I'm posting this here on TGC because most of the people who know about us call Apollo their home, and because our own website was destroyed (which I'll get to shortly). This thread is for the people who followed MISoft Studios closely in the past, who've been wondering what's been happening with us in the past year. I'm going to ask that those with nothing genuine to say, please just ignore this thread. If I didn't think it was important to several people, I wouldn't be posting it!
Those of you who follow MISoft know that our website was down for a while, and while it's back up now, it isn't working. Our website was hacked last year by forces unknown. They broke in, attempted to attach several services and new URL's to our website, and then left it alone. We didn't re-build/ re-launch the website because we were afraid of another attack, and because we couldn't afford to move to a new hosting solution. The site had less than fifty unique visits per month just prior to the attack, down from a few hundred before that. We didn't have a new game to release (which we'll get to shortly), so we put MINet at the bottom of our priority list. Quite a few people suggested that we consider changing our name since the site was down, to something that sounds less similar to
Microsoft. We were seriously considering it.
Then, about a week ago, we learned that a party was interested in purchasing the misoftstudios.com domain name from us for a reasonable amount of money. The amount initially offered was extremely low, but after negotiating the price, we were offered an amount of money that was more reasonable. We offered this party misoftgames.com as well, for the same price as the first URL, and we're waiting to hear back from them about that. If they accept, we'll break even in the amount of money we put into MISoft Studios over the years, and while I'm not the sort of person who likes to settle for "breaking even," we've agreed to the sale of the first domain, and we'll agree to the sale of the second if they accept. I put a considerable amount of money into MISoft and this will nearly even things up.
We haven't released a game since 2007. The reason for this is simple:
Real Estate Magnate quickly spiralled from a game worth looking forward to into a complete coding quagmire. Our list of features constantly fluctuated throughout production. Some members of our team lost hope in the game and left MISoft. Agent Dink and I soldiered on, but even our devotion to the title was challenged by the complexity of what should have been a simple engine. After a few years of defeats and crushing bugs, I've decided to officially throw in the towel.
Real Estate Magnate nearly murdered my game development ambitions entirely, and to say that announcing the end of REM is painful would be disingenuous to say the least.
So what's the plan today? I'm going to tear up the contracts with MISoft Studios' team, formally releasing them from any contractual obligations previously held. All code, art, sound, and other assets developed for unreleased games will be released back to the people who made them, for use however they see fit.
Eternal Equinox, which was viewed positively by everyone who played it but failed to find much of an audience, will probably end up on the freeware rack, though I'm not entirely sure about that yet.
Someone offered to possibly buy the game design documents for
Real Estate Magnate, thinking they might be able to finish the game, so I'm going to talk that over with them, and if they offer enough money that me and Agent Dink are content with it, we're going to sell the design (I haven't talked to Dink about this yet, though). As for our other game,
Redemption 9mm, I'm not sure what's going to happen yet. I'll spend the next few days reviewing our progress before making any decisions about it.
All of this sounds like MISoft is dead, and to some degree, it is. But I still love game development, particularly game design. In the coming weeks, I'm going to mull over the possibility of building a new, smaller team for the sole purpose of developing text adventure games, which I'm still extremely passionate about and love deeply. After releasing a few modern IF games, maybe we'll start working toward bigger stuff. I still believe there's a market out there for text adventure games, and I want to prove the genre's detractors wrong, so that might be something I'll move toward.
I want to thank everyone who contributed to MISoft Studios, as a member of our team or as a fan of our games. I even want to thank the people who viewed us negatively, because you were the people who rallied the team and pushed us in the right direction. And I want to thank the TGC community as a whole for your positive feedback and for allowing us the chance to grow as a team. I recieved a lot of emails in the past year from people asking if MISoft Studios would come back, and the level of support never ceased to amaze me. I'm deeply sorry to everyone who cared about MISoft Studios for letting you down. As small a consolation as it might be, I hope you guys will take similar interest in whatever future team we decide to forge in the coming weeks and months.
I know some people are reading this and thinking "who cares?" Well, the softies care. I have a very large folder in my email box that can prove that. I hope I didn't waste anyone's time with this, and for those of you who actually wanted this update, I hope you aren't going to be too upset with me about all of this! Thanks for several years of support and admiration, and I hope everyone remembers the joy they got out of MISoft, and not the headaches. Thanks again.
