January Update!
Maiamama’s videogame design philosophy centers around accessibility. This means she primarily uses open source and free software. This is why the Can You Survive a racism games are on the platform itch.io. She had been a customer on Choices made by Pixelberry studios and when they released a publishing engine she suggested we try to out. Claudia was nervous about collaborating with a commercial entity but they decided to take the risk.
It started off great. Maiamama published Final Test a visual novel and was livestreaming her designing session of 100K Praises to Gaming4Justice. Then we got unexpected news from StoryLoom that caused us to have to scrap most of our work and start from scratch with only a week before our deadline. It was last minute communication and we are now we are experience a similar emotional trauma to those going through tech layoffs. Ironically our independent nature was meant to avoid that.
We pivoted quickly after a healthy 24 hours of emotional processing. First we researched a number of alternative open source and commercially available videogame design software. We also looked at a variety of playing card and visual novel generators. Maiamama has come up with a brilliant redesign that retains the core aspects of the visual design, user experience, and production budget. This new design of 100K Praises gives her a lot more creator freedom. The only downside is now she’s doing a years worth of work in just a week!
@claudiaalicklove Tech companies are hiring and firing irresponsibly. They are creating platforms and inviting us to build on them and then destroying them because their plans were not sustainable. Our independent practice was just impacted by the tech layoffs. we will be designing from lessons learned this quarter. No more sharecropping for corporations. @Maiamama #pixelberrystudios#storyloom#r#rippleeffectt#techlayoffst#techlayoffs2024v#videogamedeveloperv#videogamelayoffs
♬ original sound – Claudia Alick
Message from StoryLoom Jan 23 7:03pm
Dear StoryLoom Readers and Creators,
It is with a heavy heart that we have to share some difficult news with you. After careful consideration, we are closing StoryLoom on February 29th, 2024.
In 2019 our studio set out to build StoryLoom, a platform where writers could find an audience for their visual storytelling. Despite the hard work of both our team and the independent writers contributions to the platform, StoryLoom has not met our goals for sustainability.
Until the end of February, Chapter costs will be reduced back down to 1 coin each to let you read as much as you want until 2/29/2024.
This decision was not made lightly and comes with a mix of emotions. Thank you to our fans for all the support and for being part of our community. If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our support team.
With heartfelt thanks,
The StoryLoom Team
Message from StoryLoom Jan 24 6:40pm
Dear StoryLoom Creator Studio Users,
As you know, we will be closing StoryLoom on February 29th, 2024. Starting January 24th, 2024, we will be disabling the publish functionality in the Creator Studio tool. During this period, we will not be accepting new submissions, and as such, users will not be able to submit new chapters or publish any content.
StoryLoom understands the importance of your creative work, and we want to ensure that you have time to prepare for this change. We strongly recommend taking the following actions to save your work before the platform is inaccessible:
Export Your Existing Content:
Export your existing chapter’s JSON files to ensure that you have a backup of your work.
Create Screen Recordings:
As the content export is very technical, consider creating screen recordings of your work through the preview generator for additional backup. This will provide the visual component to accompany your saved content.
If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out to our support team at [email protected]
Thank you for your support and creativity.
The StoryLoom Team
Play 100K Praises Here!
100K Praises