tl;dr - The sequel to The Gamers: The Shadow Menace is already shot, you can watch it this year, we just need your help to finish editing. Pledge → get the new Gamers first.
Attack of the Pwns Editing Progress
Twenty-four years ago, Rogar, Newmoon, Nimble, and Ambrose (sorry, Magellan) were torn from the fantasy world of Fartherall to modern day Earth in The Gamers.
The film premiered in November of 2001, was shipped on VHS out of a garage in Tacoma in 2002, and it became a global cult hit. The Gamers inspired sequels, series, games, comics, books, live shows, and countless derivatives—all part of one epic story!
Now the original heroes are back for a new adventure… with a real-world twist: the new Gamers episode is already shot and we’re editing it right now.
With your help, we’ll be able to finish editing, music, and special effects, cover our production costs, and release The Gamers: Attack of the Pwns this year!
In their ongoing quest to track down The Shadow’s operatives on Earth, our heroes learn about a politician whose private militia may hide a supernatural secret. Using the unpublished Fartherall Modern supplement, they take on fantasy adventures in our modern world, culminating in an explosive turn-based car chase.
Need a recap of the adventure to date? We have you covered!
Attack of the Pwns also completes the first story arc for Aaron Williams’ comic strip The Gamers: Nodwick’s Tale. The full arc is included as a bonus reward in this campaign.
The Gamers is a comedy series that imagines what would happen if player hijinks at the game table actually played out in the game world. It has been featured in countless reviews, videos, and tributes, winning awards and accolades around the world, and garnering millions of views streaming on Netflix (2009-2012), Amazon Prime (2012-2020), and YouTube.
How Does Attack of the Pwns fit into the larger story?
The second part of The Gamers: The Series Trilogy, Attack of the Pwns picks up where The Shadow Menace left off. This story of the fantasy characters stuck on Earth will conclude with The Gamers: Revenge of the Myth.
Meanwhile, The Gamers: Dorkness Falls, produced by Cabin Nine Films, will resolve the story of the players from Earth who were transported to Fartherall at the end of The Gamers: Hands of Fate. You can follow the production of Dorkness Falls at this link.
One of the longest-running independent film franchises in history, The Gamers is finally nearing its epic conclusion!
The complete Gamers chronology
Created by Matt Vancil, new films, episodes, supplements, books, and comics from The Gamers saga have been written by Vancil, Nathan Rice, Ben Dobyns, Thomas Gofton, Andy Dopieralski, Aaron Williams, Owen Stephens, Larry Dixon, and Gabriel Gonda. The Gamers is released under the Shared Cinematic Universe License Agreement (scu.la) which encourages both fans and professionals to tell their Fartherall stories in a massive shared universe.
Many creative and business partners have produced and distributed Gamers films and supplements since 2002, including Dead Gentlemen Productions, Epic Level Entertainment, Paizo Publishing, Zombie Orpheus Entertainment, Lynnvander Studios, Rogue Genius Games, and Cabin Nine Films. Attack of the Pwns is produced by Dead Gentlemen Productions and Zombie Orpheus Entertainment.
Attack of the Pwns brings back the original cast of The Gamers (2001) plus the cast of The Gamers: The Shadow Menace (2017). Produced by Dead Gentlemen Productions and Zombie Orpheus Entertainment, it is directed by Gamers veteran Gabriel Gonda. This episode is written by The Shadow Menace alumni Gabriel Gonda, Larry Dixon, and Ben Dobyns.
Thanks to the input of hundreds of Gamers fans in a recent poll, we've reconfigured our reward structure for the manufacturing and shipping chaos of the modern era.
We ARE making DVDs and Blu-rays.
We are NOT raising prices. Digital downloads and discs remain at the same prices ($25 and $50) that we established in 2012 with JourneyQuest Season Two.
We ARE providing the choice to opt-out of any/all physical rewards. All physical campaign rewards are provided in print-quality digital form for backers who want to skip shipping and print locally. Every backer survey will let you select which rewards you want physically and which digitally. Digital backers will receive their rewards much, MUCH sooner than backers receiving physical items. (In many cases, the cost of printing rewards locally will even be lower than the cost of shipping them!)
We ARE providing alternative manufacturing and shipping for backers outside of the USA. A second run of DVDs and Blu-rays will be manufactured in Europe and will ship from within the EU. Those discs will never enter or leave the USA.
We budgeted a stretch goal to unlock physical Gamers dice and miniatures. If achieved, this will add those items to the $115 pledge level. That level will also let us improve the packaging for the Ultimate Dungeon Showdown booster pack. This is the "we pay all of the tariffs" option. It's the only way to get access to those steel molds that can only be made in China.
The Gamers isn’t just a series, it’s now also part of a game!
This campaign includes a booster pack for ZOE’s Ultimate Dungeon Showdown, a combat card game that brings together the entire ZOE multiverse into a fast-paced party game (with optional deck-building rules for deeper strategy). You can grab the Gamers booster pack in several reward levels, as well as add-on the Ultimate Dungeon Core Game if you don’t already have a copy. Learn more over here.
Plus, backers at $250 and up can submit themselves (or a character they own) to appear as an exclusive, playable Ultimate Dungeon Showdown card!
At pledge tiers $250-$1000 we'll print and send you enough copies of your card to share with other players. At $2500 and above (our Producer tiers) we'll also include your card in all physical reward levels!
When we released The Gamers: The Shadow Menace, some viewers complained that it was "too woke." They didn’t like that we included gay, non-binary, and POC characters.
In an era when politicians want to erase marginalized people and their stories from society, we won’t be pressured into erasing them from our movies. The world is a big, wonderful place and we’re going to continue to represent that diversity on screen…
…and we’re going to continue telling stories where standing up to evil is a moral imperative, no matter the cost.
As you know, moving products into and out of the USA this year has become unpredictable, to put it mildly.
Where will the world be in six months? Or twelve? Honestly, we don’t know. Tariffs, cuts to the USPS, and general economic uncertainty make planning more difficult.
After our experience with how badly the pandemic delayed production and delivery of JQ4, we knew that we had to shoot Attack of the Pwns when a production window opened up. Now, the hardest part is already over!
Here’s what we’re doing to mitigate external global factors and get your rewards delivered:
Crowdfunding AFTER the episode is shot, eliminating the biggest risk.
Budgeting now for current tariffs and freight costs, including these costs in the campaign
Handling all non-US shipping from outside the US (via Canada, Hong Kong, and/or Europe)
Communicating regularly with fulfillment partners and warehouses
Offering print-at-home digital files for backers who want to skip shipping. (Printing your rewards yourself, at a local facility, will almost certainly be cheaper than the cost of shipping)
As long as the Internet continues to work, we’ll be able to deliver the final digital products to you. For physical rewards, we’ll navigate physical supply chains, political and economic disruptions, weather emergencies, and infrastructure breakdown along with the rest of the world, in partnership with our established suppliers. We’ll keep you up to speed with regular, transparent updates. And we'll get your rewards into your hands.
Due to rapidly changing shipping and tariff costs, exact charges for shipping (and any new tariffs) will be calculated and charged just before physical fulfillment.These charges will be made via your backer surveys and we'll communicate with you at each step of the way.
TIMELINE
We expect to fulfill all digital rewards by December of this year (2025). Physical rewards are likely to take longer. We would normally estimate an additional six months, setting our delivery deadline at June of 2026. If that timeline changes we'll keep backers updated.
