Has anyone considered that they might be embarrassed by the lack of progress?
Like… Yeah, you agree to this new deal with this new studio so everyone on the team has a sustainable job, and you think “okay, cool, I’ll be able to keep doing the stuff I love in my free time like I have been with this contract work”, but then the new job takes a lot more out of you than you expected, and a kid needs to be potty trained, and the stress of economic changes, and your wife gets sick and by the time you get time to go “oh ■■■■ guys, I’m sorry!” the community is already as pissed off as it can get and all you can do is feel like you let everyone down and just want to wait until you have real tangible news to share. And then periodically, something forces you into having to say something, like Nightstar described…
Idk about you guys, but it’s happened to me a few times just like this. You would assume I’m lazy and have no follow-through, but I just mess up and get anxiety about facing the people I’ve let down.
You can say “well the right thing to do is just say that!” but, from my perspective, that is completely disregarding the strength of emotions when it comes to projects, people, and communities you love.
The difference is that Turbulenze is supposed to be a business. While we can forgive James for being human this behaviour is also unprofessional. If he can’t handle the job of community relations he needs to find somebody that can. A business really doesn’t deserve people’s money if they can’t act professionally. (And I just renewed my planet for 2 months so I guess I am guilty of rewarding unprofessional behaviour as well. smile)
Failing to release things, discontinuing development, etc are unprofessional. Not communicating with customers is normal for businesses. Sony doesn’t tell you when they are going to announce a new console, they just announce it. Some companies don’t ever say anything until it’s actually ready for release. If Turbulenz decided to change communication style, that’s not unprofessional, even if you don’t like it.
We will have to agree to disagree on this. James might be the nicest guy in the world but he does not run this company in a professional manner and part of that is due to his lack of communication. Of course, what is considered “professional” has changed over the past few decades and what would have been considered unacceptable in my day now seems to be “best practices” now.
It’d unfortunately be split @kemyobra. There is a contingent of ardent James defenders on this board who, even if he were to announce he’s turning off the servers immediately and not refunding anything by way of gleam club or sovereigns, would still get his back and claim something like “well that’s his right to do and it’s fine” or “obviously this is the best decision for Boundless as it must not have been making money”.
For the rest of us, the absolute lack of communication over the last 2+ years has been enough to teach us that James has zero interest in it, sees no value in it, and is never going to change in this regard so we either play the game for what it is or we move on.
Unfortunately, most have moved on and the complete lack of dev communication has undoubtedly led countless others to take a quick look and simply head somewhere else as nobody wants to set up shop in a ghost town.
It’s different than it was before and much less often, but they have still been around. I agree that it would be nice to see updates, events, and roadmaps like we had previously. There have been several changes and apparently more to come. https://forum.playboundless.com/g/Wonderstruck/activity/posts
Yeah I have to agree mate, I understand that their may have been NDAs in place ect while they did not have IP for publishing but if you create a culture by being active with your community from day one and then ghost them, your ideally telling your customers that you don’t care anymore.
If the passion is no longer there sell the game to someone that will drive it into phase 2 or update the community with the game plan.
Anthem is a great example of this- hyping their community for 6 years before launching- launched with mayor bugs- said updates coming soon then scrapped it and walked away.
I agree mostly with you, but the lack of communication causes this. I am sure something is coming, or he wouldn’t have said it was, but the longer we get silence the more speculation and uncertainty there is.
Not only was the hype massively disproportionate to what was stated, but the doom started less than halfway through the most conservative definition for “in the coming weeks” that I can find.
The game’s been languishing for roughly 8 years now, in this zombie-like state between life and death… Anyone with a purely rational interest in it either left the building a long time ago, or they come and go in the blink of an eye because they realize there’s not much game and nothing more to see here. At this point it’s the gaming equivalent of a Rorschach Test - you either dream of the incredible potential it will have if it ever grows to maturity, or you curse it for being eternally unable to mature.
I’m only still here BECAUSE I take sadistic pleasure in precisely the phenomenon you’re describing.
There is no actual hype ‘in game’ apart from this announcement keeping everyone guessing, no new events, nothing, I’ll wait until 11th September to see if anything comes out, if not, I can’t see myself playing on much longer although it’s one of my favourite games, hope is still here but not for long.
You should try to be on the other end of the equation at some point. When you communicate threads like this happen: every word is twisted and over-analyzed - it hardly incentivizes more. Players have this magical expectation that dev teams are all-powerful entities with unlimited budgets, perfect skillsets, and infinite amounts of time that are there to serve their expectations of the game.
Meanwhile, in reality (as viewed from my viewpoint), you have a studio that is passionate about the game they have created and are desperately trying to make ends meet and find ways to work on it again. Just like the hardcore player base that is still here years after the last update - they can see that the game can become so much more, if only they could find the massive amounts of time needed to continue the development and fix the list of issues they already know are hindering the growth of their baby.
I’ll continue to mind my shop now and enjoy Boundless. Peace.
Yeah, I wasn’t going to say anything about this, but in my own case there are a couple things that I’ve learned about other games during the period of the silence here that have combined to turn me sort of cynical when looking at game projects, and reinforced that I need to listen to patterns, logic, and common sense rather than words. Maybe not fair to turn more negative here since they are different teams of course, but can’t help but put together patterns with parallels, since we have brains programmed to recognize such. I won’t elaborate on details on either - one I’m sworn to secrecy on, the other is something I dug up on my own but that I’d never put online since it would serve no purpose at this point but to stir the pot and potentially hurt that game, which is one I do love. But it HAS played into my negativity here, so I figured it is probably the right thing to mention that is part of where I’m coming from.
I still support games I love, always on the lookout for cool new stuff to back, but look at it all with a more jaded eye now. Bad life stuff has played in to make me even more hardened. It makes me sad really, I prefer the more trusting and happy way I used to be. I hope we get news here soon that proves my worries completely wrong and maybe helps turn that back around for me, build faith again in the hobby that I love so much and has truly helped me survive these last few brutal years…
I should clarify, though I’m expressing my concerns here and worries, James’ post really did give me some hope and I’m trying to hold onto that… I’m sort of just putting the arguments in my head out here in public, the big worries that are still eating at me. This isn’t normal for me at all, I’ve really never been so attached to any game, certainly never spent so much money in any game or made true friends like I have here… part of me wonders if it would be healthier to just step away and let go of it! But before the OP here, I admit I WAS pretty much at “Doom” when I found that article… now I’m more just at “worry” with “some hype trying to sneak in” and hoping for good news soon!
I hope we get news here soon that proves my worries completely wrong and maybe helps turn that back around for me, build faith again in the hobby that I love so much and has truly helped me survive these last few brutal years… 
