Hey Everyone, it’s official! 

I am now jobless. 

 There are many, many, reasons why I decided to quit my job, but a big one was my profound desire to give this project a real shot. Starting today, and for the next few months, I want to dedicate myself full-time to The Bibites and give it the attention I believe it truly deserves. I estimate that what I have saved up should last me about 6 months, and hopefully, if this project is meant to work, that timeline will extend further.

Many might think and say that it’s dumb and insouciant (and some already do 😅), but that’s what I want to do. In the end I have the support of my SO and many of my close family and friends. Their faith in me is all I need.

No matter how this works out, I know it’s going to be an incredibly exciting and rewarding experience.

So, in that timeframe there are a few things I want to achieve: 

Publish the next video on herding behavior (~3 weeks maybe):

I plan to maybe take 3 weeks to complete this, I already finished writing the script and recorded most of the voiceover. I pretty much just have to generate graphics, finish shooting footage, and edit the video. However, that’s usually the longest part 😬

Don’t know if I’m being too optimistic, but we’ll see.

Upload the 0.3 version on itch.io for free:

Up to now, I’ve only released the 0.1 and 0.2 versions on itch.io, and in both a lot of features were locked (like having control over the settings and parameters of the simulation). Only my Patreons had access to the simulation parameters (in addition to having access to the alpha releases). I find it sad that I didn’t give access to the most interesting part of the simulation to most people trying it out. 

And honestly, I also felt a little greedy and dirty doing so... But that’s what most people felt was the best when I made a poll about it back in the days. From now on I figure I would feel more comfortable leaving the normal version of the simulation for free to everyone and keep the more recent alpha version for my paying patrons.

Of course, at some point, the project will reach a point where it will be ready for the first official version (1.0) and I’ll upload it to Steam instead where it’ll be available for purchase (no idea on the amount yet). Of course, I figure that my patrons (and others that might have donated through itch.io) will be deserving of one (or more depending on the length/amount by which they’ve been supporting the project) steam key, allowing them to receive the steam game for free.

Make a channel introduction video presenting the project to newcomers:

So far, my recent videos have a hard time reaching new audiences because the subject is pretty complex and I don’t reintroduce some important concepts like how the brain and genes of the Bibites work. 

So I feel like it would help a lot to make both a video explaining all the basic concepts as a channel introduction video, as well as a small intro that I could put at the start of every new video to urge viewers to first go watch the introductory video before continuing this one.

Start a new lower-effort video series on YouTube:

I figure that, so far, I’ve had a very hard time uploading videos on YouTube without going many, many, months between each.
Of course, I had a full-time job that also had a high toll on my well-being and motivation, but still. 

I’ve probably shot myself in the foot so far because every new video requires so much overhead work before even starting to edit it, like planning feature, implementing them (often extremely long and complex to incorporate), debugging them, make regular alpha releases for my patrons, write the video script and try to think of good ideas to present features and making it entertaining to watch, find interesting footages of the simulation to show for certain passages of the planned video (also long and tedious since evolution is a fundamentally random process ahah).

I want to have a video series that wouldn’t have so much overhead and still present an interesting result for the people following me on YouTube. 

I’m still unsure about what form that would take exactly, but an idea I have would be a “Digital Biology 101” series where I would take an interesting Bibite’s Simulation that I or another user have found and analyze it, decoding the brain and genes of the species present, and explain their behavior and dynamics resulting from it.
I think it would make for an interesting result and it would make a great case in presenting the possible complexity of what can evolve within the simulation.   

Publish a Scientific paper based on the project:

Last year, I attended the ALIFE2020 scientific conference and gave a presentation about how community-centric continuous projects like The Bibites represent a great opportunity for the scientific community as they attract newcomers to the field, have the possibility of evolving further than one-shot research projects, and also presents the potential of profiting from funding from the community.

I was insecure about presenting the project itself as I was unsure if it had any scientific/academic merit, so I went with this subject instead of making a talk directly on The Bibites, which I now regret.

Because, in the end, the feedback was incredible and a lot of scientists reached out to instruct me on the merit of the project. Many suggested and encouraged me to write papers on different behaviors that I’ve seen evolve in The Bibites and that were unheard of so far in other similar evolution simulations. I’ve always been a scientist in my heart and almost went in the direction of research after completing my Bachelors in Electrical Engineering (although it would’ve been in a completely different field than Artificial Life), so it would bring me great pleasure to know that I’ve contributed to the scientific field in a meaningful way.  

I also like the idea of publishing a paper as an independent (not affiliated to any research group and so on) and to my knowledge, I’m not aware of this being a thing.

I’m unsure what I’ll start with, but I know it will be quite a big task, and I plan on having fun with it.

Plan a timeline of the Project’s future:

I started reflecting on the future of the project and I’m starting to solidify my plans. I should put them on paper (figuratively) and keep it up to date as things change and evolve (pun intended).

The community should be aware of where the project is going and where I’m planning to take it, as well as knowing my estimated timeline of completion, even if it’s very much an arbitrary estimation. More so, they should be able to find the information easily. Overall, I need to get better at managing a community and juggling with all the social medias the project is on 😅. A clear and up-to-date timeline, as well as me being more present on the different platforms, will help a lot in reducing the number of people asking if the project is still alive (which is most of what everyone has been asking for some time now ahahah). It might also get more people excited about the project and what might be accomplished through it (again, I have big and ambitious plans ahah). Added bonus: more support allowing me to dedicate myself to the project even longer.

In the end, there’s a lot more I’d like to do, but I figure that’s a good ambitious place to start 😅. 

It should keep me pretty busy for the next many months as it is 😂. 

Again, this is going to be an interesting journey, but I’m confident a lot of good will come out of it. Your collective support across the whole spectrum of interests that this community is displaying is already inspiring to an enormous degree. From programmers to gamers, from novices to hardcore nerds, from kids to seniors, from biology/AI enthusiasts to actual scientists and researchers, you all share an interest in this project and I’ll try my best to satisfy all of you in the best of my capacity. Thank you all SO MUCH for your support, your likes, your kind comments, your ideas, and your presence. Your existence is what already made this possible and what will be the foundation of everything from now on. With all my sincere love, Léo, Creator of The Bibites