Post#230 » Fri Nov 10, 2017 2:48 pm
Hey everyone,
Sorry I hadn't seen this earlier. Not to make an excuse here, but... In the last few months, just looking business-wise, we...
- Moved all of GOAT Store physically (23,000ish items) to a new location
- Moved the Midwest Gaming Classic event that we also run to a new location
Both of these things have been taking up SO MUCH of our time, it's been tough to send out timely updates. The *good* news, I'm not the one actively developing the game. The *bad* news is that I'm the one doing the majority of communication, so... I suck, sorry. While the other things are obviously important to us, getting this game out is just as important.
Having said that, to answer some questions...
Is it a scam? - If I was going to do a scam, I would sell more than 484 total copies, and I wouldn't be so darn public with things like the Midwest Gaming Classic. No, it's not a scam. To write the same thing I've explained in email before, the game was done and working *emulated* when we announced. The engine did not work on actual hardware. At first, we thought we could fix it easily, and it ended up requiring a full rewrite, and has also had a couple personnel changes.
Why have we been waiting to send out an update? - You'll actually get this in an update I'm writing shortly. We are down to ONE bug on the bug list. We expect once this is done, the game will move into production quickly. A single bug sounds easy, but it's never that easy. I was hoping to have it all cleared up, so the next announcement sent out could say when we expect games to ship. Since I'm going to be sending out something like this (probably later tonight) to everyone, it will have to be the next update hopefully. But we're so close, it's been a tease of debating whether to wait or not to send this out. We thought it would have cleared earlier, but it hasn't...
Whey else have we been waiting to send out updates? - I've explained this in our emails a couple times, but in short, the game has been done for ages, so we're not doing the "interesting" stuff other games like to send out. We're not adding levels, or making new characters, or anything like that. We're rebuilding the engine that makes the game do what it is supposed to do. The new engine is better, but it's not easy to explain or show. There is no huge benefit for us to show gameplay footage that for all purposes will look the same as the other gameplay footage we released when we originally announced this.
Is it hell doing stuff like this? - Sort of. I mean, of the games that we have produced, Jay Townsend's SLaVE will be our sixth. Of those six, three have had major delays. This is our first delay for a programming issue (Inhabitants / Maqiupai were delayed because of production issues brought on by a terrible company we were working with) since the game had pre-orders opened for it. I know that doesn't exactly inspire confidence, but I can assure you, we will do our best to make it not happen again. I cannot pretend to you that I like the delay, or communicating the delay properly (believe it or not, I usually get an email or two back after each that is like, "Why did you send this?"), or anything like that. Having said that, I think what we are doing is still really cool, and I can't wait for it to be done. Mostly because I believe in the game that much. The delay is going to make it so we probably lose money on it's production - shipping in particular has gone up significantly since the majority of orders were placed, and we're not going to change it - and that's okay. It's the risk we took taking it on and announcing it.
Why can't we contact them about this? - You can! At any time! It's my direct email that sends out the JTS updates, I am the one that does our Facebook page, and any support ticket emailed to us is seen by both myself and Gary. Sometimes we take a couple days to reply - I'm SWAMPED with things to do at the moment - but we DO reply. Always. And, although it disappoints me whenever it happens because it means we failed someone, if you want a refund, we're happy to do so at any point in time. If you're willing to stick with us, hopefully very soon you'll find an exciting email.
Unless something magical happens in the next few hours, it probably won't be the next email, but it will be a good one...