Hello friends, 

As we draw close to yet another photo finish (it'll be fine! (Probably (I hope... (🤞))), I just wanted to share with you all the road we took to get here. Some of this will be familiar to most of you, but I just wanted to offer a deeper peek behind the curtain, and a trip down memory lane.

Sometime in 2015,Ben and I were in an elevator, descending from some meeting in downtown Seattle, when they pitched me the idea of The Gamers: the Series. The characters from the original Gamers (the original original. Gamers fans seem to be in two camps. Those who saw the 2002 short film, and are completely unaware of the rest, and those who think Dorkness Rising is the first one) are stuck in our world, and fish-out-of-water shenanigans ensue. Then we'd make a Leverage-style modern day heist series, with new players playing them. And it would all connect somehow. I didn't get it.

After I read the script for The Shadow Menace (and watched all of Leverage), I got it. We had a format, and a plan. We shot mostly on the PLU campus and it went swimmingly. 

The premiere at Gen Con 2017 was amazing. The Gamers were back! We got to work right away on planning the next installment. 

As you may remember, there was a global health emergency a few years back. It derailed JQ4, which was already funded, but unable to shoot, which in turn derailed GTS. Even as things started to open up again, there were several false starts. We tried to get it going in 2022, to align with the 20th anniversary of the first film, but delays kept happening. 

What finally broke through the logjam was getting support from our state film office. We successfully applied to a small budget incentive program that would cover part of the funding. Once that was in place, I was put in touch with some new producers (shout out to Meghan and Jonathan!) who grabbed the ball and ran. 

We got to work securing our locations. Fortunaely the government support gave us access to several shooting spaces, including Harbor Island Studios in Seattle

We were all set, except for the two most challenging locations to find: forest roads we can drive cars on, and a sailboat.

I had a lead on the forest roads: a park in Tacoma that was a former housing development, and had overgrown roads.

The boat was more of a challenge. A sailboat is a big ask, and nobody we knew had something suitable. Plus, in the middle of winter, a lot of people have their boats put away for the season. In desperation I reached out to an old acquaintance, who put our request in their yacht club newsletter, and that's how we found Allen and his boat Afterglow. 

With these last pieces in place, we were good to go. 

Due to actor availability, we had to break the shoot up into two legs. This wasn't so bad for us, as on Gamers shows we usually shoot all the game table stuff first, so that worked out. We knocked out all the gaming scenes in 3 days in October.
 

The bulk of our shoot took place in February, enduring cold weather outdoors, cold studios indoors, and night shoots.

And that brings us to now. It's been years of trying to get this made and we are so close! If you have friends who are interested, but haven't gotten around to pledging yet, now would be the time to remind them. 

Wow, thanks for a great day of pledging yesterday! With over $7000 in new pledges that came in, we've now raised 65% of our goal. However, we still need to make it to $145,000 in the next 51 hours to renew The Gamers.

Click Here to Pledge

But if you're here, reading this update, you know the drill (and yes, there are enough people following this project to fund us instantly, so we're hopeful that you'll join us before the campaign ends!)

We've also seen a few requests for rewards and features that already exist, so in case you missed it in the wall of campaign text, here are the details: