24 Hours Post Release

Good morning, Xine Readers!

As you may have heard, we launched Xine yesterday, releasing both Xine One and Cortex Lite.

Response has been entirely positive and of a, shall we say, respectable magnitude. I'm just kidding, we were blown away by how many Cortex fans—old and new—grabbed the zine and game. We had SEVEN HUNDRED AND FORTY downloads in the first twenty-four hours, close to evenly split between Xine and Lite (with Lite having a slight lead). This also landed us on itch.io's "New and Popular" physical games list, which didn't hurt those numbers at all.

We're already seeing discussion about Xine stuff on the Cortex Discord, which is about half the reason we organized the zine in the first place. If you're not already over there, swing on by, we'd love to talk Cortex with you!

Things are still shaking out—we're testing out running an ad on reddit—but we're really happy with Xine's first 24 hours. I feel like our numbers look promising for the future.

Speaking of which...

The Way Forward & the Budget to Get Us There

We've said in a number of places that we'd really like Xine One to be the first of many issues, and the necessary fuel to get us to that dream is money. We pay all our contributors—writers, artists, editors, and layout—because we believe this work has value and deserves to be compensated. We hope you believe the same.

And it turns out you do!

Of those 740 downloads, we've had 31 readers support the zine financially. That's a four percent conversion rate, which is pretty damn good for a zine that came out of nowhere.

That's also just so far: some of the folks in our initial rush of downloaders will be taking their time with the zine and game, realizing that they'd like to see more, and putting their money where their desire to see more is.

It takes about a grand to produce Xine, and in just twenty-four hours we are one sixth of the way there. As the wave of interest, eyeballs, and donations from the release continues for the next few days, I expect we'll see that climb. We've also got a good start on pledges through Patreon, which is what's going to get us from our initial surge to our eventual goal(s).

If you're considering supporting Xine and don't know which option is best, from our end, it's absolutely Patreon. A $1 monthly pledge is going to help us more than a $10 one-time donation, because it helps build momentum and community. Ko-Fi can also take recurring donations if for whatever reason you can't do Patreon.

But again—every little bit helps, and your support should be what works best for you and your life. Even sharing Xine and Lite on social media is a big help!

If you'd like the nitty-gritty details, we're posting transparent financials to the patreon as publicly-visible posts.

Whew!

I can't reiterate how happy we are with the reception that our kooky little idea has received in its first day out in the wilds of the Internet. I'm looking forward to seeing how far this initial burst of momentum gets us, and I'll be keeping you in the loop with regular progress reports here.

But mostly: thank you. Thank you for downloading our stuff, and thank you for pledging to the Patreon. We can't do this without the support of the Cortex Community, and it is absolutely fabulous to see members of that community step up (ha, see what I did there?) to help us make more cool stuff for everybody.

Peace out, much love, and Happy Pride,

—Miriam