LET'S TALK ABOUT ISSUES

Hi! Recently a supporter has made a very good point with his view on the current situation of this project that I would like to address now and share my thoughts with all of you!

I will sum up what he said to make it easier to understand. If you would like to see his original message, I’ve copied it in the attachment at the bottom.

He was worried about the completing time of the project, which seems pretty legit: he argued that when the project would reach its end, the income would slow down, and he had experienced something similar being a patron of other projects. He asked how could he be sure that he was investing his money wisely.

Now I would like to talk about all of this and explain mi views on everything, 100% transparent.

First, the thing that is most clear and somewhat the elephant in the room: yes, this project is making a stupid amount of money. This month it made more than what I could earn in my old job in a year, so for me it’s something absolutely crazy. I’ve never even seen so much money together, as I don’t come precisely from a wealthy background, so I’m still finding trouble understanding all of this.

That said, I will try to explain how I’m managing the money regarding the project!

· First of all, this has become a team as you have seen. We have Cris, who is in charge of all the media and social pages (insta, twitter, the web, patreon messages, etc) who is doing a wonderful job

· Then we have Javitxu, who is making all of the (as I call it) 2D stuff (flowers, grass, fire, animation, etc)

· Then Juan, in charge of the mindblowing things he is trying to achieve on optifine, and he also is creating programs from scratch to help me out with my workflow (he made for example an amazing texture resizer, so I don’t have to export everything multiple times)

· FernFox is the video guy, who made the stupidly viral video on Youtube that almost got 5M views (and he is working on more!)

· And then the INCREDIBLE wonderful MOD team, who are not only in charge on resolving all of the problems here, but are creating an amazing server for everyone here to play together!

And everybody is having his/her part! The mods, the server, all members of the team, and I won’t like it to be in any other way. And I’m not saying all of this stuff because I feel 'proud' of me paying people for the work they made by any means, I just tell you this as info for everyone to know how his/her money is being used!

Then, after all of that, there is still a lot of money that remains. A large part is for me of course, I won’t pretend that I just get a tiny bit portion of the cake, I earn quite a number! I’m saving it to move out (where I live houses are crazy expensive) just if you wonder hahaha, but that’s just my business.

That said, I would like to address now the longevity/scam situation. Yes, Patreon is a very convoluted and yet simple web (I personally don’t like it) that tries to have a universal approach on its functionality to be able to host multiple kinds of projects with only one layout for some reason. I’m aware of other similar projects that just lay back and enjoy the revenue from the hope of their supporters, doing everything slow to stretch it all they can.

With this I will be very straightforward: this project is not the case by any means. I have posted a roadmap to avoid just that, because every time one of the big updates finishes, it is uploaded for free, (we are still on the first one, but that would be the rhythm) BUT on that regard I will take a L, as I’ve been talking about a release date from a very long time ago, without never reaching it. But that’s not me stretching things out... that’s just bad management and time calculations.

I’ll be honest here, I’m just a guy that didn’t even played Minecraft (just some portfolio exercises that went viral), and never ever directed a project or anything like this. This is very new for me, and in some things, I’ve been making a lot of mistakes and just bad takes, especially in the time ones. This is not a studio with experience, it’s just me, a pretty much regular guy, trying to hold it together hahahaha. This is the funniest, coolest and biggest project I’ve ever made, but also the hardest and most difficult one, and it’s very hard to not be constantly insecure about everything, but I think I’m improving and making things better every time.

I work every day on this, and sometimes every night, no weekends, no nothing hahaha, (also, not trying to play the victim card here, I do it because I love it and is my jam) so maybe, taking the criticism, I should be more active on the progress channel!

- On a final note, I want to talk with you guys on the future of this: I am already designing some side projects related to NAPP – this is just the beginning!

Also, PLEASE, use the #thoughts/concerns channel to talk about these things and/or ask me directly everything you want to know. I’m as lost sometimes in this as you are, and sometimes I don’t know if I’m going on the right direction, so I appreciate a LOT the feedback, and I read everything!