Raid Area 51 Game
Storm Area 51 Game Allows you to raid area 51 with friends.
Please Read First
Message from current Developers: The game is LIVE and we are continuing development on it. We took over the game from Blake in February of 2020 and continue to improve and optimize the game for everyone. We thank Blake for creating this game and allowing us to continue the work on it.
The Raid Area 51 Game Story
This game started off as a meme idea between me and my friend and has since then become so much more than that.
My name is Blake Gillman, I'm 19 years old and all I've wanted to do my entire life is game development. I'm autistic & lack any sort of a social life as I've dedicated almost my entire life now to games. Every day after school through both Middle School & High School I did game development, learning programming, learning how to model, to make textures, the basics of UI concept design, networking, marketing, etc.
The first time I released a game on Steam was in 2018 (Deep Space), just a little over a year ago. It was met with overwhelming negativity and I thought I wasn't cut out to be a game developer, I thought that my career was over, and I became suicidal and about a week later quit my job.
But as I said, I've been doing game development every day for years and I knew I could do better. By early of this year I had started my new job of picking up game development programming contracts which usually lasted a month or two in order to get by. I kept getting told that I was the fastest & most efficient programmer they'd ever worked with, but this didn't help my confidence, after all my last big game was such a failure. But then They Can't Stop All Of Us happened.
It started off as a joke I suggested to my friend. I browse & participate in Reddit often on the r/dankemes subreddit and at the time the "Raid area 51" meme was very popular. I thought it might be a cool idea to make a game about it, just a small game that would only take about a month to make about raiding area 51. Maybe I could start building an audience.
It was many nights of no sleep, 18/19 hours of work. I wanted to get the game done a week before the event so I set the early access date for September 13th, and started working on it full-time 14/18 hours a day (90+ hours a week).
About a week before release I had my friend do the trailer & did a large marketing campaign on Reddit. I made memes about the game, I messaged people who commented on the memes, and I just tried to make everyone that I could aware that the game existed.
On release I had a short battle with PTSD. I too vividly remembered the failure of Deep Space, and this game ended up attracting so many people that the servers couldn't handle it. At that point I had already invested $300 into a game that had made no money, it would cost $100/mo out of my savings to upgrade the servers and it looked like the game was doomed to fail, I cried. But I got my act together, I took a leap of faith and invested another $100 into the game, and put up a notice about the servers.
Within a day the game had raised enough money to keep going, and somehow every week people just keep coming back, and I just keep updating the game, and I'm just so happy.
I've been out of work and the game has been able to pay my bills, and now has over 200,000 downloads since release.
But it doesn't stop there. Thanks to this game, I was able to finally have a successful game launch listed on my resume which I showed off when applying for a new job. They were very interested to hear how I had made an entire game on my own (with the exception of many of the starting maps being my friend). I got the job as engineer, and now make a little over $20,000 a year.
Think about that. I had no money for going & no intention of going to college, doing contract work month to month and this game allowed me to finally secure a job in the thing I've been working at my entire life.
This game literally changed my life. I have the amazing r/dankmemes community & the wonderful people of the internet to thank for it.
So many things had to go right, me deciding to make a game off of a meme, marketing / making memes about it on Reddit, deciding to dig into my own savings in order to keep the servers up, people deciding to get the DLC so that I had enough time to find a job. And people playing every day, talking on the Discord, sharing their thoughts, and making it feel like I actually have people who care about me, and what I've made.
I couldn't ask for more. All I want is for people to enjoy my games, and I've gotten way more than that. I'm truly blessed to have all of you here playing this game and I wouldn't change a thing.
That's why I felt the need to write this. So that when I tell you I'm thankful, you really understand what that means to me, what this game means to me, and what you mean to me.
So really, thank you.
I want to continue to make you all proud, and I want to push myself to new limits. So I've decided to start on a new game. I really want to be able to show off my skill & make another game that I can be proud of and that you are all excited to play.
So again, thank you all so much for what you've given me. I promise to do my best to not let you down!
What does this mean for They Can't Stop All Of Us?
I've been trying my hardest to balance my time but I'm only human. I now do a full-time job, a part-time job, weekly updates for TCSAOU, and am starting work on a new game. I just can't keep up.
I had to start this update expressing how thankful I am, because it'll help give context as to how painful it is for me to say that I just can't keep up the updates. I'm only one man and my time is so fractured I can't keep it together anymore.
This month (December) will be the last TCSAOU updates the game will receive. Every week I've been struggling to come up with new ideas for content, to balance things, new maps, new features, marketing, it's just all so much for one guy to handle. And I don't think it would be a problem if it was my only job but as I stated, I'm making a new game, and have 2 jobs (one full-time & one part-time) so I'm working roughly 80~100 hours a week.
The game will still be available for everyone who wants to play it. So long as people are getting the DLC & the game can pay for its own servers then it'll remain up.
Here are the plans for the future:
12/13/19 (tomorrow):
New attacker class (DLC Only): theme "Space" with 7 new units & 2 new maps
12/20/19 (Last content update of the game)
New game mode "Arena" (Defender vs Defender) w/ 3 new maps
There may be updates after that to fix anything broken by the new content but other than that there are no plans for major updates or new content.
What does this mean for you?
I really love that you all were there for me, so I want to make you proud moving into the future. The best way to keep up with me & what I'm doing is to join the . I hope to make my next game even half as memorable as this one is!
Sincerely,
Blake Gillman
