Where have we been?
It has been almost a month now since the vast majority of the small but amazing player base we have last heard from us. It was as if we had seemingly and abruptly vanished from the surface of the earth after the 12th developer’s blog was published. No words can describe how frustrated we were with ourselves for not being able to inform you all regarding our abrupt ceasing of press releases and what had happened to us until the dust had settled. It is entirely our fault for failing to announce the recent and abrupt closure of the survival server and the developer blogs and we sincerely apologise for keeping everyone in the dark for so long and most likely disappointing everyone.
Truth be told, as we were typing out the 12th entry in the developers’ blog series, we were already in somewhat of a developmental hell, and which at the point, simply nothing was going for us. Development grinder to a halt as we all had personal commitments to attend to while our participation in the Athion building contest did nothing to remedy that. At the time we wrote the last developers’ blog, we were totally burnt out from the development of the survival server or the network to be completely honest. Things just were not going according to plan. We had miscalculated the interest the survival server would generate while also misinterpreting the general trends in Minecraft servers and as a result we launched a vanilla server in a time when they were losing popularity. The beta for the survival server did not pan out the way it should have either and in retrospect, was due to the rushing of the beta testing. There were simply way too many bugs and flaws that we had not perceived earlier, an example being the mob arena maps being only semi-functional or the spleef arenas not finished. Overall it was completely unpolished and should have never been released looking back.
Apart from our obvious failures with the survival server, we as a development team was going through a extended period of chaos and anarchy. Previously when we first launched the network, we attempted to structure the development team in a democratic manner so that the five co-owners had to agree on every decision with no proper leader. Ideally it would work that way. However as time worn on, it became more and more apparent that the team was falling into a complete disarray. One person would be working on X while another on A, already stretched thin by a lack of manpower as a small network that meant that nothing was actually progressing and develop enemy halted. Without direction, everyone was doing nothing, or did not know what to do. Another issue stemming from this fundamental leadership issue was that we were unorganised. Most minecraft server development teams or any development studio for that matter had some form on internal bulletin board to organise themselves. Initially we used trello but gradually abandoned that and fell into obscurity, instead we opted to use google drive while admittedly was somewhat effective just did not suffice.
Another issue we faced apart from our internal unorganisation, was the developer blogs surprisingly also contributed to our demise. Our original intent was for the developers’ blogs to showcase what progress we had made while attempting to stay relevant at the same time. Unfortunately however, it did not pan out as planned, degreasing from the original intent. We instead of using it to showcase our progress had it the other way round where we developed to showcase our progress while neglecting the actual progression, doing what looks nice but not necessary instead of doing what’s necessary.
With the reasons behind our abrupt departure out of the way, we feel it is also high time to inform the community of yet another drastic change, the closure of our survival server. It is with great sadness today that we announce that the survival server has been closed down and the entire project scrapped. A decision which costed most of our development efforts and energy to be washed down the drain. As written earlier, we grossly misinterpreted the trends in Minecraft servers and in that sense should have never started development to began with. While the server had it pros, we generally felt it to be not on par with our standards and as stated was rushed into beta which was a costly mistake for us, potentially casting the server and the network as a whole in a negative light. Apart from that, it never performed as we expected not was the server well received which dealt a server blow on the morals of the development team.
How exactly are we going to move on from here? That is a pretty thought-evoking question to which none of us has the slightest clue. The only thing we can possibly do is to learn from our mistakes to ensure this never happens again. We are not about to throw in the towel yet for the night is still young, neither is there any sense in crying over split milk. The only things we guess we can do is to move onwards wherever that might be. We now have a overall leader elected from amongst the five co-owners to direct and coordinate the efforts of the team. Also, we are in the midst of experimenting with multiple organisation tools. Lastly with the closure of the survival server, we are now free to start work on a new project which we are at present uncomfortable with releasing to the general public. Maybe sometime in the future, it would see the daylight, maybe it won’t, who knows?
To all those who are still even reading this blog, we as a development team would like to thank you for your continued support for us and it really means a lot to us. Until next time, hopefully, this is Karus Network signing off.
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