Today marks the one year anniversary of the start of #TheImperialRealmMiranda's Early Access. Woo!
I had some things I wanted to do to mark the occasion, but then my wife was out of commission for several days (she's fine now) so I was trying to do her stuff as well as my stuff, and that's exhausting and wildly disruptive.
So I thought I'd do a little
#tweetstorm postmortem of the first year of Early Access.
What Went Right
People are having fun playing with the toys I've built. I check out what people are doing, and I'm constantly amazed by what they've accomplished and the unique things they're doing. Everybody really does play differently!
The feedback I have gotten from everyone has been amazingly supportive and helpful. I really can't thank everyone enough! You have given your time to submit bug reports, pages of written feedback & suggestions, and put up with hundreds of crashes. We are all building this dream.
The tech works. I was worried launching Early Access that it would fail in some spectacular manner I hadn't forseen. Getting hundreds of avatars for thousands of players on one seamless map in real-time is an incredibly challenging technology problem.
The niche works. To my amazement there still isn't another seamless open world massively multiplayer RTS like Miranda. Actually, knowing what it takes to build an MMORTS like this, it's not actually that amazing.
What Went Wrong
PR efforts have been an abject failure. I believed people would value a completely unique and playable game enough that they would overlook shortcomings in appearance. That was delusional thinking. Without great visuals you are at a massive marketing disadvantage.
The plan for Miranda to be a purely PvP game was a disaster. PvP seems a natural fit for RTS, but you know how people say they don't like PvP? It's true! So the focus is now on adding more cooperative and solo play choices.
I have some amazingly talented musicians and artists lined up to help me make Miranda the spectacular world I envision. I had planned to use some of the revenue from Early Access to pay them. So... it's still just me.
And Now...
I'm hard at work on the third major update I've dubbed "Bold New World". It will be done when it's done. There will also be an update for GDPR compliance. I'm not sure yet if they will be one-in-the-same.
The Imperial Realm::Miranda is by far the coolest and most difficult thing I've worked on. And I really don't know how it will work out. But it has given me the opportunity to know my daughter. And there is a huge value in that. I'm optimistic we can fix the rest.
Since I haven't posted any screenshots in a super-long time, here's a teeny preview of the new crystal formations I'm working on.

[Crystal formations - work in progress.]