I would suspect that the development time to create a full blueprinting feature would cost a lot more than the savings of shutting down some of the worlds.
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Agree. And if it’s a choice between shutting the game down or losing some worlds, I’ll vote to lose worlds any day.
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If we’re to believe numbers we’ve been previously told, no matter how many worlds we shut down, it wouldn’t even pay the salary of a single full time software engineer…
As I mentioned previously, server costs is almost never the issue for games, or even any software project for that matter. Monetization is almost always the #1 focus because server costs are minimal when you have good sales and further monetization.
Probably better to come up with actual solutions to the monetization, eg: Separating cubits from the cosmetics system, which means the game earns more money which means nothing needs to be removed.
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I think this is exactly correct. I bet Monumental can operate Boundless indefinitely. But as soon as even a single developer starts focusing on it, it starts losing money at a significantly quicker rate.
Operating it now seems sustainable. Developing on it still looks unsustainable in the short-term.
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I was afraid that we were eventually going to hear this. Well, it’s better to know than to be in the dark about it.
What kind of monetization would be necessary to begin active development on Boundless?
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I don’t think you’ll like the number that I think it would take. Guessing $200k/month or more.
I think Monumental’s reasoning is that it would be much easier and less risky to instead get a different game to succeed and then use some of that success to cover development on Boundless.
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That seems… Off…
Looking for $200k/mo projected revenue seems really weird to me. I would expect a business to be looking at margins. If it costs $17k/mo to pay a dev, they should be looking at something like $20k/mo projected revenue to invest. What’s the RoI? Is there an increase in brand value and IP value by investing in these games?
Running some number guesses, this may well still not be a hopeful prospect, if I’m being honest. I’m increasingly thinking it may be best for the game long term if they considered something to crowdsource some form of development or other long-term engagement.
Totally hear you but here’s the thing: by the time that happens, many years from now, there will be so many options that scratch the itch Boundless does that your investment will have been completely wasted. There’s already a handful of games that compete with Boundless in various ways for me and many.
So, I’ll reiterate what I’ve said two dozen times here: there are no plans for Boundless. The game is what it is right now and will very likely forever be exactly like this: unfinished and dead. If that’s okay with you, log in and play. If not, go find something else because nothing is going to happen to Boundless for many, many years if at all.
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To you, yes. I felt it was finished (until I was told it wasn’t) and if by dead you mean no community, there is a community. The servers could remain up forever, and if the current game isn’t your cup of tea, I get it. I’m ok with the servers being around forever and I can leave and come back as I please.
That said, I do think it’s a bad business model to say let’s hope and pray we have enough funds from another game to at best, update another game. I even understand that model, but I can’t say I agree with it, because why buy Boundless to begin with other than to just keep the servers up, which is far from the promised statement Monty made. Granted he could keep that promise, but with an undetermined timeframe.
I’ll continue to play because I like the game, I enjoy the community that’s here and heck I don’t have much else I care to play at the moment. But things change.
But anyone that puts down the community just because they want to play a game they like should just move on.
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Thinking on this longer, and re-reading Jon’s response
It could make sense if they are already only running a bare-bones team to pump up revenue on this other project. It would explain why the RoI on a single dev would still be better spent on the other project. If that’s the case, a good businessperson would see diminishing returns pretty quickly and want to create additional teams as soon as revenue allows.
So… I guess we traded in Wonderstruck spending all their resources on BG3 to keep the lights on, and we got Monumental spending all their resources on Animation Throwdown or whatever Kong game to keep the lights on - but they swapped the incandescent bulbs out for LEDs so it’s cheaper.
I feel like a kid in foster care. I guess that’s a little better than feeling like an elderly person in a nursing home?
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Thing about LEDs though, in addition to being cheaper than incandescent, they last longer, are more environmentally friendly, are more programmable, create less heat, are more durable and shock resistant, come in a much wider range of colors and color temperatures…
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still, there is no game like Boundless, there are voxel games but not even single close to Boundless
what making it so unique?
1.variety of blocks + variety of colors + more variety of blocks by crafting + building + chiseling + tinting
2. gathering + farming + variety of crops + unique farming + decorative crops
3. world generator that make every exo and every sov unique
4. mining, variety of blocks 
5. gathering flowers and seams without destroying them
6. gleam and variety of items mae using gleam, that glowing, i just simply felt in love with gleam first time i entered game and someone show me the gleam 
7. community unlike in any other game, voxel or not this community is awesome and uniquehelpfull, resourcefull, mostly willing to share their experience, their knowledge, their gains to make this game a better place for every player
and i think that with new advertisement, maybe a team up with other game to put other game +Boundless as bundle pack at Steam would help
personally i think
Cubic Oddysey + Boundless bundle might sell well
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what about porting Boundless to the Switch 2? HUGE community of players would jump on the chance to play the game, of course this will mean any updates you make will have to be vetted by Nintendo outside of minor hotfixes, but if you sync it up to all of the other console and PC release times, you’d have a bigger installbase looking for something that is more appealing than Minecraft(hence why I play Boundless and not Minecraft)
We got options, and I will gladly buy Boundless on my S2 just to support the operation.
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The amount of effort it would take to port a custom engine to Switch or any platform would be a pretty large effort. I’d say just getting the servers running good and cost effectively would be most ideal.
After that, it really depends on Monty and what he wants to do.
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Can we at least get some of the Journals fixed? Also, how hard would it be to add the distance a meteor is away?
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