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There Will Never Be Another Project Zealio

Sep 24, 2024630 VIEWS

Figure 1: Zeal's own photo of the first production bags of Zealios switches...

I’m guessing that a good number of you reading this article right now clicked on with some sincere degree of confusion from the title. There can’t possibly be any way that ThereminGoat – the guy who has personally tried over 3,000 different switches – is claiming that there won’t ever be another switch like the Zealios, of all things. (I’m sure a few of you are further listing off at least a dozen other medium-heavy tactiles that you can think of that are close enough to Zealios on top of this, too.) While you would be right in calling me out for saying something of the sort about Zealios, the switches, what I’m talking about here is something bigger and more impactful – Project Zealio, a.k.a. the initial groupbuy announcement and ‘Round 1’ release of Zealios switches. I’m here to argue that not only did Project Zealio fundamentally changed the way that the mechanical keyboard community thought of, ran, and purchased their switches from that day forward, but that there is no shot of any switch moment having as big of an impact ever again. There’s no doubt in my mind that March 5th, 2015, signaled an inflection point that changed us from the path of OEM-only switch offerings to the trajectory we’re on today with hundreds and thousands of different colors, types, and brands of keyboard switches. However, I realistically expect that not many of you have ever read that deeply into the history of Zeal and the Zealios switches to know why you should know this date. Let’s fix that. Announced on March 5th, 2015, seasoned and well respected Geekhack community member Zeal announced “Project Zealio” – a then secretive post in his own vendor forum hinting at the idea of a new, never before seen switch soon to be made. Teasing the community with puzzle pieces that would come together to form an image of one of the switches and a rather blurred out, red-colored photograph, he brought the community together for pages upon pages of hype building and guessing – with everything ranging from a big joke post to all red switches being suggested as the thing that Project Zealio was about. After almost 6 solid months of replies, guessing, and teasing, on July 29th, 2015, Zeal finally debuted his now namesake switch – Purple, MX Clear-like “Zealios” tactiles with 62g., gold plated springs and fixed tolerances that promised to get rid of all of the complaints the community had had at the time about Cherry MX Clears at the time. While this formal debut, alone, was more than enough to captivate the keyboard community at large, Zeal soon filled out the rest of the thread with more enticing details including that these switches would be made by Gateron, using newer, smoother molds with improved tolerances, and would even come with better stock lubing from the factory than Cherry had been doing at the time. Removing the brakes from the hype train entirely, the remainder of this Project Zealio thread is packed with everything from a linear, clear stemmed partner to be released alongside the purple Zealios, three different spring weights to be offered with each, reviews of switches from respected community members at the time, and even a final groupbuy announcement date. Spanning from August 30th to September 30th of 2015, Zealios clear linears and purple tactiles would be available on ZealPC.net at $0.75 per switch. Everyone who was anyone at that time bought these switches from Project Zealio.

Figure 2: A bit near and dear to my own heart - the very first custom switch review ever from CPTBadAss of Tactile Zine.

With that origin story briefly charted out, the course that Zeal took to the present day is probably a bit more clear for most people to put together. Following Project Zealio was round after round of iterations and switch releases, resales, and for a couple of years a nearly complete dominance of the switch market for the custom mechanical keyboard hobby. Anyone who was around and attending meetups at this time will tell you that at least half, if not a lot more of the boards at any meetup were filled with Zealios switches. This was more or less the way that it was up until about 2018 when the explosion of custom switch offerings really started to take off. As the price per performance of Zealios, as well as general community sentiment for Zeal, has stagnated a bit in the most recent years even in spite of some new switch designs and releases such as the Zealios V1 Redux and Zeal 3-in-1 Clickiez switches, most people seem to have shifted their opinion of Zeal from an overwhelmingly positive one to one that is not nearly as positive. While I can understand how people will look at some of the non-sale prices of Zealios today and see them as overpriced relative to what else is available on the market, they’re looking at the price of switches that have a legacy built into them unlike anything you will ever be able to buy in this day and age. If you don’t believe me after all of that background that Project Zealio and the first run of Zealios switches was as important as it was, let’s wind the clock back and go over just a few reasons why we’ll never see another “Project Zealio” ever again: Reason 1:
Zealios were designed, teased, and sold all within a centrally located keyboard community. Back in the years between 2013 and 2016, Geekhack was the forum for custom mechanical keyboard switches. Sure, there were places like Deskthority, IRC relays, and even the barely yet sprouted r/mechanicalkeyboards subreddit that was diametrically opposed to all things “geekWHACK” according to its founder and owner at the time u/Ripster55, but the western community existed largely on Geekhack. If you wanted to talk about keyboards, become a seller or designer in the custom keyboard space, or even dip your toes in the still fairly new artisan keycap community at the time, it was done on the pages that are still there today. Flash forward to today and Geekhack is a hollow shell of its former self. That’s not saying that any of those other forums listed up there as well necessarily did much better. With the advent of Discord, Twitch, and TikTok as platforms and waning interest in the hobby by moderators and mass contributors like Daniel Beardsmore, iMav, and Ripster, the platforms that once propped up the community are dusty relics with its occupants scatted into the wind into thousands of tiny hyper niche keyboard spaces. Without a central keyboard space to truly bring everyone together, a singular product like this could almost certainly never grip hold of the entire custom keyboard community all at once ever again. Even if the largest keyboard company you can think of wanted to debut the next revolutionary product to move the hobby forward today, it will still fall on deaf ears to large swathes of the community that simply don’t interact with them day in and out. Reason 2:
Project Zealio pitched an entirely unproven product at a high price point and sold it almost entirely on the reputation of Zeal, the person, alone. As I teased earlier on in this article, way back in 2015 there simply was no such thing as community-made custom mechanical keyboard switches. There was no idea of what this would look like, how hard it would be to do, or even what the costs associated with such would be. Just the idea of convincing a large switch manufacturer who is almost entirely disconnected from the then quite small community to make a custom set of molds for a switch that would have no market capture outside of that small community seemed borderline impossible financially. And yet, Zealios switches sold like no other at a $0.75 per switch price point that would make most people turn away today. How Zeal managed to do this, though, was through his meticulously built reputation over the years. All the way back as early as February 21st of 2014, Zeal was making and selling custom keyboard cables before he even had a website. Gaining a massive reputation for his “buy today, ship tomorrow” service, he amassed enough of a following and trust in the community to roll that into an unlimited MOQ keyboard groupbuy in the Simply60 keyboard as well. Project Zealio in 2015 only came about after the built upon success of both of those previous endeavors, and I know for a fact that many people had faith in the quality of the project based on Zeal’s reputation and ability to execute, alone. In this day and age, singular people in the community simply can’t and don’t have the ability to build up such a reputation in such a centralized place with financial stakes as high as they are now. Even single keyboard groupbuys, these days, require the support and coordination of multiple vendors to happen safely and securely for all parties involved. The days of truly making a name for yourself in the keyboard community as an independent, single person entrepreneur is basically long gone.

Figure 3: To be fair, they were some very nice looking cables.

Reason 3:
Project Zealio and Zealios switches were a then truly unique concept that had never been executed on before. While it’s certainly true that Zealios V1 switches are not technically unique insofar that they were designed around trying to mimic the tactility of existing “Ergo Clear” modder switches at the time – which were just Cherry MX Clears with lighter spring weights swapped in – just the premise of trying to make your own better version of a switch was unheard of. No individual or small company had ever struck a deal with a switch manufacturer as large as Gateron for something like this, and since the announcement of Project Zealio in 2015 only even a handful of people have ever done this in any similar capacity with a company this size at all. And I’m not just talking about ordering switches either – I’m talking about buying and paying for the ownership of an entire set of molds for switches that would be made at such a legacy manufacturer like Gateron. If someone were attempt to approach a switch manufacturer and develop a new switch from the ground up with new molds today in 2024, they wouldn’t be able to get anywhere without incredible (read >$100,000) worth of bankrolling from a large keyboard company or only working with the newest and least proven of switch manufacturers. Never mind the fact that the person would not have enough personality, nor enough attention of the keyboard community at large, to be able to convince them to pay $0.75 per switch for a switch that mimics that of another one. Today people are simply too jaded by and familiar with the idea of switches being designed to mimic the feeling, sound, or qualities of other already existing switches.

Normally I round out my articles here on Drop by trying to re-emphasize some of the prescriptive points I’ve worked into the paragraphs above this final one. While this normally does well with guides or short-lists that are meant to push as much new knowledge about switches into your minds as I can, this article was more of a personally motivated “horizon expander” than anything else. Knowing just how insane it was that Zealios switches even happened in the first place, I can’t help but laugh a little seeing how people react to switches and switch releases that are infinitely more safe, planned out, cheap, and innovative today than the original Project Zealio sale. Whether it’s by intentional ignorance or a complete lack of awareness, people simply don’t realize how good we have it now with switches, and they certainly don’t seem to understand why switches like Holy Pandas or Zealios are as important to the current state of the mechanical keyboard hobby as they truly are. Hopefully after reading this you too will carry around with you a bit more of an appreciation for Zealios switches and what they mean to us all here.

(Edited)

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