Latest update on Patreon gift packages! (Patreon)

Hey guys, it's Rocco! Just earlier today, we saw one of the biggest video games of the year get delayed, and everyone was calm and cool and fine with it because they explained the delay in an honest and candid manner. Well, I guess we can cross our fingers and hope for the same reception if we're honest too? Thanks for the confidence boost, Cyberpunk or Neo or whoever!

So the latest with the Patreon gift packages- all of them up to now are in production. The Flame War Theater package was an absolute nightmare that held the whole thing up. First, it took a while to author it (not terribly surprising- we wanted it to be good). We had some software issues that slowed production down, but that was eventually solved. However, the replication company we use has been... unresponsive and slow, to say the least. It took forever to get anything going with their printing (funny story- we tried bringing back an older DVD title a year or two ago, and they took so long to get the project going that we just had to move onto other stuff. Lame, huh?). The places we used to turn to for reliable physical media have all disappeared. It's a sad state for disc-lovers like us. But it's not all bleak- we've found better ways to get this stuff done that will hopefully make this go quicker in the future. But between the authoring, the mastering problems, and the factory not really giving us their highest priority, it was a pretty awful experience, one that gummed up our entire production timeline for Patreon stuff. 

The Patreon has been a chance to experiment with a lot of different things. I think the FWT Blu-ray was one that pointed out the difficulty of having a gift that took lots of creative time from the whole team; it asks a lot more of us than giving a hat or a poster. We all wanted to make it a good product but... that kind of time devotion just pushed off all the other gifts in the pipeline and it became like a traffic jam. Live and learn. Some people also expressed that they didn't care for the idea of a Blu-ray as a Patreon gift, while others said they loved the concept. We'll see how everyone feels once it's out- I for one just feel bad it took so long. Hope you like it though!

The included playbill with the Blu-ray turned out rad, full of photos and info. As a thank you for waiting, your playbill will be personally signed by one of the Flame War Theater cast!

The package following that, the podcast-themed package with vinyl record soundtrack and USB drive, is following that into production too and will be on its way soon. The holidays (and impending Chinese New Year) was an additional hiccup, but our goal is to send these packages all out, possibly at the same time, in February. We'll keep you posted on that.

As for future gift packages, there will be one for the quarter that we've essentially already crossed into, and those of you who have been on here through that will definitely get that. Stay tuned for more details there.

Thanks again for your patience- even this post took too long to get out, but I was fighting a cold after our live tour. I guess that's what we're always doing- fighting something to get it to work the right way. Sometimes that fight is just a little harder than usual.

Thanks as always for your support,

-Rocco