19 hours ago, theFlu said:this move [on TFP's part] is pretty purely bottom-line first.
This is the part that's being assumed automatically. And you know what they say about assuming: "It makes an a** of u and me." I can't quite fathom why this is being assumed. Is it because we just so happen to live, move and have our being in a fishbowl of institutionalized greed, ill-will and delusion ruining everything in the ocean, including the video games that were once just a fun and interesting hobby to engage in whereas now the industry at large has joined the psyops...er, I mean, "social engineering"...brigade intent on preying on the vulnerable in the name of profit?
Personally, I can't assume ill-intent from a small outfit like TFP without evidence and I see no evidence of it in this case. TFP lost the console publishing rights to their own game; went through a veritable nightmare to get them back; and are now syncing the PC and console versions of a work in progress. That's it from my perspective. I hope they learned some valuable lessons along the way because it's pretty obvious to me, at least, that they're learning this stuff as they go. Why should I assume this was done "purely" from a selfish profit motive when the game itself is designed around community and the "old school" (at least, to date) way of doing things, including having the game run on community servers as it was not so long ago before the "live service," centralize everything bug bit both the software and video game industries? Now, guaranteed, if they go the "paid DLC" (that turns out to be recolored and/or repurposed assets like models and skins, etc.) route, I'll start to seriously wonder about their motives myself. Such may be the "acceptable" way to "monetize" a game in an ongoing fashion to many, but not to me who is strictly of the make a tangible product, sell the tangible product school of above board business practices.
That's why I say they might just wrap this one up and move on to something new. Wouldn't that be fun? I have to wonder if there isn't a bit of burnout going on at TFP, having worked on the exact same project for ten plus years. I experienced that myself when a former boss started an online endeavor, then refused to sell it, stuck in the "if you buld it, they will come" mentality, and wondered why it wasn't going anywhere. I told his Dad the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results, but the family business had invested roughly a million bucks in it and felt they literally couldn't let it go. Don't let this happen to you. 