Is Jolt still committed to this game?

[aussiebob]

I recently suggested that the creator of uTools (a Firefox add-on for Utopia) should be approached by Jolt to help develop the game. A simple browser add-on has made more improvements to the game interface in a few weeks than the game developers have managed to do in months. The player community has done more for the game than the actual people who own it.

According to Bishop, the developers at Frontsquare (Sean and Brian) are not getting paid for their work, which raises some questions if that's the case...

Is Jolt making any financial commitment to improve this game or is Jolt simply going to rely on charity work to keep it going? We have a dedicated community manager (Thundergore) who seems to be trying his best to make changes, but at the end of the day, if the company isn't going to commit financially to do anything with the game, then it's not going to improve. I suggested a while ago that Jolt sell Utopia. Interestingly, there has been no official response to that. Some people have theorised that Jolt is only retaining ownership of the game to increase their monopoly.

I think that it's time to bring up such questions again. The last real announcement that we heard about the game's future was over a month ago (March 18th) and it can still be found on our Throne Room page. We were informed that Sean and Brian are spending their spare time maintaining Utopia, out of the goodness of their hearts, which suggested that even from their point of view, Jolt has left the game to go to ruin.

Let's have an official response from the people who actually own Utopia, not the unpaid developers or the community managers who are trying to keep this dying community going. Is the company behind the game actually committed to its future?

[Poggo]

The answer to your original question is a big fat no.

[geln0r]

I'm pretty sure Jolt is leaving the game to die, and doesn't want to release the code to prevent competition and/or loss of face (should someone else get it going again). In any case, it's not like Jolt is in charge anymore after they got bought by gamestop.

That being said, Brian, Sean and Thundergore are all doing an excellent job considering the circumstances. I don't care what anyone else says, they're the reason we still have a game up right now, buggy as it may be.

[Magmalava]

The time for questions... don't start again, we know where we are, S&B have explained that well.

Jolt would have pulled the plug, if SB hadn't volunteered to give the game a try.

You won't get direct answers from Jolt.

As long as SB find the time to start up a new age, including a few changes, then we're happy.

[Bishop]

please visit the announcements forum - or your throne room.

[aussiebob]

Basically, that announcement (from 18th March, nearly two months ago) could be summarised as...

"Stop picking on us for not doing our jobs, because we're not being paid for our work and Jolt doesn't care whether the game lives or dies. We blame cheaters and you nasty, angry players for spoiling the game. Don't bother complaining because we're just going to ignore you anyway."

That was the last we heard from the Ninja programmers, but perhaps it does answer my original question, i.e. Is Jolt still committed to the game? "No".

So let's assume that Jolt doesn't want the game to survive and doesn't want to sell it for the sake of preventing anyone else from possibly making a profit. Sean and Brian only look at it in their spare time, which is not enough to really make a difference.

There are people out there who are willing to put in the time to improve the game and have demonstrated that they're capable of doing so. I mentioned uTools before, because it's made some significant improvements and is being developed even further. Consider what one volunteer programmer has done in a few weeks compared to Sean and Brian, and imagine how much more progress could be made if the game was in the hands of someone who is actually willing to put in that kind of effort.

[WolfysBack]

There are people out there who are willing to put in the time to improve the game and have demonstrated that they're capable of doing so.

No such capability has been demonstrated.

[pmyraje]

People who wish to and have the skills are free to go and develop their own games. Has anyone done so to a level that is any good at all? Writing tools for an existing game is a whole different thing to coding the game itself.

That previous post from the developers made it 100% clear what Jolt's position is.

[VT2]

Jolt has no idea of what their position is.
This is fact.

If we're to believe what we've been told, this game is no longer part of Jolt/OMAC, so what Jolt's position is has absolutely zero bearing on anything anymore.

[aussiebob]

No such capability has been demonstrated.

That was an odd statement to make. I assume that you haven't used uTools. It may not be the same as writing a game from scratch, but it has increased the functionality of many game pages and made them easier to use.

People who wish to and have the skills are free to go and develop their own games. Has anyone done so to a level that is any good at all? Writing tools for an existing game is a whole different thing to coding the game itself.

I'm trying to figure out how your argument achieves anything. Do you want this game to improve or not? Someone who is capable of writing a script to change the game's interface may be capable of doing more. At the moment, however, the game is locked in the hands of the same two individuals who have failed to make any significant improvements in months. If you accept that situation then you have already doomed the game to die a slow death (which you may very well have). On the other hand, if there are people who want the game to improve and are willing to help, then they should be encouraged and even enlisted by the game's developers to be part of that process.

[Bishop]

while i enjoy using uTools to compare coding it to writing a complete game is laughable. They are worlds apart.

[VT2]

But making a tool is worlds apart from taking a functional game, and downgrading it to a buggy mess, that's less secure, less functional, and less appealing than something that was made by an amateur 12 years ago.

[pmyraje]

That was an odd statement to make. I assume that you haven't used uTools. It may not be the same as writing a game from scratch, but it has increased the functionality of many game pages and made them easier to use.

I've used uTools. To be honest I hated it and got rid of it very quickly. That's not to say there isn't skill involved in writing the tools, but the fact remains that writing scripts to alter things in an existing game is a totally different thing to programming the game itself.

I'm trying to figure out how your argument achieves anything. Do you want this game to improve or not? Someone who is capable of writing a script to change the game's interface may be capable of doing more. At the moment, however, the game is locked in the hands of the same two individuals who have failed to make any significant improvements in months. If you accept that situation then you have already doomed the game to die a slow death (which you may very well have). On the other hand, if there are people who want the game to improve and are willing to help, then they should be encouraged and even enlisted by the game's developers to be part of that process.

It's not obvious what the game would "improve" to. If it would improve in the direction of the uTools ad on then absolutely no, I don't want it to "improve". I also absolutely don't want the game code in the hands of players of the game. I am more than happy with a game being run by the current people and I can decide whether to stay or go. Having someone fixing bugs or making proper improvements to the game would be good, but that is different to a cosmetic script.

[stoffi]

This seems to be the very end of utopia, all because the current owners do not want to sell it to create competition and lose face. Egoism at its worst. I will never ever try a game that is somehow connected to omac or whoever else owns utopia nowadays.

[TheRock]

while i enjoy using uTools to compare coding it to writing a complete game is laughable. They are worlds apart.

Angelus is the best coder in Utopia. If you disagree, you are wrong.

I heard he actually re-recoded the game back to the Mehul Method just for ****s one day, then lost it when his boyfriend spilled Guinness on his laptop :(