Not only did they have a really good time also the numbers of subscribers skyrocketed within days. They both thought: maybe we can actually do this for a living at some point.

Looking at the growing and growing numbers of subscribers they realized that one of them could be one of Disney’s lawyers. Fearing a highscale lawsuit and/or getting blacklisted, they decided to take the account down.They wiped out all of their content and said goodbye to Jizzney Productions:

Jizzney Productions  † 20.04.2014 - 15.5.2015 †  

Guuii flew back to Berlin: Their everyday-jobs were calling for duty. 

Both couldn’t forget their thought about joining forces and making a living off of what they loved. 

By the end of 2015, they were ready to make the leap of faith - daring to go for their dream.

Their passion and spirit brought together ten people from all over Europe who worked on a first prototype they presented to an investor in a meeting room reeking of money in May 2016.

The team had a first deal ready for grabbing. The excitement of the opportunity was overshadowed by a distant feeling of it not being good enough when another investor came along. A major international porn company signalled interest and Steve and Guuii went into deep negotiations with them. Plans were made, business plans were written, the team moved to Berlin, the milestones were negotiated and then the whole deal crashed.

Steve and Guuii sat down and thought long and hard about their dream. 

What was it they envisioned so strongly while studying at the academy? 

What kind of content did they want to create?

What was it that sparked and peaked their creativity?

The project they had running while talking to investors trying not to lose their dream out of sight had become a money cow: Free to play content in which people could buy avatars of pornstars to customize to their desire and play around with in Virtual Reality all while money sharks looked them over the shoulder controlling their creations.

Not at all what both envisioned a few years ago:

Creating premium games with high quality-gameplay and visuals, an enticing story with a vast and inviting background.

Turning their backs to the easy money, they looked into the future and remembered their passion for creating content they both loved:

WildLife was born

Looking into their options of how to actually afford spending all of their time on their vision, making it grow and inviting people back into their dream, they turned to Patreon.

And it worked. You guys (looking at you first subscribers) saw potential and the first batch of money came in. Steve and Guuii moved into a shared apartment to save costs, work hard and - if creativity allowed it - 24/7 on their project. Soon after the first freelancers joined the fun and excitingly different project.

The first build was released as a prototype without written code and based on unreal-blueprints.

Jump to September 2017, when it was time for Steve and Guuii to rehire people from their former team (who were still very involved in the vision) to recreate the game in C++ code to make it scalable in the long run. 

Steve and Guuii sat down and wrote up new documents to plan the production until the end of 2018 - only this time they really did it for their dream.

--- 

This is where we are now, writing this. We use most of the money to pay professionals to work on our game. Apart from that we have to pay rent and eat food - to keep us going in order to create what we (and hopefully you) love.

We are extremely grateful for this strong and supportive community which is actually making this project happening. 

Of course we are not yet close to a goldmaster build. There is still a lot to do, people to hire, creativity to flow and problems to solve. 

To let you even further in on our vision, we will post a roadmap for our project within the next few days. In it you will see where we want WildLife to be by the end of 2018 and the steps toward that goal.

Without you WildLife wouldn’t exist as it does. You allow us to independently create a project. Your feedback shapes how the game develops. 

Our vision, your faith and ideas, this community - together we make WildLife happen. And for that we thank you.

We look forward to 2018.

Yours truly

WildLife Team