Q: What is the AshWednesdayGames Final Fantasy X 18th Birthday Stream-a-thon?
A: It's me playing Final Fantasy X non-stop and taking donations until we either raise $1000 or I die of JRPG-induced exhaustion
Q: What's the point of it?
A: To raise money to help my family out of the financial hole we've found ourselves in, to celebrate the 18th anniversary of an important game, and to launch my new Twitch channel with a bang
Q: Where and when can I watch it?
A: Twitch dot television slash ashwednesday games, friday 7/19 (Final Fantasy X's 18th birthday) @ 9PM EST and continuing all night and all weekend until I die or raise $1000
Q: Where can I donate?
A: Donations will be primarily taken through Streamlabs, which you can also access via the donation panel on my Twitch page. Alternate donation methods for if that somehow doesn't work for you (it requires Paypal) are Cash App (slightly preferred) and Ko-fi (seems to be available to more people in more countries). If you leave a message along with your donation, I'll read it on stream, even if it's to call me a bitch.
Q: Why do you need $1000?
A: Our financial situation has just been snowballing worse and worse and now we're kind of backed into a corner. We haven't paid rent this month, our electric is about to get shut off, I have a traffic ticket I have to pay ASAP, I have a tax form I have to file for my business that costs money, I owe multiple friends small amounts of money, etc. etc. etc., it's just all piled up. My wife is disabled and can't work so I support both of us (and our pets lol) by doing game development and delivering for DoorDash. But it's rough cause the income from both of those jobs is shitty and inconsistent/hard to accurately predict.
Q: Why would I donate, besides just sheer generosity?
A: Donating to keep us afloat financially directly supports the development of updates for Pocket Rumble, the development of my next game (a roguelike) and the launch of my new Twitch and Youtube channels where I'm going to be churning out content about RPG history, for people who are into those sorts of things.
Q: Why aren't you using GoFundMe (or some equivalent service)?
A: Just because doing it through Cash App and Ko-fi gets us the money a couple days faster, and some of the things we need money for are urgent. I'll be tracking the progress of donations on the actual Twitch stream, in the same way that events like GDQ do.
Q: What if you get $1000 really fast or get more than $1000?
A: I doubt this is how things will go but if we get $1000 too quickly I'll keep the stream going for fun/to see if we can get more. If we get more than $1000 but still a reasonable amount, we'll just keep it cause we need it lol. We need whatever we can get. But, in the highly unlikely scenario that we start to get so much money that it makes me uncomfortable, I do have a contingency plan, which is that I'll give the extra money to RAICES
Q: Who are you, anyway?
A: I mean this is sort of answered already but I'm Ash Wednesday, I'm a trans/nb game developer mostly known for being one of the lead devs of Pocket Rumble, a fighting game that you can find on Steam or the Switch eShop. I also tweet a lot and will have a lot of RPG-related stuff coming soon to my Youtube and Twitch
Here is a picture of me and my wife Wren so you can see how cute we are and want to give us your money.
Q: Besides Final Fantasy X, what kinds of games are you going to be covering on your Youtube/Twitch in the future?
A: It's actually going to be more about CRPGs than Japanese console games, for the most part, but I think anyone who's into RPGs will get a lot out of it. Some of the major series I plan to cover include Wizardry, Ultima, Might & Magic, the Gold Box games, Infinity Engine games, Geneforge & Exile/Avernum, Fallout & Arcanum, Elder Scrolls, etc., but also plenty of more obscure or one-off games and games from the recent CRPG revival boom too.
But I'll also be playing and talking about some Japanese games for people who are more into that, stuff like the Japanese Wizardry spinoffs of course but also stuff like Disgaea, The Legend of Heroes/Trails, Megami Tensei, etc. I'm probably not going to spend too much time covering Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, or specifically the Persona games because there's more than enough content about those games out there already but I might dabble into them a little occasionally, like this FFX stream.