Istvan's Update:
They Can't Take the Sky From Us
This last week, Jumpgate marked an
anniversary again, the fourth for the Live servers. We released in Europe in July 2001, so
Jumpgate is more than four years old now, no matter how you look at it. How time does fly.
 We've outlasted
some competitors, such as Earth and Beyond, mostly through sheer tenacity and simply being
unwilling to shut down. As I've said in the past, being inadvertently self-published has
been a blessing in disguise. If we still had a publisher, they'd probably have turned
Jumpgate off by now. Of course, if we'd had a real publisher at the start, perhaps
Jumpgate would have received reasonable marketing, and there would have been more
resources available over the last four years to improve the game faster. No use crying
over spilled milk.
I hope those of you with an interest in science-fiction and a love of movies will go see
"Serenity", which as I write this, releases tonight in the USA. Since I was
introduced to the show, I've drawn lots of inspiration from the Firefly TV series; not for
game design, though the story takes place in a very well-made and interesting universe,
but for the will and motivation to keep this project going. From some points of view,
Jumpgate can seem like a difficult project to work on: The game receives little marketing,
sees little outside attention, nor much growth. We're admittedly short on resources to
keep things running. There is no big dev team to spread around the workload. There are
still plenty of bugs, and more turn up all the time. Because the code is old, and I'm not
the original author, it takes a lot of time to add the major new features we're all
wanting.
It's a bit like flying a beat-up, outdated spacecraft, with all kinds of idiosyncracies, a
need for updates and replacements, and occasional sputtering failures. Our trusty old ship
doesn't get a second glance in most ports, and some people think it's a piece of junk, but
there's a certain kind of traveller, with the right interests, some toughness, or a sense
of nostalgia, willing to sign on for a voyage. The crew works harder than you might think,
maybe harder than they should, to get the job done. We deal with system failures a little
too often, and we're always finding out the plans have become a little more complicated
than we intended. The ship doesn't go that fast, doesn't look that sexy, sometimes doesn't
seem that reliable. Everyone always seems to have the advantage over us. But that's what
makes us special.
At the end of the day, what matters is that we're still flying.
I'll be seeing the movie with my wife this weekend. I'm hoping it's as good as the series.
If you enjoy it, I hope you'll tell your friends about it. And if you enjoy Jumpgate, I'm
hoping you'll tell your friends about us, too.
If enough of us keep flying, they can't take the sky from us.
|
