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    Gunpoint

    Game » consists of 2 releases. Released Jun 03, 2013

    A 2D stealth/puzzle game from PC Gamer UK writer Tom Francis. As a private detective hired by a woman accused of murder, the player infiltrates buildings by hacking or "crosslinking" electrical systems to bypass heavy security.

    One Tom Francis Is All You Need

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    patrickklepek

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    Edited By patrickklepek

    “I will probably never write another news story again.”

    That’s either a quote from yours truly on his inevitable death bed, or a comment from Gunpoint designer Tom Francis. His joke comes weeks after announcing the success of his (excellent!) debut game has allowed him to quit his day job at PC Gamer and make games full-time.

    Francis provided regular updates on the game's progress from the very beginning of Gunpoint, then called Private Dick.
    Francis provided regular updates on the game's progress from the very beginning of Gunpoint, then called Private Dick.

    Yes, Francis is one of those dastardly video game writers who has gone on to make them. He’s on the other side, one of those people. We are lucky for it, and it was inevitable. Gunpoint’s creator has been thinking about games for a very long time, but arriving at this point took many years.

    Gunpoint is a side-scrolling action puzzler, wherein players zip a spy wearing magical pants around the world at lightning fast speeds, and manipulate electronics to your own, nefarious ends. The door in front of you will not open? Don’t worry, just flip into crosslink mode, wire a light switch to the door, and when you flip the light switch on or off, the door will open and close, too. It's one of 2013’s best, smartest games yet.

    In high school, Francis would flip through game magazines and dream about a life where he spent all day playing and writing about games. (I wish that were true.) He even found himself chatting back and forth with developers, including Diablo III lead designer Jay Wilson, designing the cult classic shooter Blood at the time.

    “I would email the lead designer of whatever game I was playing and just suggest things to them,” he said. “ [...] I would email him just every day to tell him ‘oh, you should add this weapon! And you should have a weapon that does this! And you should do this and this and this!’”

    To Francis’ surprise, Wilson would email back, and let him know how those ideas jived with what the team was building. Back then, Wilson was working on the much less thrilling sequel, Blood II: The Chosen.

    The gaming dream adjusted itself during college university, where his aims shifted to game development. When he graduated, there was some downtime, so he tried to put it to good use. Design was on his mind, even if it wasn’t clear what the path forward was. Francis wrote a pilot for a sci-fi TV series. Naturally, Futurama and Firefly were soon cancelled. But he also spent time writing a design document for a game.

    “Obviously, any indie developer today will tell you that you don’t write a design document,” he said. “That’s not game design. Game design is [when] you actually try making the game.”

    This was around 2003, though, and the idea of striking it out on your own has come a long way since then. This is before Braid, Super Meat Boy, or other trailblazers that proved it was possible to make games without a publisher support system. These games helped prove small teams could produce games as meaningful as what the biggest studios were creating. So Francis quietly tucked away his dream of making a game.

    No Caption Provided

    “It was just totally ingrained in me that I could never do this,” he said. “There was never a job opportunity. It was like wanting to be the CEO of a company. You can’t just start as that, you have to do the other things in-between beforehand. [...] In the back of my head, I thought ‘this is probably what I’m supposed to do. I enjoy this so much. I’m excited to get up in the morning to do it, and I work on it late on night, and I get up the next morning even earlier to get a head start on it.’ I just never tire of thinking about it, but, also, it’s completely impossible. There’s no way anyone can actually ever do this, unless you happen to get the right career path through a developer.”

    Francis started living with a friend in Bath in the United Kingdom, which also happened to be where PC Gamer UK was located. When an opening at the publication appeared, his high school persona emerged. Not only did he land a job, he’d landed the job, the one he’d dreamt about. But for Francis, inspiration soon came from nearby with Introversion Software’s strategy game, Darwinia. Released in 2005, Darwinia was a genuine indie darling, one of the earliest of its kind.

    But despite Darwinia’s success story, Francis still hadn’t accepted this could also be him.

    “That’s when I realized a game essentially by one guy is now one of my favorite games of all-time, so that’s a thing that a person can actually do,” he said. “I still didn’t feel like I could do it, it was still way beyond [me]. Chris Delay, the designer and programmer and level designer and almost all of the creative roles on Darwinia, he’s a complete prodigy and a genius in every possible way. I never had the sense that I could be anything like that, but it started that seed of ‘hmm, hang on, games made by small teams can actually be as good as games made by huge teams.’ The number of people you have working for you is not really the limit on how good your game could be.”

    Everything changed when Derek Yu’s Spelunky was released in 2009, a game that quickly, alongside Darwinia, entered into Francis’ all-time favorite video games. (Yeah, 2009. The most recent Xbox Live Arcade and PC editions of Spelunky are updated versions of the game.) With Spelunky, a light bulb went off in Francis’ head. Spelunky is a game with an unbelievable amount of depth, but the rules were simple and the artwork wasn’t complicated. To Francis, this seemed like a game he could make.

    In the back of my head, I thought ‘this is probably what I’m supposed to do. I enjoy this so much. I’m excited to get up in the morning to do it, and I work on it late on night, and I get up the next morning even earlier to get a head start on it.’ I just never tire of thinking about it, but, also, it’s completely impossible. There’s no way anyone can actually ever do this.

    “I couldn’t do any programming at the time but I kind of felt like it wasn’t so complex that I could never even approach a project of that size,” he said.

    Perhaps the most important detail was that Spelunky was made in GameMaker, a development suite for newcomers. GameMaker allows users to get very simple games running with drag-and-drop tools without programming experience. Yu was also posting GameMaker tutorials., and after Francis followed two of them, he was off to the races.

    “The two tutorials were enough to just get me to that point where you make a character that can move around a level,” he said. “As soon as you do that, the spark has happened, right? I made that! That happened because of the stuff that I did in this editor! From then on, it was very easy to stay motivated.”

    What Francis built with those two tutorials formed the basis for Gunpoint, which went by the working title Private Dick. Many developers throw away aborted prototypes or work through a number of ideas before settling, but from day one, Gunpoint was the game Francis started to make, and he never stopped.

    That was May 2010, at which point Francis started blogging about his experience on his website.

    “I’m making a game!” he said in his first blog post. “I will probably never finish it! But I thought I’d start talking about it anyway, to keep my goals straight and get feedback on my ideas as I go.”

    Fortunately for everyone, Private Dick became Gunpoint and did come out.

    Even though Francis was able to get the basics of his game realized pretty quickly, it was several years before Gunpoint was finally released this past June. In that time, Francis experienced the traditional ups and downs of game development, which was all the more pointed due to his relative inexperience.

    Building collision detection, for example, turned out to be a huge headache.

    “I looked up loads of stuff, took advice from other programmers,” he said, “but they all basically just say it’s a nightmare. [laughs] No one’s out there saying ‘collision’s really easy! You don’t need to worry about that!’”

    Francis rewrote the collision engine roughly seven different times--from scratch. Each time, Francis would bang his head against the wall. Then, he’d start over. Then, it’d break. Then, it got good enough that Francis gave up and moved on. Even in the final game, there are some glitches he couldn't stamp out.

    “But it’s as good as it’s gonna get,” he said. “It’s gotten to the point where every time I redo it now, I make it worse, so I’m just leaving it as it is.”

    Other parts of building the game were surprisingly simple. As mentioned earlier, one of Gunpoint’s big bullet points is the manipulative crosslink feature. It’s easy to setup incredibly elaborate traps in the game’s seemingly simple scenarios, as doors flip open and close, lights flicker on and off, and several objects in the environment are reacting to one another at once. Building this proved one of Francis' biggest surprises.

    Spelunky was built in GameMaker, convincing Francis it would be possible for him to create a meaningful game by himself.
    Spelunky was built in GameMaker, convincing Francis it would be possible for him to create a meaningful game by himself.

    “From what I’d known of developers as a journalist,” he said, “I always thought that if you give the player a power, a lot of freedom, a lot of flexibility, that’s a nightmare and your game will be a testing nightmare and will be really difficult to debug and all that stuff. But I didn’t find that to be true at all. If you make systems that work in every context, those are very reliable and very simple to code. That’s how computers want to work. They want rules to apply in every situation. They don’t like special cases and they don’t like scripting and they don’t like anything that’s pre-ordained by the designer. They like simple rules that apply in every situation, and in a certain context, so does design and levels.”

    About a year into development, Francis realized the game was starting to come together, and while he was able to clear the hurdles of programming and design, decent art wasn’t going to happen by sheer force of will. He released a video of the game, and asked for help from the gaming community. More than 35 people submitted samples, and offered to become part of what was, at the time, meant to be a game released for free. Francis later repeated this process for the game’s music. Everyone who signed onto Gunpoint did so figuring the game would not make a dime, but when it became clear Gunpoint might be something special, everyone was offered a profit-sharing deal. But much of that original work was done merely for the love of it.

    One of the bigger challenges for up and coming game developers is getting your game in the hands of enough people ahead of its release. Francis noticed an opportunity when he was having a birthday celebration at his house while the game was still in development. Sitting in his room and watching people play his unfinished game wouldn’t be much way to spend a party, though, so he set the game up on a PC in his room. There was one catch: he’d also set a camera up in there. Of course, you were not obligated to turn the camera on, but watching people respond to the game is invaluable for developers. Everyone obliged.

    “Watching it back,” he said, “I started to feel like the world’s biggest creep. [laughs] I’m spying on my friends playing my own game, this is really strange. [laughs] But it was really useful!”

    As development progressed, Francis would bounce ideas off his editor at PC Gamer, Graham Smith, and ask his game-playing friends for advice on how to handle price, downloadable content, and other ideas he was thinking about for the game. It’s cheaper than focus testing, and can happen over a couple of beers.

    Based on the way Francis talked about Gunpoint, though, I’m not sure I would go about expecting a huge expansion of levels anytime soon. He sounded exhausted.

    “As an indie, creating content kills you,” he said. “It’s just massively time consuming, it’s really arduous, and no matter how much of it you make, your primary complaint will always be that you haven’t made enough of it. He [Chris Delay, designer on Darwinia] told me that all those years ago, and I just kind of forgot. I ended up making a game with handcrafted levels that, yes, they took me ages, and, yes, the main complaint about Gunpoint is that it’s too short. So I should have taken that advice much more wholeheartedly.”

    In retrospect, he wishes the game had included a random level generator.

    “It’s not that everyone should make a game and it’s not that everyone can make a game and it’s certainly not that it’s easy. But with the improvement in tools that have been made and the indie revolution, it’s really easy to find out whether you can make a game."

    But the game is out, it’s been hugely successful, and he’s quit his day job. While Gunpoint has done well enough to let Francis quit his job, he’s hoping to keep writing about games in the future. No more news stories, though.

    And what if Gunpoint’s success has inspired you? What if you want to make game? Francis had one piece of advice.

    “It’s not that everyone should make a game and it’s not that everyone can make a game and it’s certainly not that it’s easy,” he said. “But with the improvement in tools that have been made and the indie revolution, it’s really easy to find out whether you can make a game. So just get in GameMaker and just try it. You will find out fairly quickly whether it’s for you or not. My first weekend with GameMaker, I certainly didn’t make a game. I followed a couple of tutorials and I had a bunch of garbage that didn’t work, but I already knew at that point ‘okay, this is for me, I can do this. This is really exciting. Even though I’ve only made very small progress, I’m enjoying the progress I’ve made.’ The magic was there. The translation between my effort and the reward was easily good enough right off the bat. It’s not easy to make a game, but it’s really easy to find out whether you should make a game. Just give it a go, basically. I put that off for years and years and years. I should have done it at least four or five years sooner than I did.”

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    TheManWithNoPlan

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    #2  Edited By TheManWithNoPlan

    Interesting read.

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    AlexW00d

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    Huh, Giant Bomb is possibly the last place I would have expected an article about Mr Francis and Gunpoint, but I am glad it has happened.

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    Nushi

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    #4  Edited By Nushi

    as someone who is trying to make a game, this article ia another awesome read from Patrick. Keep producing quality and I'll keep subscribing thanks mate.

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    rmanthorp

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    #5 rmanthorp  Moderator

    Fucking love Tom and fucking love Gunpoint. I'll get to this article later on. Just about to hitup the Dump truck. Great shit Scoops.

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    space_sandwich

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    #6  Edited By space_sandwich

    Very interesting piece, Patrick. It definitely sparked a little something in me, and I figure once I get some free time I might fiddle with this GameMaker thing... Worth a shot, right?

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    MrMazz

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    #7  Edited By MrMazz

    great stuff as usual patrick. Always itneresting to see how these indir games come about

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    Synekal

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    @alexw00d: Why so?

    I feel like this story is definitely up @patrickklepek 's alley -- It's the story about the people behind an indie game. Other than Polygon.com I can't think of another site that would do a piece like this.

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    Fisco

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    #9  Edited By Fisco

    Awesome read Patrick, thanks for taking the time to write this up. And thanks to Tom for the inspiring words and for Gunpoint.

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    LeSieg

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    Awesome!

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    crispyt68

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    Another great article, Patrick--I really enjoyed. Thanks.

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    AlexW00d

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    #12  Edited By AlexW00d

    @synekal said:

    @alexw00d: Why so?

    I feel like this story is definitely up @patrickklepek 's alley -- It's the story about the people behind an indie game. Other than Polygon.com I can't think of another site that would do a piece like this.

    'Cause it's a PC game? This kind of thing is what you'd find on Rock Paper Shotgun tbf. Maybe now they've covered this they can cover Sir, You Are Being Hunted, another indie game a games writer is working on.

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    Orange

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    Great read!

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    probablytuna

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    I remember using GameMaker to make games a few years ago and they were really crap platformers. Reading this article gives me some inspiration to go back and try again.

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    ShaggE

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    I have, like, six or seven Tom Francii. If I only need one, what am I going to do with all the extras?

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    patrickklepek

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    @alexw00d said:

    @synekal said:

    @alexw00d: Why so?

    I feel like this story is definitely up @patrickklepek 's alley -- It's the story about the people behind an indie game. Other than Polygon.com I can't think of another site that would do a piece like this.

    'Cause it's a PC game? This kind of thing is what you'd find on Rock Paper Shotgun tbf. Maybe now they've covered this they can cover Sir, You Are Being Hunted, another indie game a games writer is working on.

    I definitely want to play Sir.

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    DonPixel

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    #17  Edited By DonPixel

    Interesting article and cheers for that guy, Making it in the indie scenario it's kinda hard nowadays, you need to have a good product, good media relationships and a bunch of luck.

    I gotta say: "programing for videogames is so hard mentality" is so 90s... Nowadays you can implement the mechanics of a good game in a matter of hours with a high level scripting language such as JavaScript, C# or even Python, there are plenty of open source engines for that... The times when you had to build your own 3d engine in assembly and your game logic in C++ are long gone for good.

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    chet_rippo

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    #18  Edited By chet_rippo

    great article!

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    Noogy

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    #19  Edited By Noogy

    Congrats to Tom on his massive success! And an amazing story. As someone who walked down a similar path, I could only nod my head as I read through this.

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    AlexW00d

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    @patrickklepek: Well it's on the Steam Early Access thing now, but you're probably best off waiting 'til it's a full game.

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    development

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    #21  Edited By development

    Somewhat inspiring while at the same time deflating.

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    McGhee

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    So I too could make a video game? I have ideas but programming seems like magic to me.

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    yellownumber5

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    @patrickklepek Similar to Francis, I wanted to be a game reviewer in grade school, and in high-school me and friends wanted to make video games, and I designed them by writing out flow charts, making formulas and rulesets, and designing graphics. At some point I just moved on, or found other interests, or was either discouraged from video games as being a realistic goal. I don't think I am the only one who was really gung-ho about wanting to make or review games in their adolescence but then life went another way. I always wonder what is it that keeps that spark for people to go on and make a career out of games. I also wonder of those who started a career for making games, then moved on in mid-life to other things, even non-computer related, and why.

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    Animasta

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    @alexw00d said:

    @synekal said:

    @alexw00d: Why so?

    I feel like this story is definitely up @patrickklepek 's alley -- It's the story about the people behind an indie game. Other than Polygon.com I can't think of another site that would do a piece like this.

    'Cause it's a PC game? This kind of thing is what you'd find on Rock Paper Shotgun tbf. Maybe now they've covered this they can cover Sir, You Are Being Hunted, another indie game a games writer is working on.

    honestly their coverage of that game kinda ruined RPS for me.

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    Curufinwe

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    I used to listen to this guy on the (now defunct) PC Gamer UK podcast. Seemed like a top chap, so I'm glad all his work on Gunpoint paid off.

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    BLipp18

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    This needs to come out on Vita. Seems like a perfect fit for this game.

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    tourgen

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    #27  Edited By tourgen

    nothing but respect for the people who did the gfx for that game. It has a really cool look.

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    Rick_Fingers

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    megalowho

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    #29  Edited By megalowho

    Wonderful game, interesting article/interview/post-mortem. Makes me want to dive back into Adventure Game Studio and seriously devote some time towards learning it, at least for a weekend or two. Can't hurt to try.

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    rcath

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    Good read, really liked it.

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    MasterpinE

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    Solid read, sounds like an interesting chap. It's rather interesting looking at the mindset's of indie and small devs when creating works outside of the publisher model. How they prioritize features and work out internal time-frames is fascinating to me. The process of game making outside of business interest and focus groups doesn't seem to have a defacto standard, always appreciate these interviews and articles.

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    Chumm

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    Tom also appears on the best pc gaming podcast by a mile: http://crateandcrowbar.com/

    The PC Gamer UK podcast was the best, and it got shut down for some reason, so they went independent and it's even better as a result.

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    pmurph

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    @alexw00d: Same here, Been a big fan of his work and PCG UK for around 10-15 years now.

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    pmurph

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    @chumm: You absolute legend. I had no idea they spun it off into something else, and I've been saving the final farewell episode of PCGUK for a rainy day. So glad it's continuing.

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    eccentrix

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    #37  Edited By eccentrix

    Sitting in his room and watching people play his unfinished game wouldn’t be much way to spend a party, though, so he set the game up on a PC in his room.

    I have little to no understanding of this sentence. Specifically, how the last clause relates to the first. Is it a joke? It wouldn't be much way to spend a party, so he did it anyway? Did I lose my humor gland?

    This edit will also create new pages on Giant Bomb for:

    Beware, you are proposing to add brand new pages to the wiki along with your edits. Make sure this is what you intended. This will likely increase the time it takes for your changes to go live.

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