Looking to the post-EWA future
Filed under Design Diary, Writing Journal on August 10, 2007
Keywords: Eternal Warlords, Relvan's Rescue
Got a quick rejection from Baen’s Universe. Ah, the benefits of being an “established” author. 
The remaining markets on my list are all submission by mail. For those keeping track, I’m 0/5 so far.
In other news, we hit a snag in the release of Eternal Warlords: Arena. Development is on track, but our server is throwing fits. Everything works fine when the OS is set to DHCP, but all the services crash when we enter IPs, DNS, etc. The server is running Suse Linux. Poor Chris (Wan Gai) is pulling his hair out trying to troubleshoot this while still getting good enough grades he can graduate at the end of the month.
Not having a server up means we’ve been unable to do some of the marketing stuff I had planned via the game’s website, and it’s delayed development of the communications services the game will use. It also means we’re paying for colocation that we aren’t using.
I’m still very excited about how close we are, and am looking ahead to our next project. There have been many lessons learned from EWA. I now have a more realistic idea of the time involved in game development. It would have been very beneficial if I could have devoted at least one full business day each week to EWA, and GMG business in general. The next project’s burden would mandate a full-time commitment, on my part as well as others.
One of the prerequisites to starting the next project is being able to fund a staff. I don’t expect EWA to provide the necessary income to do this within the timeframe I want for the release of the project, so that means seeking out investors. And we’re not talking the piecemeal chunks from friends and family that got EWA off the ground. I’m envisioning salaries for myself, Chris, a couple programmers and a couple artists for two years.
That kind of financing likely means giving up a chunk of ownership in GMG. My wife and I are currently the majority shareholders, with over 50% ownership between the two of us. To retain that, I want to buy out most of the other current investors before starting a new round of venture capital-seeking.
EWA’s performance will impact this plan in two primary ways. First, it will be the sole source of revenue for the company, enabling or inhibiting its ability to buy back shares. Second, it will be our “proof-of-life” for prospective investors.
That’s a lot hinging on a big “If,” but I’ve found the experience so far very fulfilling and worth the uncertainty.
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