Delays, countermeasures… and a solution?

Over the past few months, slight delays have pushed the releases back by a few days, then a week, then two weeks.  Unfortunately, I had a power outage over the weekend and ended up staying with a friend, making it impossible to work on the update.  This will be the third time an update has been missed over the course of developing the game - with the previous time being when I had to travel overseas.

The way I’ve been planning and scheduling the game isn’t great, allowing for a number of variables to creep into the equation.  Aside for unexpected obstacles, even the monthly schedule is traversed on unsure footing sometimes.  Depending on how many days are in a given month, and where the weekends fall in that month, slight delays can be generated.  Most of the time, it all works out, but when it goes wrong, it tends to snowball into a deficit.  This all translates into an additional level of stress in trying to meet these deadlines, and it only exists because of the way the schedule is structured.

Historically, I’ve counterbalanced this kind of thing only one way - by pausing the billing for the next month.  Since this month has already been billed, and a release won’t be coming out, it only makes sense to push it forward and credit the subsequent month, and that’s what will happen for this release as well.  Apart from that, I’m thinking of changing the billing to a “per release” schedule, rather than a strict monthly schedule.  The releases will still happen roughly every month, but it may be something like a month and a day, or two, or three…  Let me know if you like this idea, or if you see a reason why it might be problematic moving forward.

Bearing in mind the tentative nature of how the releases are happening, what’s the solution to all of these problems?  Originally, I hoped to reach certain thresholds of support, allowing me to free up more time to work on the game.  We haven’t quite gotten there, and things have seemed to plateau over this past year of development.  One obvious possibility would be to simply raise the rate of exclusive access from the $2 tier, to the $5 tier, which is something other developers have done.  That’s just not the direction I want to go, and I couldn’t possibly ask more of all you wonderful people that have carried the game on your backs thus far.

It takes support to generate content, but it takes content to garner support, so it’s a kind of catch-22 scenario.  When it’s not really working, it’s time to step back, reassess, and reengage from a different angle.  As before though, I’m not willing to preemptively quit my job and hope for the best, I’m just not at a point in my life where I can afford to take that risk.  So instead of trying to create an environment where I can accomplish this goal, I’ve decided to try and get some help with the project.  Although nothing has gone into motion yet, I have been in talks with someone who is interested.  He has some great ideas for the development of the game, and is highly skilled in all the areas where I come up short (coding, marketing, etc).  We hope to generate more content per month, which may result in more support for the game.  I think this is a great approach, rewarding all of you with more content in every release, and potentially attracting more fans and supporters.  We are still in the very early stages of this plan, so I may be jumping the gun by mentioning it, but I want to keep you all in the loop as much as possible.  I can’t guarantee that this will work, but I CAN guarantee that I will try to make it work.

Just to recap: The next update will come out at the start of December, but December will not be billed.  I intend to change the schedule to a “per release” basis rather than monthly.  Moving forward, I hope to include additional members to assist in development.

If you have any question, concerns or suggestions about any of the above, please feel free to: drop a comment here, message me directly, shoot me an email, or hit me up on discord.