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A concern about $... interested in your thoughts

#1
So, we initially gave Josh ~$200,000 to make this game. Almost exactly 4 years ago. Averaged, that's about $50,000 a year to-date.

As just living expenses, that is generous for a college-student. It's do-able in most cities, it pays for rent and utilities and a cell phone and food and gas. It leaves plenty left over. In fact, if one is frugal it's fairly easy to do the same at $30,000 a year in some areas, though in many places that requires some sacrifices. $200,000 / 6 is a little over $30,000.

This brings me to my concern. Josh doesn't only have living expenses to take care of. He has office space. He has development equipment - computers and whatnot. He has mentioned hiring out the sound and graphics and other portions of the game, though we don't have a whole lot of info on how that was handled. All of these are a drain on resources, and I'm certain there are other aspects I'm not accounting for. Is Josh now running an LLC? There are costs. Did he need a lawyer to help handle the formation of an IP which will be Limit Theory? That has costs. Did he need an accountant to help manage the money earned in the KS and projected sales of the IP? That has costs.

I have more or less accepted this is one of those "it'll be ready when it's ready" situations, and suspended any emotion associated with that. My concern is one of practicality: Is there enough money for Josh to continue to develop this game to his heart's content until he feels it is ready? If not, will he be picking up side jobs (or a full-time job) to cover his costs while he develops on the side? What kind of delays would such a thing entail?

I know there are many in this community who might contribute large sums to delay this, but I personally feel that even if that is true it sidesteps the issue. More or less at-best with the above estimates, there's another two years of frugal-to-the-extreme living before the KS cash runs out and Josh is forced to look at other sources of revenue to continue developing.

Is this something which has been addressed? We continue to offer our goodwill that the game will be released and come feature-packed with all that we were promised, and that's awesome. The question is, how long can things go on as they have been to enable that? There is a cutoff point, a hard reality associated with $. Cost of living. Cost of being allowed to create, supported by those who believe in you.

I don't know that 6 years is an accurate estimate. It might be closer to 4 (2016-2012 = 4, aka now) with any other associated costs I don't know about. It could already be gone.

I don't really care how development is being funded, and I have no choice but to accept Josh's continued promises that development is ongoing and will be completed. I'm wondering whether we can really expect continued full-time development, and if so, for how long? If this has come up and been addressed elsewhere, I'd love a link to the source.

Your thoughts and musings are welcome and appreciated.
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Re: A concern about $... interested in your thoughts

#2
Hi Kaeroku,

It's funny I was only just thinking about this last week (or the week before I can't quite remember).

According to kickstarter Josh raked in about $190,000 and according to the forums is probably spending approx $30,000 ish per year (when he used to post on his spending habits he sort of conveyed that he was spending wisely on his living).

- i hope he was being honest and wasn't infact buying Mercedes cars etc :ghost:

That's just over 6 years worth of funding.

I'm not worried just yet!
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Re: A concern about $... interested in your thoughts

#3
I brought up the same concern a few months ago and was told that it was not something worth speculating about because of unknown factors. I do share the same concern you have and I hope that Josh has been able to manage his finances over the past 4 years.

I really just want to see Josh begin posting at this point. The fact that he has gone dark a second time is quite worrisome.
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Re: A concern about $... interested in your thoughts

#4
I'm not all that worried about splurges on things like fancy cars, and I even think that having a (reasonable) budget for fun and entertainment in life is important. I hope, in fact, that he *has* spent $100 here or there on a night drinking with friends or going to a movie or whatever it is that Joshs choose to do when they aren't coding.

Sounds like 2 years of funding are left. So the question remains, what happens then...? I haven't seen anything to indicate that the game will be ready by then.
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Re: A concern about $... interested in your thoughts

#5
I had once made a list of unofficial features that were once stated in the FAQ as needing to be finished before LT could release. At the time of the first "Dark Age" Josh had completed or at least partially coded the majority of Limit Theory's features. I had thought that it was about 6 months worth of work that remained. Then we heard that Josh had scrapped LTSL and was working on converting code to python to improve performance. It's this process that is currently stalling the rest of the development cycle in my opinion. Once Josh finishes the python implementation I think we'll see another 6 months worth of actual feature development and then a beta and release.

This is all my opinion and what I gauge from what I've seen in the Dev blogs. For the sake of this project, I hope that Josh is able to finish the python switch by halfway though 2017 so that the last half of 2017 can have features worked out and 2018 can be used for beta testing prior to launch.
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