So it is currently 5pm on this lovely Wednesday afternoon and I am sitting here on my laptop at almost a loss for words. Lets just say when I launched the Kickstarter Project I thought I was going to call it a night and finally get some rest and get back to promoting in the morning. After waiting many long days and weeks, then making sure everything was perfect, last night was the moment I had been waiting for for months. I was finally able to click the "Launch" button and as funny as it sounds, it was the first time in a long time i felt really excited to do something. I can't really explain the feeling completely but I can compare it to being a child again and asking your parents for a really awesome toy for Christmas, then coming downstairs on Christmas Day and seeing a gift all nicely wrapped up under the tree with your name on it. Now the only question is whether or not that gift is what you asked for, or was it just a regular gift that your parents found suitable. Are we getting that Omega Supreme Transformer? or are we going to be opening up that counterfeit Voltron that your grandma picked up from a swap meet........
So once again, its 10:30pm and I literally just finished altering some text on the kickstarter page and watched the video for the 50th time. I took a deep breath and proceeded to click that damn launch button with authority. I then logged into Twitter and posted that the project was now live and to please spread the word. So I then head to the kitchen to grab a glass of water and was preparing to wind down and get to bed. Daughter was asleep, wife was in bed ready to sleep, and I was heading back upstairs when I started to hear my phone blow up with text messages and Twitter updates......... What was going on? Did I make a mistake and people were trying to get my attention to correct something? I was getting nervous actually and then to my surprise I had raised $3500 in less than 15 minutes. I couldn't control my excitement and told my wife to go check it out ASAP. So we looked at the computer together and within minutes it was at $5000. I just chuckled like a little baby eating ice cream for the first time and started to get a real warm feeling of success and accomplishment. So I try to lay down for a few minutes and my phone is literally buzzing non-stop. Now I go back to my computer room and can't stop hitting F5 to refresh the page over and over. I find myself sitting there until midnight and all of a sudden the campaign is sitting at over $12000. Anyways, so 3am comes around and it slows down a bit but I think I see the number $13500 before I can no longer keep my eyes open. I can now get to bed with a great sense of accomplishment and some relief. Thank you everyone.
So morning comes and instead of getting texts, now my phone is ringing off the hook. During a few calls from friends in the scene and even a few family members I am checking Twitter notifications and see over 200 retweets and countless mentions from everyone. I can't thank you all enough and this is the largest sign of support I feel I have ever received in my life. I work hard week in and week out for the community and this might just be that time where I succeed and can continue to work hard for you all and make Super Arcade something incredible and more amazing than you can imagine. Not going to jump the gun at all as I realize that the goal is only about half way there, but to get there in this fashion is just shocking. We came out the gate guns blazing and can't waste this momentum. So here I am now with all this support, and now it's time for me to continue pushing forward towards this goal. Huge thanks to everyone that has motivated me and there are a few people I want to give special thanks to. Some of you may know Talis from attending our WNF tourneys as he is the taller gentleman with long hair constantly walking by my hair with fantasies of being Fabio. But all joking aside, he helped me put this project together on paper and is also helping me with all the web based duties. Another person is Eliver Ling who helped me put together the video you see on our kickstarter page. I would like to thank him as well as apologize for having to do the video over multiple times as I not camera friendly and a little difficult to work with. Thank you for your time and effort sir. And last but not least I would like to thank Tom Cannon for helping me adjust many things in my project as he himself recently ran a huge kickstarter campaign for the game "Stonehearth." Stonehearth Kickstarter Project Big thanks to Tom as he pretty much just point and fired all his knowledge in my direction and it is definitely paying off.
So that's about all I have to update for now and I will keep everyone up to date as far as how things are going during this whole ordeal. I try my best to keep up with all the feedback, and I even hit up reddit to keep those guys at peace with me cause we all can agree by now, Stream Monsters are part of the FGC! I need to get ready for tonight's tourney so I am going to cut it off here and see you again in about a week. Thanks for reading as always and talk to you all again soon.
oh yeah, heres the link to our kickstarter if you havent check it out already: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1079692033/super-arcade-project-2014
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Sunday, March 9, 2014
The time has finally come..... (and a couple touching stories)
So it's about 40 days past due and the amount of stress up to this point has been immense. There are so many feelings involved at this point that it made this whole "Kickstarter" thing that much more difficult to finalize. On one hand, we can just finally put to rest an arcade that has been struggling just to stay open, but on the other hand, we might have a chance to build something so great and awesome that the opportunity cannot be passed up. I have lost so much sleep over the past 2 months from all the thoughts of both success and failure. There has been a slight increase in revenue and I have definitely seen an improvement in effort of those who choose to visit us on a weekly basis. Whether they are coming for our tournaments or just our console casuals, the numbers have been very solid over the past 2 months since this blog was started. I am just glad people care and also make the effort to be here and support the scene at this point. There has also been a couple more touching moments of people who frequent my shop.
One gentlemen who plays in our Wednesday event and also comes to practice on Fridays had recently told me he had a brain tumor. This same person was also dealing with kidney stones but never made any excuses and just showed up week in and week out. I knew he was in pain at times but he roughed it out and then after a few weeks he showed up to WNF and told me that he just had his tumor removed the day prior. WTF? I can understand someone having a love for their hobby, and also have such dedicated loyalty to go out of their way to be here, but this dude literally just had his head opened and operated no more than a day ago. That in itself was already crazy to me and then this guy breaks through and places like top 3 that tourney. After his loss I noticed he was feeling a bit down so I went over to talk to him and offer a bit of advice and stuff. I told him that I knew he practiced really hard and studies the game like no other. I also told him aside from his work ethic he's a nice guy and shouldn't take it so hard. There will be other tourneys and he will have another shot soon. But he still seemed bummed out so I started telling him how it has been difficult for me still participate and not win like i used to. To go from being a top player and winning tourneys with ease, I was now struggling to place top 8 in my own shop. He then replies, "Watson, I know everything about you, I respect you, and you're like a brother to me." Man these guys always got some tear jerking lines to lay on me during tough time haha. But regardless, we shared a good moment here and by his recent placings I can tell he has put this loss behind him and continued to better himself and his game. Good work man, you know who you are, and thank you for your kind words and support.
There is also another guy who comes here and has helped me out in keeping this arcade open. He's a cancer survivor and always asks me about how things are going here all the time. I tell him the truth and it seemed to bum him out a bit. He told me that he was very happy that I kept the place open so long and that arcades had helped him overcome all the pain and torment he went through while battling his disease. Stuff like this is really touching because you can genuinely see how something as simple as a building with video games in it can become a paradise for people and an escape from reality for those who really need it. This person said without his friends and a place to get away to, he might not have lived through everything. I also thanked him for helping us out here and told him I would do my best to keep Super Arcade alive. These past few months have really been eye opening in that we lost a few good people in the FGC and then I hear these stories of people who look to us as a haven to get away from their problems. My issues are only financial and can be worked on while these people are literally fighting for their lives and struggling with just being healthy. This is another reason why I rarely complain because no matter how rough you think you have it, there are plenty of people out there who have it much worse.
So aside from these couple stories I have been working extremely hard in getting more estimates and making sure everything comes out perfect. I was going to release the kickstarter weeks ago but with the help and knowledge of a few professionals I decided to delay this and make it better before launch. I was also unhappy with the total amount that was required for all the remodeling and revamping so I launched a website selling t-shirts in which i will use the proceeds to lower the final goal we need for our project. I thought it would be a good idea because at least now people would be able to receive something material for helping and the overall goal needed to fund the kickstarter could be lowered making it that much easier to succeed. There is very detailed information on the kickstarter page for all of you to read and you can all decide for yourself if my project and the arcade is worthy of saving. So this will honestly be the final blog I write until everything is launched and you can expect to see that sometime before March 15th. After that feel free to ask me anything you would like as I have always made myself available for questioning and drop by our #NSFW streams on Friday night to stream monster it up and talk to us. We will probably be taking calls and stuff throughout the entire 30 days the kickstart campaign is running so don't be a stranger. Until then, wish us luck and talk to you all again soon.
oh yeah, heres the website you can go to if you would like to check out our shirts : http://superarcade2014.com/
thanks again,
watson
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