The long awaited update vol.1

The long awaited update vol.1

23/07/2018, Nikolai

Okay, I know, this is outrageous. We’ve been quite for half a year and there was not a single update on the project status. The problem is that there is no “we” for nearly anything you may think of, and right now I’m the one man army behind a project plagued by all kinds of problems. First - it was the terrible advertisement plan that swallowed over 5 BTC payments, most of them upfront (meaning we had to replace the money at the end of the campaign, when the crypto world got really crazy), with 2.8 BTC payment for ICORating project evaluation being one of the worst investments we made. Then we hurried and promised a new coin launch way before we secured the funding and the crew behind it, and now we (e.g. “me”) are at the mercy of Crypto-mining Blog, and they delayed things after a number of misunderstandings and miscommunication that were easy to blame on either side. Then we exchanged currencies before the December crypto hype, so I had to buy BTC at nearly double the price for fear I wouldn’t be able to pay the marketing budget (listing the coin, etc.) at the rate of inflation, and then the bubble mostly crashed. Then another publisher’s game used the same name we planned for our first game and failed. And that’s not even all.

And I’m only one person that has a regular job, and also an infant that takes a lot of dad time. So at some point I just said Fuck whatever the plague, I will just work on it as much as I can.

 

But first things first, there is the issue with funding first:

Cryptum was funded as much as we needed to actually produce couple of games, and 5% of the funding should have been for the Cryptumcoin. But then we spent alont more than we had to on advertisement and I really blame the greedy websites, the number of those actually accepting new listings for free was becoming minimal. I can put myself in their shoes - after all, between the announcement and the start of Cryptum ICO, the market was literally flooded with ICOs (48 announced just days between Cryptum started). Sure, it was reckless to spend amounts of few thousand dollars for something that hardly led to few website hits, but we expected better funding. The main problem with it is that it was largely dependent on few larger investments from people we know In fact the amount of tokens bought from “unknown” sources is less than 14%, the rest are money from people we talked to and we deal on fairly regular basis. The first thing to suffer the underfunding was the Cryptumcoin. Delay after a delay, then the holiday season where the lead programmer vanished on a planned vacation, then another one, than another delay. I cannot count the number of times we talked about it and agreed on something, and yet it was “when I have time”. And I cannot do anything about it, as the funding is low, and we are so past the times programmers agreed to work for a future bounty. New coins are launched on a daily basis (well, there were times when the Russians launched new neoscrypt-based coins nearly hourly).

So what is happening with Cryptumcoin? I do not know, I got a another promise it will be done soon^tm. Right now the new coins are still a dozen per day, and exchange listing prices are through the roof. I’ve no idea how to deal with that yet.

 

Game updates:

Blockchain: The Cryptocurrency Bord Game - the project is on hold. When I said the project was plagued by problem after a problem, I’m not even scratching the surface of it. For starters, the December hype started changing the less important coins so fast it was hard to catch up. I’ve remade the coin database few times, and then another hurricane arrived - someone decided to launch a Kickstarter for a game called Blockchain: The Cryptocurrency Game. One word change in the name and Boardgamegeek database accepted it. And they were first on Kickstarter, but at least I learned a lesson after their project failed miserably. In turn, I thought of a new name (and I’m not sharing it, sorry, I don’t want it stolen), but there was also the issue with the declining interest - after the December hype and the expected market crash, people started avoiding the topic of Bitcoin. And a game from unknown publisher would have zero chances of succeeding where another game of another unknown publisher didn’t make it (even using the same name). The solution was to put the game on hold and proceed with the Primewarp game, since it was in much more advanced state of development, and start working on the next game (Godforge) too, with the idea of building some popularity before we try the Blockchain game under a new name.

Well, that also didn’t work as intended.

 

Primewarp is nearly ready. I would never imagine it would take so much time, but it is still on the way. With “nearly” being a state that actually still needs a lot of work. Worst of it that the 3D freelancer Francesco Orru still has to make the last 3 miniatures sculps. I cannot hire anyone else, since the style change would require a total overhaul, and with 320 pounds a piece I just can’t afford it. He started working on bigger projects and I can only wait and hope he’ll find the time.

Then I have to personally rework all the cards, as they are currently just placeholders for effects that are not described with proper text. I’m working on it almost on a daily basis. Problem is that my free time is not what it was. Still that’s the small issue with the game, and even after huge delays, I plan to finish all graphic work by the end of August. Meaning I would only have to send the files for quotation the moment I receive the 3D files from Francesco, and then proceed with the Kickstarter campaign. I could have made it sooner, but with all the other issue there was also the issue of the lack of motivation when everything around was crashing and affecting my life too. The bigger investors were OK with a delay, so I didn’t push it enough.

 

Godforge was started much earlier than expected. But it’s bigger than expected too. This is actually where I’ve spend most of my hours of work, since it requires tremendous amount of explanation, references, descriptions, etc. The lead artist for the game is Ania Kryczkowska, and I think I found a great artist in her, with plenty of ideas, allowing me to give her great artistic freedom bound only by my basic requirements. We also found a way to lower the cost of the card art considerably (which is a know-how I will keep to myself, even if I suspect most people in the business are aware if it). But… she’s way over talented. You can see below some of the “sketches” she made while we talked about the art stile. Those would be regarded as advanced artwork by 99% of the artists out there, and yet these are just that - free sketches. And these take more time that I’d like. Anyway, except for June, when she was working on another project, and July (which was my holiday month), we’ve been in touch and we are working on the database of the cards and the art needed for each race, planet, etc.

I have to sort the cards I’d like to include for sure. I have nearly 3000 “ideas” for cards and I have to cut them to between 850 and 1200 (may be separate  some for expansion). I usually do that when I have some free time.

 

Other games - not much to tell here. We agreed with another designer to produce his game at some point. I also worked some basic ideas for two more games, one of them on an epic scale and both of them including mechanics never used in another game. Lately there have been plenty of outright thefts of ideas (you know, no patenting games ideas hurts, so I’m not shaing any details before I have something in nearly ready state. But these are projects for another time, after the Primewarp is ready. The cyberpunk game that was initially planned will be made after Godforge as I definitely want Ania working on the art side.

 

So what does all that mean or you?

Basically you can blame me for promising more than I could deliver on my own. I’ve learned to rely on myself, and every time I had to rely on other people something failed. Yet, I’m no artist and I’m not good with the brush, and I’m not a programmer and I have to rely on others for the coin launch (if and when it happens). And while everything is coming with a huge delay, things are still on the way, so fear not, I haven’t ran with the money. Most of them come from people I know, so I cannot do it even if I wanted to do anything else other tan designing games.

To be continued.