"New Funding and New Schedule"

Dear Future First Earth players,

This newsletter is a more personal update about the game's progress, from me, Adam Thompson, the owner and developer of First Earth.

= Executive Summary =

Development on the game slowed in May and June because I ran out of money. I now have a steady income, so development will speed up again and be constant through release.

I am canceling the "May/June" public release deadline and promise. The new release date will be announced later; the new release date will probably be several months from now.

If you have preordered, thank you, and your preorder is still good. You'll be the first to play the game when we start public testing. If you preordered and you want a refund because of this delay I'm announcing, email me back and I'll refund you from my personal income within 1-2 weeks.

= The Long Version =

When I began working on First Earth in 2010, I funded development by doing freelance web consulting. Freelancing is stressful because its schedule and salary are unreliable.

In early 2012 I did a full-time push to try to finish and release First Earth. As you can see, we reached early alpha testing but not release. Preorders were good but weren't enough to cover my living expenses, and my web consulting income suffered from neglect.

Through April and May this year I worked to find First Earth $10K in startup funding from investors, with no luck. I decided that having a full-time day job would be better than freelancing for progressing on First Earth, so I found a local company I liked, applied, was hired, and started last week. I love the work I'm doing there, and the company is great.

It might seem like my having a full-time job would make it harder for me to work on First Earth. The opposite is true, because it's in place of freelancing. I was already working 15 hour days before, but freelancing made it hard for me to escape work - there was always more freelancing work to do, or people calling me, paying me late, and many other issues. All of that interrupted my game work. Now, with this new job, after I come home from work (and on weekends) I'm totally free to work on First Earth.

Anyway, this got pretty personal, but I wanted you to know why I'm sure that development will get back to normal again. Have a great weekend :) (Anyone else watching the MLG tournament?)

-Adam

First Earth

info@firstearthgame.com

This newsletter summarizes the progress of First Earth. Thank you for subscribing. Visit our blog and forum for design and development details

First Earth is a player-world game about trade, currently in alpha testing.
http://firstearthgame.com

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