Why Cantr failed

[Jos Elkink]

... all want to lead but few want to follow.

That is true, but part of the idea of being allowed to play up to 15 characters is that you could play 13 followers and 2 leaders and still enjoy the game

It just won't work.

I don't buy that. It depends on the players' motivations. When I played the Lego game, it did work that way, not because of the game design, but because the few players that played the game wanted to play that way and enjoyed that challenge. Cantr attracts many different players, which is great, but that includes a majority who is more interested in peaceful, cooperative gameplay, and I just happen to be in the minority who enjoys that less. But that's different from "impossible" or "can't work".

[sherman]

Well, it's just my own observations. Of course Cantr is a different game but I have lead over the years alliances/coalitions on other games, biggest one had 50 players at it's peak. You need good communication (Using skype, etc really helps here, specially if you have people from different timezones, which here is against the rules and thus you can't do it if you want to follow rules), capable leadership and players need to be active and at least somewhat able. Usually there's big enough player pool to pick from so you always can kick and recruit more but in Cantr you pretty much need to use what you get. You can roleplay what ever you want but you can't change fact that some people just are better at organizing, leading and so on than others. Just because you are motivated and your title is general doesn't make you a capable commander. Motivated one can still suck and results aren't always that great.


I'm myself also into more peaceful gameplay because Cantr just doesn't feel like war game to me. If I want a wargame I can always pick some other game and lead whole divisions and use various strategies to win the war. At best you get skirmish level wars here so the scale is much smaller though it can still be interesting. Though If given chance I certainly could do that. Current game is just that it doesn't need that much of strategy to win, all you need is awake people and it's like taking a candy from a baby. Not that challenging specially if you abuse fact that you can always observe people's timezones and attack when they sleep. Creating empire is a different matter and that actually needs players who are willing to work for it

[Tiamo]

This is where Cantr excels, or should excel. The game actively promotes playing a role for each individual character and build up a personal background/personality for them. However, although many options are deliberately left open for your character to play, there is little to no support in terms of game mechanisms for expressing, fleshing out and sustaining a chosen role. By design, i must add. I think this is a serious misconception, hampering the buildup and consistency of (public) character personalities and, on another level, the buildup and perseverance of social structures (there are more reasons for this). Apart from this i think cooperation (thus creating social structures) is pretty much undiscovered territory in Cantr. Unfortunately, there is a world to gain in this respect.

This point I really do not understand, but sounds interesting. So I'm curious to hear what you mean, what a game would look like that does this differently.

A lot of online games create social structures. WoW has a formal implementation of player groups; EVE Online has corporations or teams with implemented systems (e.g. how leaders are elected, listed, etc.). I forget the terminology and systems they use, but it means the game interface allows you to "create a group", "elect a leader", etc. I have always strictly avoided in Cantr, as this completely undermines the idea that it should be a playground to experiment with different types of organisation, both friendly and aggressive, and one where society is formed by the players. Now how would you expect to see this?

I also think "pretty much undeiscovered territory" is really putting it much too strong - but I do agree that it is not common enough.

This is about two topics: the character model and the society model.

The Cantr character model prescribes very little: gender, spawn date/age, spawn location, language and skill levels. Just about everything else is up to the player to choose and, if wanted, to change on a whim (yes, i know, you cannot change the character description to its opposite, but it can be changed).
This doesn't really help when a player wants to build up a character personality, and play it consistently. It would really help if more character specifics (looks, but also habits, traits, quirks and history/memory) would be easily determined and/or captured. I tend to remember only one or two core traits for my characters, making their roleplay somewhat inconsistent over longer periods. Having more (self-chosen) handles would really help in this respect.
If more characteristics of characters would be chosen and be fixed after this choice, there would also be more variation in characters you can encounter.
Finally, i think characters should not automatically be able to use all skills (albeit at different skill levels). Some skills do not need any training to do (like digging), but others should be taught/trained first (like smelting). Also, there should be some kind of a limit on the set of skills a character has (maybe half of the trained ones), with of course free choice which ones those will be. This will make a single character somewhat dependant on other characters for the skills he doesn't have. A strong incentive for cooperation, organisation and roleplay!!!

The society model really is absent. You have made clear what the reasoning behind this is, and i agree with your reasons to a certain extent. If concepts like 'leader', 'profession' or 'organisation' are defined by the game system, this will limit their use to the chosen implementation.
On the other hand, Cantr reality shows that it is almost impossible to have any type of organisation survive the death of the initiator, even if the rules are written down. For any kind of organized society to survive over generations it is, i think, absolutely necessary that characters (and their players) are aware of the existence of the society from their spawnday, and accept/live by its rules (in general). This requires the rules to be written down, be known to all and of course be useful/acceptable.
I don't have a ready solution for this dilemma. Maybe it should be something like providing some basic concepts of organization (what are groups, rules, roles, responsibilities, privileges, restrictions, penalties, transactions, etc.) as examples, together with a simple, generic way of registering sets of rules (leaving it to the writer of the rules-set to define if/how concepts are used). With the danger of being a sociology lesson...
Social structures can also be implemented by necessity rather than design. If it takes two people (with specific skills) to perform a task, some kind of informal social interaction is automatic. If harvest is depending on seasons, some kind of food stock building (and handing out) is inevitable. I already mentioned skill specialisation. I am sure you can think of many more.

[dvw79]

There could also be more practical problems why Cantr fails at this moment, for example:
- lack of technological innovation; every society progresses. But at this moment the technology used by the people in the Cantr world is the same as 365 days ago (except the radio, which is 'silenced'). Roleplay depends on the challenges people have and the challenges have been the same for a while.
- rot is not realistic (food, tools, vehicles, buildings); if rot is more realistic people would have to make real choices and eventually work together.
- abundance instead of shortages; most towns have too much resource slots (and machines don't even count). It creates an abundance of resources. Some foods are too nourishing.

The above examples create a lethargic vibe.

[Jos Elkink]

If more characteristics of characters would be chosen and be fixed after this choice, there would also be more variation in characters you can encounter.

I really think the personality of the character should come from how the character is played. We could have implemented more physical variation and that would be a nice feature, but not the other kinds of character traits you are describing. Personally I have a short private note for each character with this kind of detail, that I use when playing. So you should imagine in your head the personality and play accordingly and other characters can then form their own opinions. I'm actually already kind of unhappy with the visible descriptions you can now add to characters - I think this violates a basic principle of the game design. But it's too late now

Finally, i think characters should not automatically be able to use all skills (albeit at different skill levels). Some skills do not need any training to do (like digging), but others should be taught/trained first (like smelting).

On that I actually agree and in the (very preliminary, and now very old) development of Cantr III, that changed. In a newer version of the game I would have implemented more of a trajectory of learning technical skills and also having the tech tree grow gradually as you learn more etc., including making them more localized through inventions.

Maybe it should be something like providing some basic concepts of organization (what are groups, rules, roles, responsibilities, privileges, restrictions, penalties, transactions, etc.) as examples, together with a simple, generic way of registering sets of rules (leaving it to the writer of the rules-set to define if/how concepts are used).

Hmm, yeah, that is exactly what I have very consistently tried to avoid, and I think I would still do that. I mean, a very interesting game could be one that has this more structured - I often fantasize about a more science fiction based game that I wouldn't mind developing someday, and it would have this - but in Cantr it would really be quite the opposite of the original principles of the design.

I know it can be silly to be too strict about principles, but I also think Cantr is unique compared to other games and too many games have too similar mechanics, so I think that's a good thing.

Social structures can also be implemented by necessity rather than design. If it takes two people (with specific skills) to perform a task, some kind of informal social interaction is automatic. If harvest is depending on seasons, some kind of food stock building (and handing out) is inevitable. I already mentioned skill specialisation. I am sure you can think of many more.

Now, that is much, much more in line with how I would think of creating this kind of cooperation in game. These are interesting suggestions and, I think, in line with the basic design of Cantr still.

- rot is not realistic (food, tools, vehicles, buildings); if rot is more realistic people would have to make real choices and eventually work together.
- abundance instead of shortages; most towns have too much resource slots (and machines don't even count). It creates an abundance of resources. Some foods are too nourishing.

I agree with those two points, although the first one has the problem that significantly more rot also leads to more "repair" work to be done in Cantr, which is possibly the most boring activity - it is more exciting as a player to develop new things than to just maintain what you already have. But I do agree with the impact on the overall economy.

I'm not sure about technological development - the game should have to continuously extend the types of objects, it is already a huge list. If I were to completely redesign the system, I would have more gradual development of skills and more localized "inventions" etc. but that is too big a change to implement in the current game, I think.

[Tiamo]

Hmm, i see i wasn't quite clear on character specifics. Of course only physical specifics would be visible to other characters, mental characteristics could be chosen, and recorded, but only be visible to the player of the character. The character's memory (a list of private 'mental notes' ) could provide a means of changing/tweaking your character's mental characteristics over time, without the old ones being lost. It could also provide a permanent character 'history' if the character would make (subjective) 'mental notes' of important personal experiences, only for the player to be known.
You using a note (inside or outside the game?) to remember some character specifics, exactly shows my point: the game offers no support on character building, you have to come up with something yourself (i actually used an excel sheet for keeping track of my character's data/history for some time). This makes character building even more difficult than it already is for many players. Providing handles and recording choices, without steering gameplay, would i.m.o. be really helpful.

This also goes for the society model, if you look at it from a gameplay viewpoint. Providing handles, without steering characters/players in any direction, would help the creation and longevity of social structures (there are other barriers, but that is another topic).

On money: you are right, money is just a social understanding (debt) made complicated. I actually have found a way to create an in-game money system that is both practical and counterfeit-proof. But it can only last as long as there is a widely respected organisation (a bank, a country) supporting/overseeing it.

[Jos Elkink]

The idea of a system to record information about your character that is only visible to the player is an excellent idea! I think it's already sort of there? You can add private comments on the character description page, including your own character, but you are suggesting something more structured? Guiding the player along what kind of features to think about?



On the society one, you are suggesting something that impacts gameplay more, though, isn't it?

On money we already agree. It was a mistake not to introduce that from the start and basically implement a world-wide bank or something like this.

[Alladinsane]

I used those windows often to keep private notes on somebody.... something they said or did. I would also keep notes on the last time my char saw them and where... you have everything you need, it just takes a little diligence. Every note you take is from the perspective of the char you are playing at the time...

Joe schmow met pauly prissy on 2715 and she said she hated klojt.
Tommy touton met pauly prissy on 3030 and took notes
Joe schmow met pauly prissy on 3099 and I asked if she felt the same way about klojt and how she got that limp

Some people expect the game to tell them when and where they met someone... a bit lazy I always thought.
Descriptions aid in rp and give you a means to start conversations and interactions. Its all there, be creative!

Cantr has been around 15yrs and outlasted so many other games, it takes a good bit of ignorance to ever think it failed.
Faded? Yes... but far from a failure and if it ended tomorrow you could not realistically call it a failure.

I toast to Jos and the unique success named cantr

[Rigel Kent]

Cantr needs WANT. Thats really it. Want makes people play.

[Tiamo]

Visible information is quite straightforward i think: length, eyes, hair (its length can change over time), posture/build, skin tone, age decade, possibly visible quirks/disabilities. Whatever seems useful for roleplay.

Invisible/private could be something along the line of general demeanor (sanguinic, apathetic, etc.), specific demeanor (a huge number of behavioral treats/deficiencies to choose from), mental state (might be variable, but could be permanent), not-so-visible physical states (elegancy, bad eyesight, limping, bad coordination, speech characteristics, etc.). All in the category: show, don't tell.
The main one would be memory. This is a list of mental notes concerning changes in private characteristics (when changing some later on), the existing character descriptions (of chars you have met) and events the character marks/describes as noteworthy at the time it happens (death of a beloved one, an important deal/vow, raiders, completing the grand statue, homecoming, political issues, fights, someone stealing. Whatever, and not necessarily the truth!). The character has to wilfully make the mental note. It consists of a date and a (limited) piece of text, maybe an importance level. After making the note it cannot be changed. There also must be a limit in the number of mental notes a character can make (a hard limit for life, after which every new note will make an old one disappear, or a soft limit of a maximum each Cantr year?).
Characters can try to recall mental notes based on an approximate date and/or one or two keywords (not a complete list at once!), and reread the note(s) this returns.

Optional refinement: mental notes that are never recalled slowly fade, notes that are recalled every now and then stay clear in memory. Important notes also stay clear longer/fade slower. Faded notes need more specific dates and/or keywords to be able to successfully recall.

This is just a suggestion on the fly. It obviously needs a lot of thought and balancing (limits are important!). I am not really a hardcore roleplayer (more of a simmer), so i don't really know what information people tend to use for roleplaying.
A secondary advantage of more specific (and lasting) choices is that the information can be used within the game itself (like length and build could influence weight).

I never thought of using the character description on the character itself. Like Alladinsane i do use it for other characters, recording where and when mine met them, which language they speak and maybe some special remark.


The society part is trickier. Even providing some basic knowledge about possible properties of social structures (without showing examples of how they could be used) would make creating, using and maintaining all kinds of social structures (particularly organisations) a lot easier. This could have a big impact on gameplay, towards more structured societies beyond the basic group/leader model.

I think we don't agree on money. It definitely is a key social structure, which should not be pre-created by your own principles. I think it can be created in-game (albeit not with ease) and states a nice challenge.

[dvw79]

I meant with 'lack of technological innovation' real innovations, for example: photocameras, cell phones, air travel, trains and maybe even space travel. It can be in fact everything, but it has to have a real function in the game.

It will keep people busy with achieving the newest 'gadgets' (just as in real life).

You will see that the 'vibe' will change, instead of a lethargic vibe there will be a more active vibe.

If you combine innovation with new rot rules (just for the innovation) you could also stimulate social roleplay. For instance a cell phone with a lifetime of 200 days (no repair possible) and a base transceiver station with a lifetime of 400 days (no repair possible) which requires every 20 days a new fuel injection (you cannot insert all the fuel for the whole 400 days in one injection).

The above example will keep people busy with their own cell phone (they have to work for it and if they want a new one they have to work again) and it will create social challenges about how to create an cell phone infrastructure (who pays for it and who maintains it).

[Slowness_Incarnate]

^ I do not think Cantr was EVER meant to evolve into a "modern" society.

[Jos Elkink]

^ I do not think Cantr was EVER meant to evolve into a "modern" society.

Hmm, well, no, it was always meant to only be modern society ... I just didn't know how to get there, because how does the first newspawn get to develop all those things we have? But that aim is exactly why we have cars and bone weapons at the same time.

a lifetime of 200 days (no repair possible)

Hmm, I like that idea actually. We introduced rot to stimulate maintenance, but then repairing is one of the more boring tasks Cantr characters have. But there is of course also just expiring without repair as an option, that might be perfectly suitable for some kinds of objects. Good idea!

[Millhouse]

Recent topic about repairs: viewtopic.php?f=90&t=28172

Sorry if it's hard to follow. It seems there were a few (very) different suggestions taking place in that thread.

[jfrizz51423]

Wow sorry I have not been on here in a few months and did not realize all of the extra replies that were made on this thread. Jos Elkink I will reply to you now!

I think the fact that it was just a hobby project created to play by me and a few friends, and then see if some other people on the internet might be interested, which then turned into a game with thousands of players, and then lasting 15 years, is quite a success. Not in the league of WoW or Minecraft, but still pretty exciting. That said, there is a consistent growth in players for the first 5 years and a consistent decline for the subsequent 10, and now I have to admit, to me it feels like it is dying. The game is more boring than it used to be, the forum is remarkably quiet, and on Discord there isn't an awful lot of activity either. So it's not a failure, but it's failing.

The game was definitely a success. When I played it, I loved it. But yes, it does seem to slowly be fading into the background now.

I think you have a point here and I consider this a serious weakness. There are actually a lot of discussions ongoing in Game Administration Board (GAB), Players Department (PD) and Programming Department (ProgD) about how this could be improved (fn. 2). For the PD, which is by far the most labour-intensive part of running the game, screening new player accounts is much less work than trying to find issues subsequently.

I do think Seko has a good point, though, that I will bring up for discussion in GAB. It is probably limited damage done in a short time and we could quickly intervene, remove inappropriate new accounts within 24 hours or so from being created.The newbie world should help a lot here, too, as new accounts can immediately be used to explore the game interface etc. and get a feel for the game, albeit not yet with the real characters.

Good to know! Glad you guys are trying to fix that.

I think a bigger problem is that vigilant maintenance of the rules has also lead to killing off a lot of more aggressive gameplay, which has generated a more boring game in my view. More on this below. To be fair to the PD, though, it is incredibly difficult to delineate between cheating and interesting mobilization of large groups of characters. It is possible that some of the most exciting times in the game (e.g. the Naronian and Ladvician conflicts, if I'm not confusing names now) might have been partly due to serious CR breaches and that an improved and almost professionalised PD has made such major conflicts very difficult to play.

I agree. I just think that the moderators need to stop banning people for playing the "troll" roll in game. In my experience anyway, when someone was violent, they would just get locked up in a building and forced to either comply or starve to death. I think the characters should have to deal with the punishment. Not the actual players. Also, violence and drama always leads to more interesting gameplay So you are probably right that the strict rules have made it difficult to have characters experience exciting things.

A lot of people bring up the discussion of game versus simulation again. I don't think I find that a very interesting discussion. It's not a simulation, since there is plenty of unrealistic elements, and it is meant as a game, but the game I wanted to play is one where different societies grow and where you can play different roles within those societies. So it needed something akin to societies and I wanted to have those naturally develop. So it ends up being a bit like a simulation. But that was never the goal.

To my mind, the first years of the game were still the best and few of you would remember those. I had a character who was a journalist and developed a newspaper, and, in the same town (this only later became against the rules), I had a police officer, and we had elections and a cabinet, etc. In another part of the game, I had a soldier fighting in a large war (part of the Ladvicitavoi army), eventually killed on a scouting mission. I also had sailors exploring the coast, etc. What was cool was that there were very different societies and political systems (democracies, empires, friendly villages, military orders) and many different roles to play there in.

This seems to have changed a lot. I am only observing a tiny, tiny part of the game world now, but everywhere I encounter friendly villages, a town leader who helps everybody get their food, the main excitement some romantic affair being played out. I never intended Cantr to be like that and find it really quite boring.

Its nice to hear that you completely agree in this sense. I play games to escape the routine and dullness of the real world, and it takes a certain aspect out of Cantr when everything is handed to people. Truth is, it is a life simulator in some senses. When people do not need to fight for survival, they become comfortable, and worry about other things, such as romance, and getting everyone in town to like them. Cantr is still one of my favorite games played, but it would have been perfect for me if things weren't always so 'nice and perfect'.

If I were to re-create Cantr, I would apply the same philosophy, but I would definitely introduce money into the game interface. The barter trade in Cantr has always held back the game and social development to a huge extent and this was, I think, a mistake. It also ignored the fact that my original Lego game only started when we introduced (Monopoly) money.

Money would add a very interesting element to the game!

The competition is not pre-defined by the game, so there are no scores in the game and scoreboards (fn. 3). But you create your own competitions. You set your goals for your character and once you fix those, it becomes a challenge to fulfil them - as long as there are some other characters who have similar, competing goals. So if you want to be leader of a large empire, there certainly is competition involved in acquiring that position! At least, that's what the game is about.

Now, competition here often involves cooperation and mobilizing others. So in that sense, maybe it's more about cooperation than competition. But that also depends a lot on just how you define your characters. It is true that the game has become all about friendly cooperative playing, which I commented on above.

I agree with this! That's why I've always loved sandbox style games. The freedom to create the competition yourself, is a great part of the fun.

Most games are much more fast-paced, but I think it is nice that there are alternatives, like Cantr, and are different.

To my mind there are a number of reasons why speed is an issue, but also why I disagree:

1. Building something big takes indeed ages. But the point was never that individual characters would spent ages building, but that people cooperate. Once you cooperate, building isn't that long at all. So the focus should be on the social, cooperative, mobilization side, not individual building.
2. The game is partly slow because there are now too few characters spread over too many locations. This means that there are few that will respond to anything you do and this is seriously hurting the game. This has of course two causes: a) we lost too many players and b) I enjoyed created new lands so much that in the end I went crazy and created far too much land. My plan was to make much of it largely inhabitable (many, violent animals, for example) but this has subsequently been tempered and now there is just too much land (fn. 4).
3. The game is slow when you focus on construction instead of interaction - there are no speed limits on social interaction in the game.

In fact, for me the game is too fast paced ... Now that I have a job and play only to a very limited extent, I have a choice between two kinds of characters: a) boring ones who live in quiet communities and don't talk too much, or b) interesting ones who try to establish themselves in busier locations as politicians or merchants or journalists. But the latter takes an enormous amount of time, so I only do the former, and that makes it a pretty boring game. Making the game faster would make it worse.

I understand your points, and see how this adds to the quality of the game. I just think that it shouldn't take a week to create some tools for yourself and a basic t-shirt. It should be difficult, but not AS difficult. But to each their own, and I'm sure a lot of players like that aspect. It's just that when you are online, theres not much else to do besides stand around and talk to other characters doing nothing, since building something takes lots of hours.

Although I agree with most of your comments, this one I found a bit annoying. Yes, Cantr marketing is a bit of a failure and yes, we should have created more of a hype around it. But you seem to suggest we didn't care or didn't try. This is actually a hugely difficult thing to do and most attempts have, in a way, failed. It's also something I personally focused on less - when I still played a more central role in running the game - because I was more interested in the programming and staff organisation side.

We have ongoing discussions in the Public Relations department (PR) about how to improve this, in particular how to make better use of social media. One thing that I think has hurt us, is that we have very strict rules about sharing in-game information, but within sharing those, it is very difficult to explain outsiders what makes Cantr cool and interesting. We are going to try to change that a bit in the near future, I think. So that relates to:

One of the problems I had to face has been making people familiar with Cantr.

But basically, jfrizz, if you're still around, you should consider applying to PR and help with this! To my mind, the only thing that can really save Cantr is a massive increase in player numbers.

I'm sorry, I did not mean to annoy or offend. To be honest I wasn't expecting to hear a reply from anyone who had actually created the game, so I was just rambling my thoughts out loud. I understand that you have attempted to market the game, but in my opinion, no where near enough. For example, most really popular games have social media accounts on every type of social media possible. They make several posts that are entertaining and insightful a day. They are actively engaged with the community at all times. Not that you aren't active on the forums, but potential players aren't going to discover the game on the forums. I understand this is something that is incredibly time consuming, but would be worth it. I meant it all as constructive criticism, so if someone of importance did actually acknowledge my post, to realize that marketing for this game needs a FULL makeover in order for the game to truly be saved.

I'd be interested in applying though! I'm quite busy, and I'm not sure how time consuming taking on a role like that would be, but that does sound interesting!

Also, make an app.

Yes, definitely agree, and working on it. But this is going to take time and we have a really serious shortage of active programmers at the moment. My idea is to start with a very simple app that is basically the equivalent of opening a browser and accessing the website, but at least it would be listed in app stores etc. We can then subsequently think of more app-style features.

10 years ago this was obviously not a concern ...

I understand. An app would be great, but I get that it's hard without having people to hire. Honestly, if you guys ever did a Cantr 3, I'd charge players $5 to buy the game... super cheap, but gives you some income to work with

So here it was suddenly made personal

Ok, I have to admit, and admitted above, that the level of passion has dissipated. 15 years is a long time! I was very actively involved only for a third of that time. To me there are a number of reasons I could not keep up that level of passion - but I should add that several staff members over time have invested huge amounts of effort with great passion!

1. The game never quite moved in the direction I wanted to, which makes it difficult to stay passionate. Except for the first while - where people later claim all excitement was due to serious CR breaches - there is too little politics, war, empire, trade, competition, and too much gathering, farming, romance, cooperation, and now I understand erotic episodes. That was never the game I intended to play - these elements were only there to make the trade, war, politics, etc. be about something ... It's very nice that different players get different things out of the game, but in the end a too small proportion play the former.
2. Whatever we tried, we could never get the marketing right (and we tried!). In fact, regardless of marketing effort, the player base just grew for 5 years and then declined for 10. This is not very encouraging.
3. I had promised early on to keep the game free, and want to stick to my promise, but this has meant serious limitations in what you can do to promote or improve the game. If we could have invested in marketing or hired temporary programmers for specific features, that would have improved the game - instead we relied entirely on volunteers.
4. Some ideas I have about the game design now could not be implemented in the existing game design, so that makes it less interesting. In particular, I want free roaming instead of towns and roads, and in my dreams I would like a visual, not a text-based version of the game. Not being able to implement your main ideas about the game and instead having to focus on maintaining the game as it is, is not very motivating (fn. 5). The basic framework of Cantr II became too constrained. I had ideas how I wanted to develop the game, but that was not possible without completely rewriting the game. I started doing that in 2008-09, but that never progressed far enough to take seriously.
5. The most important thing is just that I do not have the amount of time I used to have. In the first years, I spent about 20 hours a week running Cantr, i.e. a halftime job. Now I have a fulltime job that takes all my time and energy and even absorbs most of my creativity. I'm trying to change my work-life balance a little lately, but I will never have the kind of time available again that I used to have, so I am a little powerless - observing all the problems you outline but not able to fix any of them.

Maybe Jos doesn't want to spend all their time on this game, maybe the idea was to always use volunteers for staff and not charge the players. If you want a marketed game, maybe this is just not what you want it to be.

Well, "want" is the wrong word, it's more "promised". I've regretted that promise many times ... I would prefer to charge a little every month instead of nothing, so that with enough players, that really generates some income that can be used for marketing or paying designers or programmers. I do think it is a bit sad how few players actually donate on a regular basis. There are enough now to pay the server costs and some very minimal Google AdWords marketing, but that's it.

I understand, and you make valid points in everything that you say. I'll try and reply to each of them.

- It's a shame that this game has never become quite what you wanted it to be, but know you have created endless enjoyment for many people, even if it wasn't the exact image that you had envisioned. I think you could create a game that had these elements, but Cantr would need a lot of changes in order to create that kind of environment.
- I get that failing to attract new players isn't encouraging and must make it difficult to maintain motivation after such a long time.
- Yeah, not having any money go towards the game is difficult. I understand that too.
- Man, a visual version of this game is my absolute DREAM. It seems like what you wanted from this game and what I want for this game are the same. Although probably some of the roleplaying would be different since you would actually see the world, I believe this would make the game so interesting. Obviously a visual 3d or even 2d world is a whole other beast though.
- I understand that. You have a full time job, a life, etc. I get that you feel powerless due to the lack of time you have, but maybe communicating your ideas to the volunteers who do have time, would be an idea. If you could give the power to someone else to make the big changes you want to see, then maybe they could actually happen.

No, it's not failure. Nothing is ment to last forever and even when there will be day for Jos to pull a plug it won't mean a project failed.

As I said at the beginning, I agree on this. I think it's failing now, but it's not a failure overall. What is a slight problem, though, is that there seems never to be a good moment to "pull the plug". There would always be some volunteers who would recently have invested loads of time and effort to keep the game going, so it would be unfair to them, and it would always have some players that are really invested in their characters, and there is no really good objective reason why they should be stopped. So I'm not sure there is a "pull the plug" moment ... At the same time, I feel the game has now become too quiet, the forum too quiet, the game world too stagnated, to make it still an interesting game to work on.

I agree that it is not a failure. Sorry, I think I phrased the title of my thread incorrectly. The game is not a failure. It has provided me with a lot of fun times, so I know it is not an "overall" failure. But yes, as of right now, it is failing, enough to make me sad that this game could possibly become completely dead some day. I get that the Cantr scene is dying, and it seems like it is too late or no use to invest any more time than necessary to intensely work on the game, but I think you are wrong. I think that this game can be saved, and that there is hope for something greater.

Maybe you feel that the current Cantr is too old to be changed, but I don't understand why a new Cantr III wouldn't be more than a consideration! A complete makeover of Cantr II is also a possibility. If you ever do feel like trying again to create that ideal game of politics, war, drama, trade, empires, freedom, role-play, etc, etc, I think you should give it a go.