I paid for Vintage Story, and I would appreciate if the entirety of the funds I provided go towards the development of the product I paid for. Whilst I wish you all the luck in the world on this new endeavour, I simply know nothing about it. I don't particularly have much interest at this current moment in time. Nor do I expect to experience this new product without an additional fee, and so, I can't really support the idea of using the funds provided by people who want Vintage Story going towards this other project.
This may to some seem overly harsh. It's not my intention. I think Vintage Story is great. Making more games like Vintage Story could be great. I think your team is great, and I think Tyron himself is great and has produced a very enjoyable video game. I have no criticism aimed at the skill of anyone involved. I have no complaints of the conduct thus far, I find the ideology towards development very admirable.
I understand that growing a studio is not easy. I know the realities of game development mean that you can't be entirely accountable to your players and you can't produce itemised lists of expenses and tell them exactly what they're helping develop. This isn't a criticism of bad accounting. Nor is it an accusation of "Taking the money and running" or failing to deliver a product in a reasonable time. It's completely understandable the given the success of Vintage Story, these funds would be reinvested into the studio, and certainly from this it's reasonable to assume new projects would be developed.
However. The elephant in the room is simply that Vintage Story is not finished, and that's fine. I'm not accusing anyone of lacking in their development of the project. I purchased this knowing full well that this was a long-haul, and I'm sure my financial contribution towards the project is but a meagre one. I'm not here to demand that having given you my $40 that you're therefore bound to my beck and call. But, that doesn't mean it doesn't feel a little wrong to be talking of newer greener pastures whilst the project is still unfinished.
I feel the fear from a lot of people is simply that what is being said here is effectively:
"I'm going to double my own work load, take some of the capital raised by Vintage Story and develop a new project. This won't have any effect on Vintage Story and everything is going to be great."
And, unfortunately this is a level of trust that a lot of developers have abused in the past. Steam Early Access is a graveyard of abandoned projects which were used as nothing more than a leapfrog to developer a "Bigger project". There's numerous games who've treated customers like "Backers" and told them they're in it together, only to use that money to develop cash shop items to resell back to the same "Backers" that paid for them to be developed in the first place. Even amongst the very large studios, Fortnite Save the World is a mere abandoned footnote compared to Fortnite Battle Royale.
I'm not saying that this is the direction Vintage Story is going, or accusing anyone of anything underhand. But, I am saying that many people are pretty weary to this sort of behaviour and trust to deliver on the promise of "A new project won't take away from the existing one" is extremely low.
As it is, I think Tyron and the team have proven themselves capable of developing a very good game. However, and I don't mean to be disrespectful, you have yet to prove that you can finish the game. And that's kind of a big problem when you're talking about starting the development of a new game. You're asking us to trust you, and I'm sure there's many that will. But for many of us, it's simply too much of an ask because we're been here too many times before. Myself, I honestly think that a new project presents any number of reasons for why Vintage Story may slow down development, and I think that's unfair. I think if the new project is significantly more successful focus will pivot towards it. I think if the new project is more interesting (Which it undoubtable will be at first) then you won't balance the projects equally, and the new project will get more focus.
I wish the best of luck with it, I really do. I wish I had the optimism to believe that this is a good thing. But if you pull it off you will be the exception to a pretty notable trend. And as it is, I think it's going to take a pretty consistent update schedule which continues to add significant content for the game, for the foreseeable future before any fears of this new project taking focus away will be absolved.
