Hi, Susan.
As it happens I discussed this very issue with James North a couple of
nights ago. I asked him why not refund the games and let a developer
start out fresh. His reply to that was to the effect if he had to refund
the money and then the games should be completely scrapped.
James North is in a terrible situation where he took preorders for the
titles, and now has to either return all that money or come up with the
games. He has already made it quite clear to everyone he doesn't want
anything else to do with writing accessible games, and is tired of
developing them. Yet if he doesn't write them or let someone take over
he ends up having to pay all that money back, and I understand it could
be a large sum.
If USA Games does follow through writing Raceway and Montezuma's Revenge
then I don't have much to worry about with the issue of refunding the
games. after all, once people get their product keys all orders are final.
I know the number one question on this list is, "why are we doing this?"
Well, there is two primary reasons. First, I have always been interested
in Montezuma's Revenge and Raceway since I have heard about them. I
deeply enjoy writing accessible games, and would likely continue weather
or not I sell them to others or not. James I believe has lost his desire
to write games for us.
Second, is I think I could produce them faster than Alchemy.
For an example, I began writing Final Conflict in July 2004. My very
first demo hit the net by October 2004. I have continued to put updates
up as soon as I had them. Now, Final Conflict is basically complete. If
it wasn't for the security issues and if I had the documentation in
place I could have version 1.0 ready to go. It's still under two years,
and if I get it posted before July it will remain so. However, it is
almost a finished product and it was done in 1.5 years.
I fully understand James had hard times since closing ESP, and then
turned raceway over to Adora, reacquired it, and now is turning it over
to me. I am hoping I can produce the game allot faster than it was
taking before.
One reason is that we have a different polacy about games than does
Alchemy. /We have always put test builds of our titles online as soon as
we were sure they were stable enough for public use.That sort of allows
people who want to publicly test the game while it is being programmed.
Imagine say an early public test release of Raceway in six months or so.
That would at least let gamers see where USA Games is in the development
process and show gamers what kind of game we are producing. That is
better than not knowing the status, and not being able to even play the
somewhat stable builds.
Another advantage I have found of doing it this way is I can usually
find and squash bugs early on. i only wish there were more game
developers that took this approach. However, I suppose I am different in
that regard do to the fact I've used Linux software for many years.
Since most software is public and open source a Linux user can get
applications from current stable all the way up to the current test
release. Which I got hooked on that, and figure other gamers probably
like that to.
Fortunately, for us Montezuma's Revenge does have an early demo we can
quickly update and put out until we can decide what exactly to do with
it. However, the sooner James turns over the source the sooner we can
begin work. I'm also waiting for Jennifer to rerecord the specific
Alchemy messages with the USA Games info.
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