Weekly Update [04-20-24] - IMPORTANT! (Patreon)

Alright agents! It's time to talk about serious stuff. I've been delaying this talk for a while now, as I wanted to think of the best way to navigate through the storm ahead, before making any crazy decisions. And although I'm not 100% happy with the path laid before us, I do think it's the best course of action for the time being.

First off though, let me spoil the ending and put you at ease: No, the Hex isn't going away. But we need to shift our fighting stance to insure we can keep in the fight.

Curiously the 'threat' doesn't come from the world of art or platforms shutting us down or whatever (at least not presently, and yes the Gum-pocalyse still looms in the horizon, but all of that is small compared to the other thing).

The 'threat' in this instance comes from my day-job. As some of you know from our talks in Discord and such, I've never actually given up my day-job in the film/ads industry. Hex in other words, is a side-project I've been running in parallel all this time, which is why the time I can assign to official Hex content as well as commissions is very tightly managed. And it's precisely the amount of 'time' that I can allocate to this side project that is directly under siege.

The Problem ...

You see, with the rise of AI applications in the industry (in my day-job), there have been waves of layoffs and shifts in the organizational structure, and I've had to say goodbye to many friends and co-workers simply because the company found them expendable, redundant or 'cost inefficient'. Of course to the ones who remained, this actually meant that our work loads increased, despite the presence of new 'AI systems'. Why? Because of course someone has to babysit these systems for them to actually work. AI is by no means a magic bullet, although the corpo-heads would love to believe otherwise.

In short I now have to do my normal job AND supervise automated operations, increasing my workload and squeezing my soul. And though I'm highly tempted to just jump ship and dedicate 100% of my time to the Hex, there is no certainty in this field either, due to the challenges you are all very familiar with.

The Plan ...

So what I feel we need to do to continue forth with the Hex project without crashing and burning is to gradually scale down operations to streamline the production line to prevent the alternative, which is total shutdown.

This of course won't happen immediately.

I have promised to keep with you fine ladies and gentlemen, so what we'll do is continue rolling with the current content deployment plan and then close down a couple of series/tiers as they reach completion.

The Black Book Project - Tie Breaker will be complete in 2-3 weeks. Once the Storybook is ready to launch, we launch as usual. But after that there won't be another one (for now), and the Shadow Agent tier will close down.

Then in about two months we'll finish up Classified: Maid for Combat and similarly, we'll launch as usual and the Elite Agent tier will close down.

Leaving the Veteran tier and the production of Operation: Firestorm active, and in fact allowing us to allocate some of the freed time from the other series to x2 the speed of Firestorm (yes that means accelerated completion).

In a way, this will mean a return to the ONE SERIES at a time production method, focusing all our efforts into telling a singular story at a quicker pace, and staying in the fight despite the incoming storm. Because whatever happens, one thing is for certain, I'm not going to stop producing Hex stories.

One way or another we'll push forth and adapt to the rising tide.

I guess now you know why I've been kind of mopey and sulky, especially on Discord. But I have confidence that things will work out for the better. Thank you so much for reading this massive block of text, and as usual, let me know your thoughts and feelings through the usual means. I always read all of your messages.

TLDR -- We'll initiate a rolling scale down of operations. Closing down T4 (Black Book) and T3 (Classified) upon release of the finished storybooks associated with them. Time will be reallocated to increase the production speed of the T2 (Strikeforce) Storybook, and from there on out, we'll produce ONE storybook project at a time at a x2 faster rate than normal. A sort of back to the good old days?

Once more, thank you very much for everything. Stand by for more juicy action next week and if I can pull it off, our much awaited Patreon Special featuring ... Luna in a sexy maid costume? Damn it, I can't wait.

Over and out! <3