SmallWorlds required very particular, and now, antiquated requirements for all it's different systems to run over the internet. You cannot simply press a few buttons to convert SW into a newer format, there is a lot more to it than that. Mobile games were developed to hopefully open up another revenue stream, but these weren't able to do that either. Rebuilding SW was going to be a costly consideration, at a time where we didn't have the option to fund it. SmallWorlds used Flash, which is what everything relied upon at its foundation, and which was being phased out by all web browsers in due time. we would lose money as they take a percentage of transactions. Using Steam is also not an option, they are simply a Store, our costs would not be covered, and if anything. ![]() Purging data would have directly affected everyone's places, inventories, market listings, etc. We overhauled a lot of stuff, but our data-footprint was huge, and our costs reflected that. Revenue which we relied on from 98% of the community continued to decline.Īmazon AWS servers are great, but SmallWorlds grew extremely large, and used aging techniques and services. The large shift to mobile, and ad-blockers caused these networks to shrink considerably over time. These networks changed a lot from 2010-2018. Other options also failed to convert for us, and advertising rates continued to climb up. It became irresponsible to continue to inject large amounts of money in to Facebook/Google. We couldn't just pay money to acquire new players, because the rates for doing so were higher than the average sum we would get back from those new guests. Much larger external shifts happened on the internet between 2010-2018. There was never any evidence that bugs, features, banning of players or exploits had any noticeable effect on our user numbers, no matter what existing Citizens out there say. We consulted with multiple external firms who reviewed SmallWorlds' server setup, monetization, branding, team structure, game-retention loops, office working environment, hardware, management, all saying the same thing - that things couldn't be easily remedied. This was because of many reasons, but most prominently the expansion of social media platforms, video services, increased competition, and people spending more time on mobile phones. The population of SmallWorlds continued to shrink every year. There is more to this, so I'll detail everything below in its own category. It's extremely unlikely that SW/MM would generate revenue without fundamental changes, as the numbers simply don't add up, and never really did.We would need to fund development from unlikely investors who have endless amounts of money they wouldn't mind losing, because:.SW/MM was not profitable, so we would need to redesign many aspects of the game, including mobile work.All staff leaving their current jobs to re-join the team, and given long contracts for taking that risk. ![]() Existing programmers rebuilding the game using new standards for 12+ months requiring a large initial cost ($1M+).It is extremely unlikely SmallWorlds/MiniMundos can return, because we would need perfect conditions: ![]() ![]() Virtual Worlds are complicated to operate, costly to maintain and often lose money, it's impossible to make everyone happy, they are susceptible to a lot of external situations and companies, nothing is guaranteed, advertising doesn't always work, and change is always needed. I've covered all of this in different posts, but I'd like to drop everything in one place, and be quite blunt about the situation. I often get messages about SmallWorlds & TownCenter: timelines for their relaunch, asking about source code, if we've considered just putting it online and hoping the pandemic will change things, or curiosity about where the projects are now after their shutdown.
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