It's a pure loss that Nifty Gateway is closing its doors. The closure is weighty. Time will be kind to their role, but I largely just sit in gratitude for what was given to me by its people before an ending we had to prepare for unfolded. If you look closely at the paintings themselves, the names of every single person who helped build The Monument Game are carved into a tree. In Masquerade, the names appear again. Etched into a ring of wood cut from a branch on that tree's fall. Platforms are unfortunately not forever, but those who worked within are part of the pieces themselves: the artwork and the mission attached, always had a more survivable host of a record of the people who helped us. What we made together across The Monument Game, Masquerade, the Masks and their royalty structure, exhibitions in Venice and Toledo: these were years of problem-solving and invention. My experience was never with something as abstract as a platform or marketplace, and I hope the people within do not get lost in the conversation around its closure. Each name on these trees gave love, late nights, resources, and real risk to build what I couldn't alone. Working alongside them was a joy, but the greatest gift was what I learned from the team. The engineers and producers unlocked my practice, learning from them opened things that were latent and felt inaccessible to even dream. How to exit ideas-mode or the vibe of a thing, or even a singular medium, and to actually build complex systems as well as how to guide people through them. That's the best a collaboration can offer an artist: support to dream. When we began development on The Monument Game back in 2022, Rachel and I wrote something into the contract that felt paranoid but non-negotiable at the time: full ownership and transferability of all data, code, and functionality we built together. NG agreed, and their cooperation in honoring that clause has made preserving our work much easier. These pieces and stories are not just mine, but also every person who contributed. Every Player and Mask is a part of these pieces and interfaces and now everything we created together survives. The mission of archiving every experience, every observation, dot, and the links between the people within has been underway for a long while now as part of a much larger shift of what Luci will become and will be up on my new home for this story quite soon. The archives preserve everything we did together while expanding and refining every aspect. Doing this sets up a foundation where all agency is returned to us for the future. Human memory seems to survive by jumping to tougher hosts: song, stone, servers, etched into a painting. New domains, pins, contract migrations. These help and go hand in hand with a transition like this, but this is a loss with some lessons. It comes paired with immense gratitude to those who gave enough to us, that even as one thing dies, enough motility was set in motion, flowing towards what we made that our creations together get to live and thrive beyond their first host. And the loss also comes with clarity that permanence isn't a technology quite yet. There is much to learn from the serious archivists. To preserve is a commitment. This is a lifelong project. As inconvenient as it is, good comes in its wake. What we’ve made to archive all of this is the best the artwork, story, people, and technology has ever been shown. A small preview in this still. A lot of history disappears when doors close. For all those with Masks and Players on there, take time to follow NG’s guidance and support team to withdraw and keep close for the future in a way that can survive these kinds of endings. They gave us their assurance they are all hands to help. No one likes this moment, but there are a lot of good people affected in and out. I wouldn't be here without the people in the tree. Marking them with creation, and caring for what we built together. That's the work now.