2024-07-29
To cut the long story short: some bad things happened, then some sad things happened, then some more bad things happened. I spent the last 2 months trying to work around the bad things, while coping with the sad things, and I’m not out of the woods yet, but I hopefully should be soon. I hope you understand why I was mostly absent recently - too many things happened at once, and some are still going on.
This long chain of unfortunate events made me realize that while I was working on a project for my main client throughout the past year I had no time to do anything I wanted to (like FUEL, like other games, like my books), I’m constantly tired, I’m constantly miserable, and I don’t enjoy my work the way I used to. To make things worse, I realized that the source of all of those negative factors is the manager of that project that I spent the last 12 months working on non-stop as an investment in my future.
Last week, I terminated the contract with that client, because I prefer to be poor than to be constantly miserable. On the upside, this means I can return to the life I used to have before that project has started, the downside is I have given up the steady income I had from that client. I have other clients, maybe even I will be better off this way, but I have also done that because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in services for other people, I want to work on my own projects (like FUEL).
And this leads us to the last part of this update - May last year (the last time I had some time off) I started to work on premium features in FUEL, which were supposed to be activated during the summer (just like many other things in the game), they included options to rename players, some more fancy logo and uniforms options, some additional training data, etc. And now, I have to return to that idea - I doubt FUEL will ever be financially sustainable, but any income I could get out of my projects would make it easier for me to find time between paid jobs for the clients and would help cover the costs of the server.
Yesterday I activated an account on the Patreon, still trying to figure out how to combine that platform into my systems, but in The Lone Detective I used PayPal for donations from users and one of those options might be implemented in FUEL. I have placed a button leading to PayPal donations on FUEL, if any of you consider supporting the game this way, it would make things much easier for me. There are no brackets or suggestions, you can donate any amount, but at this point it would be most helpful if you could donate the amount you think you are prepared to pay on a monthly basis to support FUEL. It would give me some idea how realistic it is to support my work from my projects.
And to make it clear - even if there won’t be any donations made, I have no plans to shut down FUEL, nor introduce pay-to-win mechanics. I’m planning to upgrade the game, but I need some time right now to sort things out. The break will between seasons will end in 2 weeks, by then I should know how the things look.
We are simulating basketball competition, in which your team will compete with others in league divisions and cup competition, in which you can be drawn against clubs from other divisions - that way you can meet opponents that are much stronger or much weaker than you.
