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Originally Posted by biffy
To actually buy a failed company / product, invest in it as Jolt did during 2003, keep it going even when you are losing money and then eventually turn it around is quite an achievement. To dismiss that as something any of the potential bidders at the time could have done assumes they wouldn't have let it get into the same state as that which resulted in having to be sold at all in the first place, or developed it into their own pet project which disappeared when their enthusiasm waned.
In addition to taking the game from the scrap heap to a now stable footing, Jolt has, aided by the effort and dedication of a number of PA Team volunteers, produced a speedgame series, a solid r10.5 and an enjoyable r11 (even for those of us active in 1:1) in the space of six months. Yes we need to do more and have perhaps missed some opportunities during that time but I consider the last six months to have been a fairly successful time in the life of Planetarion, something that the increase in player numbers over that time backs up.
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The problem is all thats great and you probally would ahve had a great deal of respect for doing so IF Jolt hadnt of done a "New Labour". By this I mean making promises that they no doubt knew they couldnt meet. There were so many little things that when you were trying to win the community over at the start you promoised but which either never appeared or if they did were very half hearted. The marketing for example is one of these areas, Jolt promoised that they would market the game to get new blood in but on the whole marketing is left down to the community to do. What Jolt did was place a half page ad in a single PC mag and put a [age up on their portal A single ad in a magazine especially one thats not the biggest selling one isnt going to do a great deal and the page on your portal is almost ALWAYS out of date.
Its a bit cliched but honest is the bets policy as you dont raise peoples hopes only to then dissapoint them. If you were realitsic at the start we would have all looked at where we were now and would think "wow jolt are doing a fairly good job here" where as we are all thinking "Jolt are a bunch of lieing bastards whom couldnt give a shit about this game as long as they can fleech as much money from us as possible"