Boundless’s source code is one of the best gaming codebases I’ve worked in. It seems experienced, clean, and straightforward. Everything is hosted in AWS and the data is 100% NoSQL. Credit to James and crew for such nice work!
We’re neglecting Boundless because we’re excited about an idea for a game we bought before we bought Boundless. If we shut it down, then it becomes harder to do something with it in the future.
We lose money operating Boundless. The worlds don’t shut down. They’re all online and simulating 24/7, which requires a lot of CPUs for the whole universe. We’re hoping to find a way to optimize it so it’s closer to breaking even. But the other game keeps stealing our attention away.
“It’s also worth noting that Monumental has not been particularly communicative. Monumental acquired Crowfall from original developer Artcraft in December 2021, and at first posted updates quite regularly, especially in March 2022. Until yesterday’s announcement (November 7th, 2022), the last update on the Crowfall website was from April. The same goes for its social media presence.
With this in mind, I’d be very surprised to see Crowfall return, regardless of Monumental’s intentions. And if it does come back, there are going to need to be some big incentives to get players to take another chance on it.”
Honestly, I’d suggest seeing how many worlds need to shut down to reach that point. And then figure out (through community voting) which worlds to keep.
We faced similar when Wonderstruck started working on Baldur’s Gate 3. We slowly lost their attention and then got silence for years. The sale to Monumental seemed like a shining beacon of hope. Now, you’ve probably got less than 100 candles still burning…
The solution is not to shut down worlds but to find a way to keep them from using CPU power when nobody is there. If my builds get wiped, I doubt I would ever return. I would be very upset for sure.
Is the other game costing money? If it is, and costing Monumental more than Boundless, then obviously you work on that as quickly as possible. If not the wiser course would seem to be to focus on making Boundless break even, then sorting the other game. But Monumental really need to put substantial thought into how they are going to rebuild trust with both games.
Boundless was always supposed to be a permanent universe. James was very clear about this and I think he was right about it too. I firmly believe that removing worlds is not the correct approach to a problem that can be solved with a purely technical solution. It also lacks foresight: Boundless doesn’t need a way to be maintainable with an ultra low player base, slowly creeping towards the end, it needs a way forward. It needs a way to be self sustainable while allowing for growth and if you ask me, growth and sustainability go hand in hand anyway.
Having said that, I am definitely happy the game is still around and obviously having the game is better than not having it, but not at all costs.
I absolutely agree with this. Something that sounds small like figuring out how to let the worlds sleep when nobody is on them, would probably go a long way to make it break even.
Figuring out things that sound small like that, will go a lot further than shutting down worlds. Shutting down worlds is just a bandaid.
So there you go. From the source. Boundless isn’t even being worked on, they are losing money on it, and it will very likely be years still, if ever, that Boundless gets updated.
So let’s please stop these posts about how the years of radio silence, no updates, and a proven track record of letting games die doesn’t equate to them having “no plan”. They don’t have a plan because they’re not even thinking about one.
I appreciate the post, @jon-eric. It should clear things up for everyone although, undoubtedly, you’re still going to have some very stubborn folks claiming that you “didn’t mean this” or “we misconstrued that”, attempting the muddy the waters and keep hope.
So I’d like to return to the original intent of the thread and, that is, for Monumental to cut their losses and open source the game so the community can actually do something meaningful with it.
It did for me. They are working on getting the game to a point that it breaks even. The current cost of a sovereign world exceeds the cost a player pays for it. Pretty sure that’s the issue.
As Jon-Eric mentions, there seems to be 2 options. Find a way to have worlds sleep when they are inactive over a period of time (24-48hrs) or remove some of the planets.
Just to clarify, this does not include any features, any updates, anything meaningful for the game and, instead, will require reduction in compute costs by removing worlds and/or implementing something that spares compute if no one is on a given world.
All that went out the window when James ABANDONED the game. You can say all the nice, pretty words, but you seem to be willfully sticking your head in the sand and ignoring the current reality.
Yes it does. It needs a way to be somewhat profitable or at least break even. John-Eric is making the point that they running Boundless at a loss, and have probably been doing that from the beginning.
Honestly? You’re not in a position to determine that course of action. It’s a beautiful idea. But that’s all it is at this point.
Well if the sovereign planets are costing more then they are to buy. The simplest thing to do is raise the price of sovereigns. They aren’t attached to PlayStation so It’s a matter of changing the prices on the website. A pretty easy fix I would think at least for sovereigns.
A wipe would be game over for the game I think. I would be done getting close to 10K hours. Plus Gleam club is to preserve your builds a wipe would would contradict that. Plus Monte stated no wipes.
