Prompted by community input and the success of my recent Kickstarter project, Island Forge is now Free-to-Play with Membership and Upgrade options!
Thank you for your interest in Island Forge. As always, community input is most welcome!
(PS You might notice my skyscraper ad here on JGO - happy to send some of that Kickstarter funding back to the community!)
So you’re on US? 
Looks like your page is going well. Good luck!
Yes, I’m in the US (but very willing to relocate if anyone is hiring across the pond).
By popular demand, I am excited to offer a Lifetime Membership reward tier!
Hurray, today Island Forge @ Kickstarter reached its base goal! But it doesn’t stop there - this is where many projects really take off.
I appreciate everyone who has contributed and commented so far. Thanks for everyone’s interest at JGO.
Find Island Forge on Facebook, Twitter, IndieDB, MMORPG.com, and Steam Greenlight!
Well done!
Final day! Grats on your goal!
Yeah, good job getting to $4,406. And you still have 20 hours left!
(voted for your game on Greenlight btw).
Thanks everyone! Still 12 hours left at Kickstarter.
I appreciate the Greenlight vote, Jimmt! So far, “This game has attained 0% of necessary positive ratings so far” … but that’s to be expected. I’ve found that much of the Greenlight community is adverse to a game that requires a subscription (and so is everyone else, for that matter).
So, once my Kickstarter project comes to fruition, my next major focus is on providing better free-play and non-subscription options.
Kickstarter was a success! Thanks for those who visited from the JGO community. (See the original post in this topic regarding the new Free-to-Play mode!)
Great work! Wish I could play without breaking the TOS, not 18 and my friends are EU =(
[quote] A parent or legal guardian may establish an Account and Subscription for a child who is at least 13 years old but less than 18 years old.
[/quote]
I’m sure being a US citizen won’t really matter that much would it? I’m 14 and would like to play?
The ToS cover my legal requirements to operate a business in which players interact with each other via the Internet and can post player-created content. It is an unfortunate necessity. I understand that some potential players are uncomfortable clicking through the agreement. (Actually, I’m more surprised when anyone stops to read it in the first place.)
Thanks for your interest in Island Forge!
Sounds like the typical forum…
If I’d have taken the same route as you (asking a laywer for advice and doing everything he told me to) I’d have made JGO only available for the Dutch, as I live in the Netherlands. Screw everybody else with their risky local laws, I’m playing it safe! Oh wait…
I appreciate your point of view.
EDIT: By the way, know anyone hiring in the Netherlands? I’d love to live there. I’m good at writing Java code. Just don’t put me in charge of marketing or legal.
Like any western country, there is a huge shortage of programmers / software developers / software engineers / whatever you want to call 'em. Stick your head in any IT office in any city and you’d be hired on the spot. It should indeed be stressed that you’d not be put in charge of, or anywhere near legal, or the user base would be drastically narrowed - as we have tiny countries over here.
That’s the problem with America-it’s not that people aren’t hiring, it’s that the unemployed don’t have the skills needed. And then those skill-less people just bleed the country dry getting unemployment benefits and whatnot.
Life is so simple, after simplification.
But let’s try to keep this thread on topic, somewhat
Not exactly. People are not hiring. Period. There’s a lot of talk that employers have a high demand for skilled workers, but in times of high demand the price people are willing to pay for that thing increases and the quantity of items that they are willing to pay for increase. Employers want people to wear several hats, pay for their own training, have worked for a competitor of theirs, and be willing to work for less pay (for both experienced and inexperienced workers) than new graduates did five years ago. Employers ask that their employees be engineers and secretaries or be software developers and tech support people or astrophysicists and janitor. You could hire both an astrophysicist and a janitor, but they wouldn’t be the same person and you can’t expect the best of both worlds by getting the skilled worker for a less-skilled worker’s salary. It’s unreasonable to expect that unless people become isolated, mutually hostile, and desperate.
They tell people via the media that they want more skilled workers in order to create hype (even retail stores - apparently Americans are either too dumb to count money or are so dumb that they believe that retail stores can’t find sufficiently “skilled” workers). If the market (demand) matched the hype, every new graduate would have full time employment and be rich. The whole unemployment benefits as being harmful thing is also imagined. If the program were allowed to do its job (and not “reformed” as soon as they start to kick in - sort of like shutting off the fan in your computer because it starts spinning faster…) they would act as an automatic stabilizer and prevent a snowball effect from wiping out other jobs by slowing cyclical recession. Although if powers having nothing to do with imaginary things like economic theories continue along current trends, the “recession” is permanent and systemic and America is not capable of recovering skilled jobs even if it has many more skilled un-employees than other countries.
Good thing I don’t have a job.