Your friends are not totally wrong. It really boils down to the game, in its basic form, needing to provide anything a player could need in a satisfactory fashion. In the current state, for example, the fact that many players are farming resources on sovs has lead to there being a surplus of resources left on the permanent worlds. So it’s really not a problem right now. If it would ever become one in the future, a solution would be to have more resources (or having them respawn faster) on permanent worlds to balance it out.
It’s a bit of a moot point though because ultimately Boundless is what you make of it, and you having millions of coins or thousands of plots is meaningless if you don’t need them for anything or don’t want to do anything in the game, like create huge buildings. Because let’s face it, ultimately Boundless is a building sandbox (at least for now). So you are really not winning if you have more of everything over others…
I totally agree with your counterargument and that was my counterargument to my friends who questioned it. I am not against anything when it comes to finding a solution and I think anyone who has ideas as to how to solve this should speak up.
For me, I just want to see the game succeed and I know this game has so much unrealized potential that just seems untapped. I know there are many of us that would be willing to throw some funding to the game but to the point @philelliott made it comes down to monthly costs. Like @bucfanpaka mentioned if it’s in the low thousands there seems like there should be some options out there in some ways to balance that out and doing whatever is possible should be considered.
I can understand where the P2W arguments come from. However, if we are talking about the game either surviving or being shutdown then does it really matter as much? If the goal is to keep the servers running and maybe provide some incentive to at least do some additional development, then maybe the price to be paid is to allow those that can afford it to provide the funds to keep it going. And if those players are keeping the game running, do they not deserve some bonus, reward, incentive to keep funding the game?
If the ultimate goal is to have the game exist or not and the only way to have that happen is to find a way for players to contribute more funds to running the game, then I personally think Square Unix should do it.
The alternative is a server shutdown and everyone loses.
Edit: I do want to make one more point. It sounds like the only ways to currently get money into the hands of the entity that is keeping the game running is to buy Gleam Club or cubits. The shame is that nothing from the planet rentals is helping with this despite the fact that several players have an extensive number of planets that they rent. At $5 per month for Gleam Club, 200 players have to buy it every month in order to generate every thousand dollars needed. This does not seem like a practical way to pay the costs. I do think another funding source is going to be necessary.
Having an easy way for players to submit blocks, skin paints, items, decor, blueprints, etc into a Boundless cubit/cash shop could be a new revenue stream. In the same way that Minecraft, Roblox, Tr, Cv, etc do it. If the submission is accepted, give the player a “creator badge” or something like that. Then the game can sell the assets.
This is always the P2W argument and I am blessed enough to be afford to help out wherever needed and I stated that I am totally open to whatever means needed to help the game succeed.
If anything, I am very appreciative of @philelliott for giving input that a lot of us have been wanting and needing and I’m glad there are at least some constructive discussion around the game. I would hope that Turbulenz is open for a lot of these discussions as it seems Square Enix is open to discussion on options.
Absolutely this!! So many of us are clamoring for more cosmetics, like clothing or armor - and I don’t want to volunteer anybody for work so won’t call out names but we have some serious talent in this community.
What I always find interesting in these arguments is that it is ok for a player to play thousands of hours a year versus a player with a job and or family responsibilities that may only have a few hundred hours to spend in a game. No one says that this is unfair or that players time in game should be limited so everyone has the “same chance to win”. But someone that has worked hard and has money to spend, they are taking advantage.
And who do the players think keeps these games running? Not the person that spends $40 for the game and then spends 5000 hours playing but never buys gleam club or cubits.
I’m going to be honest with you, I could handle the delayed updates that we have been getting since Boundless launched on steam but once updates completely stopped I stopped paying for gleam club.
It honestly wouldn’t take much to keep me happy as a paying customer, maybe a couple new blocks or one new mob type or something once every 1-3 months.
If it seems like the game is being actively developed i would be happy to continue paying for gleam club every month.
Personally, I am all for new blocks, items and especially decor. While I might not buy cosmetic Items, I would certainly buy things to make my builds more complete.
I have a family and work 2 jobs and I was gifted the game. I have 2900+ hours in the game (in about 7 months) and I am just lucky enough to be able to play as much as I do. The person who gifted me the game is the total opposite of me he works a ton and is VERY limited on time and in the past he has spent way more money in games where he could to make up the lost time to catch up to me.
I personally have no issues with it, but there are going to be a lot of people turned away by this. If it is to save the game I’m ok with whatever means are needed to save it.
The point here is I think there are a lot of ways this game can make money and I think that those options should all be on the table and all it takes is for a party that has some form of investment in the game to realize that there is monetary potential here and I fully think there is.
To your point about rentals, our hope is that those are generating some funds for Turbulenz to be able to do something at some point; but to be clear on that, the team there did everything they could and more to be able to continue to support Boundless directly. The Larian deal was an excellent opportunity to do the best thing for the staff, and I would absolutely have done the same thing - I want to be clear on that.
A the end of the day, if the game is not successful, then the people developing the game need income to support themselves and their families. I do understand that. Given the option of working for Larian or not being paid, then there is not much of a choice and I would agree that the right thing was done.
Now as a person that has heavily invested time and money into Boundless, I would like to find a way for the game to survive. If that is through Square Enix versus Turbulenz then I am fine with that. My personal goal is to know if there is a way to keep the servers running and see if ultimately at least the self hosting development can be completed.
Well, it’s almost three years since the game left Early Access. While I’ve not played in a while now (I mis-timed my Gleam Club renewal, and lost everything…) I have been perusing the community update emails regularly, and since the point about “maybe Square Enix should do some marketing” came up (which, is a very fair question) I thought it was worth answering. Or at least, if not answering, responding to.
A quick glance at Steam, I’ve put over 1600 hours into the game, and it will always have a place in my heart. I’m as gutted as anybody that it didn’t work out the way we hoped, and my personal frustration is that (with hindsight) we could have marketed differently.
But, all we can do is learn lessons (and take those learnings into future projects), even if the process of doing so is bittersweet.
I’ve said this a few times so I will own it. My apologies if it seemed a bit harsh.
I search several times a week for new games (been doing this for 5+ years) & I almost never see anything mentioning Boundless, unless there is a steam sale.
As I said, SE doesn’t own the IP and we don’t have devs standing by even if we did. So I don’t think we’re really in a position to offer a solution - but if at least it was break-even vs running costs, that would be a way to maintain the current status.
In another thread ( @dev headquarters - can we, the players, help in any way? ), there are fans here willing to do work… and another game I play has hired at least one fan as contract support. Could that be another workaround on dev time and cost saving - even if they can’t take on volunteers/unpaid interns for legal reasons, contract hire a few people here to work remotely on the game at the minimum wage? There would be some onboarding time of course, and this is something I can’t do myself, but could outsourcing some of the work maybe be a longer term way to make it more sustainable? I actually think fans as hires might be less liable to leave than your average hire perhaps.
@philelliott Just to clarify there… I think many of us here as you can tell are grasping at straws here as we are all very worried about the future of the game. There are also many of us that feel there are many ways the game could recoup funds and I by no means meant to insinuate that Square Enix didn’t market the game. I based my marketing comments mostly around the fact that the game fell under the radar of a great many of sandbox players I play with and on top of all that I am not even sure at this point like many have stated that marketing is the best idea.
I do however feel that maybe there is something that can be done here and there is a lot of untapped potential here both from a monetary standpoint and from a development standpoint. I am not sure what options are on the table, but I hope at least the game is still considered as salvageable by Square Enix.
I am willing to do whatever I can to help in any way much as I offered to @james and Turbulenz.
So if I understand we need a zero (or near zero) development effort way to incent players to fund the running costs. So we need something that exists or has existed in the game. Could players fund events like gleambow? Maybe have a $500 goal and when it is reached we get a gleambow event? As others have stated maybe buy a color changing exo for $100 a week?
No, not at all. It’s a fair question - and there is more we could do. To be fair though, when we did email and social marketing post-release (and I’m talking months after release, not just in the first few weeks) it just didn’t move the needle.
Collective is a small team, and we also work on multiple projects - we could take the decision to put the community and marketing resource into Boundless again, but that would be at the expense of other current or forthcoming projects. And, to be honest, without knowing myself what the future holds, it’s not something I’m going to consider anyway.
So I totally get that folks will ask about marketing - and I don’t take any insinuations. We did take a specific and thought-through approach that involved a range of marketing types (social, influencers), but it just didn’t generate results; and thereafter word of mouth wasn’t enough to get over the hurdle for the kind of critical mass of players we’d hoped for.
So many of us are clamoring for more cosmetics, like clothing or armor - and I don’t want to volunteer anybody for work so won’t call out names 
but we have some serious talent in this community.