I expected people to get angry about my decision to end both OtherSpace: The Farthest Star and OtherSpace: Millennium in favor of creating one new OtherSpace game set in the Hiverspace realm in the 27th Century.
The Venting Spleen on our forums has seen a spike in activity as people get the anger off their chests. I’m not going to name names. I’m not going to belittle the opinions. If people didn’t care, I wouldn’t bother keeping the games alive. The passion is good. But I do want to address some of the issues that are coming up.
You’re burned out! Leave the games alone and play a character for a while.It’s really not about being burned out. I’ve wanted very much to play these games and to be active in their management again, but my real-life game development job hasn’t left me with much time or energy in the past two years. As a result, I’ve become increasingly disconnected from the game worlds. I want to be able to reconnect. I want to become so immersed in their development that I can, with confidence, resume promoting them with the same enthusiasm as I did back in 1998.
On the new OS, however, I’ll be spending most of my time playing Genkhun, the Lotorian bar owner on Comorro Station.
Step back and let other people run the games!I’ve done that, with mixed results. In the end, though, I handle the server payments, the web address payments, and the marketing. I’ve had more help with the marketing recently – thanks, Danger! – but a result of her work has been the decision that we need to stop spreading ourselves too thin. It’s great to have a small empire of roleplaying games, but when two of them are similarly-themed space opera games, one’s a medieval-style fantasy game, and the other’s an afterlife fantasy game, we’re hitting people with too much to choose from. The result? Our ads might bring a lot of people to look, but few stick around because it’s easier not to make a choice.
In the end, *I* need to run these games. Call me a megalomaniac, but there you go. I need to have a personal investment in the projects or they might as well not be online at all.
Everything I’ve done on (OS:TFS/OS:M) is for nothing!Not true. If you’ve developed an organization on OS:M, for example, I’d be open to having that organization make the shift over to the new OtherSpace. Character equipment? It’d be nice for characters from both games to keep their stuff. Hiverspace isn’t a technological backwater. They’ll have cybernetics and other cool gadgets.
The real trick will be finding a happy medium for +sheets of characters making the move from TFS and M to the new OS. It’s too early to know for sure how that will work out, but I can tell you that we will do everything we can to make this transition as painless as possible on both sides.
If your goal on TFS or M was to become god emperor of Mars then, yes, I’ve shattered your ambitions with this choice. However, in the new OS, we’ll have lots of undiscovered worlds that you can settle and claim as your own. So, maybe that’ll take some of the pain away.
This is just some harebrained scheme and we’ll switch to something new in nine months.Nope. In nine months, if we’re not flying high with a new OtherSpace, I’ll probably just close everything down. No reboot, no new theme, no nothing. Last one out, turn off the lights.
You’re pitching a slow-motion temper tantrum.I’m as coldly logical about this as I think I’ve ever been. My temper’s got nothing to do with it. Seriously. If I didn’t choose to close both of the current OS games, I would have chosen to close ONE of them.
Closing both and starting fresh in Hiverspace accomplishes two things, one of which is a selfish desire to get past some of my personal issues stemming from the divorce. The other: I’m not playing favorites with either existing OS game, so nobody can point fingers at TFS and say I saved it because I hate Millennium, or say I chose Millennium to survive because TFS did it all wrong.
People need to remember that I’d be making somebody mad no matter what, because it had been made clear that we lacked the playerbase and staffers to manage four games, so I had to get rid of at least two, preferably three, to make our marketing and production efforts more effective.
As painful as the decision was, I’m actually happier with people mad at me in two camps. I learned in my journalism career that if both sides are angry, you’re probably doing the job right.
I appreciate the support I’ve had from folks behind the scenes, and I thank all the players who are using this as an opportunity to let their current characters grow in a new universe – and to make new characters to help build this strange Hiverspace realm.
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