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LOL Still trying to get "private investors" to give them money while even their forums are shutting
eyeswideopen
Member Posts: 2,414
E-mail I just received:
It's been a crazy time for SGL. People have gotten married, others have gotten engaged themselves, people have come,
people have gone. However all the while we've managed to get some progress made somehow.
New worlds have been created and await only for the features of the game to make them
playable and so we've brought on several new programmers eager to help get the game
to a marketable state.
That being said, we're taking the forums down.
Yes, I know... I know... But the truth is there just isn't enough manpower to maintain them
right now and it's just become too depressing to think of all the people who have posted on
them eagerly awaiting the release of the game and no doubt feeling neglected by the lack of
developer posts made to it recently. So we're going to give people a few days of time to
swap contact info with one another should they want to keep in touch with their friends
and then disable the boards for a while; at least until we're closer to a playable alpha
state of the game and can devote a reasonable amount of time to
reconnecting with the public.
As stated however progress is being made. We realized after the last video that it would
be difficult to one-up a nearly ten-minute long extravaganza of content, so the task at
hand is monstrous. This is why we've been so secretive about what can be expected with the
next video but rest assured, it will be available at some point just as soon as the
features we want to showcase in it are all ready.
We're still seeking outside investment and will continue to. The VC firms loom overhead
like circling vultures, willing to swoop in at the last moment and fund your project but
for the cost of controlling interest in your soul. We still believe that putting a
corporate entity with no knowledge of mmos in control would most likely result in the
gutting of Divergence of all we find most beautiful and dear in it's design. This is why
to this day we still seek private investment to continue to fund the game as long as
there remains any hope of finishing it under our own steam and subsequently "to make
the game that WE want" and not watch it bastardized into (yet) another horse-by-committee
wow-clone. If we can finish it ourselves with just our private investors helping pave
the way, then we'll retain controlling interest in the business. This is a much more
advantageous position to be in for us in the long run.
As always, anyone who wishes to discuss possible investment or financial opportunities
regarding the game can contact CEO Ethan Casner directly at his email address
ethan@divergence-online.com
Thanks for all of your support guys. We're doing our best and we still believe that we
can do this.
Alright, so these guys ( or this guy ) don't have the manpower to maintain a forum, but they're gonna make this game. And they still think people are going to invest money in them? They talk about "venture capitalist swarming them with offers", yet they say they won't take it as long as they can fund it themselves. THEY CAN'T EVEN FUND A FORUM ANYMORE. lol
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.-
-And on the 8th day, man created God.-
Comments
this game was lol from day 1.
ps. jus got same mail lol
they so back an forth on what is done sooo taking bets on if you ever hear from them again.
Is this game really gone?
Yeah, it's hilarious when an indie dev that's trying to develop a game with a serious amount of potential begins to struggle.
Thank God we have Blizzard to spoon feed the masses mediocre crap instead.
Aryas
Playing: Ableton Live 8
~ ragequitcancelsubdeletegamesmashcomputerkillself ~
LEarn more about these idiots before you criticize anyone here.
Start with this thread: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/233412/We-Give-Up-On-MMORPGcom-Divergence.html
These morons tried to fake out mmorpg.com right from the beginning with fake screenshots. Then a while later, they made the crybaby post I just linked. Try reading all the threads in a game's section next time.
These guys are nothing but a joke and there is not now, and will never be, any game.
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.-
-And on the 8th day, man created God.-
lol.
new mail..
Message sent to you follows:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It's been a long time since any emails like this went out hasn't it.
Things don't always work out the way you'd imagined do they. It seems like only yesterday we were putting together a businessplan, starting a company and setting out on this trek towards being professional game developers. However blame the recession, blame cowardice in general, for one reason or another the money has just not been there when we needed it.
In the last year I personally have signed on the dotted line three times and been let down each time, two of which being both from the country of Brazil, which I will not be entertaining offers from any further. If one added up the dollar value of contracts that we have floating out in the aether in which we're "still waiting on the transfer of funds to legalize the agreements" the sum would be well over $6M USD, far more than we were ever trying to put together for this.
We have found a little help along the way however - Small-time investors chipping in what they can, and to these brave souls we are infinitely grateful. $5K here, $10K there. It adds up and it gets stuff done.
It is because of these individuals that to this day, those of us who remain of SGL, are still somehow clawing away at this. We don't have enough to employ a full-time staff, so we're doing the best we can with what we have until we can find at least one more leg of financing to complete the prototype.
And so, with all of this negativity, is there any good news to be had?
There is a bit. For the past 9 months we've been focusing on a much smaller self-contained version of the full game, hoping that perhaps we can at least finish it without needing the full $3.2M to pull it off. There have been setbacks and of course being flat broke doesn't help, but I'm at least pleased to say that we've gotten a large part of it done. Another bit of positivity might be that absolutely no-one on this Earth has seen our latest work (aside from our current and future investors), which makes the things you've seen in 2008 and 2009 look like Wolfenstein 3D. The details of which are a closely guarded secret for now.
And so I leave you again for a bit.
On a more personal note, although working 60+ hours per week trying to do 5 different jobs at once doesn't leave a whole hell of a lot of spare time, we actually had an idea that it might be cool to, if enough people are planning on playing "Rift" when it's out, denote one server as "The Divergence Server" to play together on. Once we have a final server-name list shortly before launch I'll be making another mass-announcement with the name of that server if anyone is interested.
In the meantime, my door is always open for anyone who might be willing and able to commit even as little as $12,000.00 in exchange for revenue sharing. We've had luck with this in the past and these microinvestments have been responsible for much of the "new" work yet unseen by the public eye. It's highly possible at this point that the prototype might end up being completed ONLY by "small-fish" which although doesn't allow us to enter the AAA market as early as we'd like, is definitely still an entrace into the MMO genre and would definitely still get people playing (and paying for) our product before the window of opportunity closes.
That's all.
In closing, I say that it is not my desire to give hope. In truth, still without a solid financial future in front of us, I stopped needing hope a long time ago. Make no mistake, this project is not fueled by hope, it is fueled be determination.
Plus I've found that if you have enough anger, you can do without hope, which in the end is what this project, "Divergence" has been about since day one. Trying to accomplish something that everyone tells you you cannot. In our case, that was building a professional online game franchise and seeing it through to fruition.
And I promise you this. This project will be completed even if takes 5 years and Jon Ogden and I have to complete the fucker ourselves. Even if we don't see a nickel of income for the next two years. There is no turning back, there is no relenting. There is only forwards.
See you all around.
pbbbbt nothing new....
MMORPG should move this game to the Canceled game list.. It looks like the DEVS have given up on the game too...
Only Rugby releases the stress of Life.
edit: just noticed this is from Jan 2011
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I just randomly got thinking about this "game" again and was shocked to see it listed on MMORPG.COM. I thought they weren't going to let them back on the site unless they had a real game in development. I actually remember the original lisiting fiasco where they claimed to have a game when in reality all they had was an idea for a game and a few stolen screenshots from the engine they wanted to use. Ethan may be persistent but this game is never going to happen.
I remember reading the sales pitch for investors that he had up on his website. It was embarassing to read. I think a high school student could have written a better paper. Had I been a venture capitalist and received that I would have laughed. Also, I can't figure out why he didn't get a job in the industry, or at least move to California or anywhere else closer to the industry than Illinois where he is from. The days of creating a best selling game in your basement is long gone, unless you are doing smart phone app development.
The funniest part of all is that he says he is turning down money because they want some control over the project. Given both his track record on this game and a lack of a track record in creating any other game, I sure as heck want a lot of say so on how my money was spent by this guy!
oops wrong game. accidental necro...the wort type of necro-crime