Hero's Journey Forum » General Discussion » HJ is officially over.

I'm glad this game is still in the works, I picked up on it about 5 years ago, was part of some special program or something on the forums there. Just meant I was a glorified suggestion maker, lol. Hope to see some progress on this sometime soon :) and the engine does look nice.

 http://www.heroshall.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2530

Until funding is re-secured, HJ is no more.

Shame, the game had promise but the sooo long development period was pretty much a killer.

Originally posted by Hammertime1

Shame, the game had promise but the sooo long development period was pretty much a killer.

A variation on the MUDS simmutronics have made in the form of HJ would be great lets hope , they get a few dollars.

I've been saying this for years. Only recently they claimed they were going to start remarketing it. Devs came here to reassure people. Lies. Vaporware, as it has always been.

hmm this looks kinda familiar with there "release date info" *cough* DF*cough*

Originally posted by Riceman

 As a former volunteer GM for Hero's Journey, I'm in the loop as far as goings-on at Simutronics.

The layoffs are true. There are now 6 employees still remaining at the Simutronics headquarters. Dave tried very hard to prevent this, but in the end, HeroEngine wasn't selling well enough to support the team anymore.

Simutronics will continue to develop and support HeroEngine, but Hero's Journey is on indefinite hiatus until Simu can get out of this rut.

Personally, I think Hero's Journey is vaporware. Having actually worked on the game, I can say that with some authority.

This is too bad, because it had a lot of potential. HeroEngine really is a very solid engine, and I had a blast using it.

A 3 month license for the Hero engine was 50,000.00. A full royalty free license was 995,000.00. And there were a few other regional packages with royalties included somewhere in between those two price ranges. It seems to me that only large gaming companies can really afford that, in this economy banks aren't likely to loan that kind of money to independents for game creation as their business model.

Naw, I think independents are going to use lesser expensive MMO creation engines to accomplish that task.

It's too bad HJ isn't going to be released, and it's even worse, in my opinion, if they thought that licensing out their engine would cover the funding for JH.

Originally posted by Sheista

Wow, a friend who was a GM for HJ confirmed this.  He received an email from the company informing them about the layoffs.  Said the game was not cancelled, but that it would be a while until they could get funding.  Apparently they've had some pretty major financial issues, and haven't been selling as many licenses of the HeroEngine as they would have liked.

I stand corrected, but this really does suck.  :(

They'll pick it back up once the Bioware Star Wars game comes out and they start collecting commissions off the sales.

Originally posted by comerb

Originally posted by Sheista

Wow, a friend who was a GM for HJ confirmed this.  He received an email from the company informing them about the layoffs.  Said the game was not cancelled, but that it would be a while until they could get funding.  Apparently they've had some pretty major financial issues, and haven't been selling as many licenses of the HeroEngine as they would have liked.

I stand corrected, but this really does suck.  :(

 

They'll pick it back up once the Bioware Star Wars game comes out and they start collecting commissions off the sales.

You can be pretty sure that Bioware paid the 995k for the Engine, so they don't have to pay royalties afterwards.

Originally posted by Guillermo197

Originally posted by comerb

Originally posted by Sheista

Wow, a friend who was a GM for HJ confirmed this.  He received an email from the company informing them about the layoffs.  Said the game was not cancelled, but that it would be a while until they could get funding.  Apparently they've had some pretty major financial issues, and haven't been selling as many licenses of the HeroEngine as they would have liked.

I stand corrected, but this really does suck.  :(

 

They'll pick it back up once the Bioware Star Wars game comes out and they start collecting commissions off the sales.

 

You can be pretty sure that Bioware paid the 995k for the Engine, so they don't have to pay royalties afterwards.

Agreed and guaranteed.

On hold does not mean "Over". Considering DR and GS are slowly dieing along with the rest of the MUD commnunity and Simu knows it, I doubt they're willing to write off HJ, which could be their only hope of staying in business for another decade, so easily.

Also just because HJ itself is on hold doesn't mean the HeroEngine is. With a smaller staff, It's entirely possible, like I've been saying for months, that they've put HJ on hold because they need to complete work on the HeroEngine first.

It's not a case of lies, evil lies, and/or bell peppers, it's just a case of unfortunate circumstance and prioritization.

I've been waiting for this game forever.. I had a lot of interest in it, its sad to see that it was never fully developed.

Originally posted by Draq

On hold does not mean "Over". Considering DR and GS are slowly dieing along with the rest of the MUD commnunity and Simu knows it, I doubt they're willing to write off HJ, which could be their only hope of staying in business for another decade, so easily.

Also just because HJ itself is on hold doesn't mean the HeroEngine is. With a smaller staff, It's entirely possible, like I've been saying for months, that they've put HJ on hold because they need to complete work on the HeroEngine first.

It's not a case of lies, evil lies, and/or bell peppers, it's just a case of unfortunate circumstance and prioritization.

I agree that this game's fate seems to have fallen to the realities of the market. What looked like one of the more promising PvE stories integrated with the HJ gameplay engine is just another victim of  circumstance. I can't remember now how many years I've been following this game, off and on. Somewhere between 5-10. At least the engine will see the light of day thanks to Bioware and TOR.

So maybe this game is "on hold." Maybe in another 5 to 10 years it will have a playable alpha. While there's nothing wrong with that, I'd have to disagree somewhat with Draq. On hold does not mean "over"...but after 10 years go by, in the MMO industry, still on hold means the same thing as cold in the grave. Look up the definition of "vaporware" and you will it listed as "Hero's Journey."

R.I.P. HJ.

Originally posted by lancelot76

Originally posted by Draq

On hold does not mean "Over". Considering DR and GS are slowly dieing along with the rest of the MUD commnunity and Simu knows it, I doubt they're willing to write off HJ, which could be their only hope of staying in business for another decade, so easily.

Also just because HJ itself is on hold doesn't mean the HeroEngine is. With a smaller staff, It's entirely possible, like I've been saying for months, that they've put HJ on hold because they need to complete work on the HeroEngine first.

It's not a case of lies, evil lies, and/or bell peppers, it's just a case of unfortunate circumstance and prioritization.

 

I agree that this game's fate seems to have fallen to the realities of the market. What looked like one of the more promising PvE stories integrated with the HJ gameplay engine is just another victim of  circumstance. I can't remember now how many years I've been following this game, off and on. Somewhere between 5-10. At least the engine will see the light of day thanks to Bioware and KoTOR.

So maybe this game is "on hold." Maybe in another 5 to 10 years it will have a playable alpha. While there's nothing wrong with that, I'd have to disagree somewhat with Draq. On hold does not mean "over"...but after 10 years go by, in the MMO industry, still on hold means the same thing as cold in the grave. Look up the definition of "vaporware" and you will it listed as "Hero's Journey."

R.I.P. HJ.

Interestingly, lnowing Simmutronics this could still happen, even if the game released in the next 3-4 years plenty of people would still pay to play it.