So you're on US? Looks like your page is going well. Good luck!

Hurray, today Island Forge @ Kickstarter reached its base goal! But it doesn't stop there - this is where many projects really take off.

I appreciate everyone who has contributed and commented so far. Thanks for everyone's interest at JGO.

Find Island Forge on Facebook, Twitter, IndieDB, MMORPG.com, and Steam Greenlight!

Final day! Grats on your goal!

Thanks everyone! Still 12 hours left at Kickstarter.

I appreciate the Greenlight vote, Jimmt! So far, "This game has attained 0% of necessary positive ratings so far" ... but that's to be expected. I've found that much of the Greenlight community is adverse to a game that requires a subscription (and so is everyone else, for that matter).

So, once my Kickstarter project comes to fruition, my next major focus is on providing better free-play and non-subscription options.

Great work! Wish I could play without breaking the TOS, not 18 and my friends are EU =(

The ToS cover my legal requirements to operate a business in which players interact with each other via the Internet and can post player-created content. It is an unfortunate necessity. I understand that some potential players are uncomfortable clicking through the agreement. (Actually, I'm more surprised when anyone stops to read it in the first place.)

Thanks for your interest in Island Forge!

I appreciate your point of view.

EDIT: By the way, know anyone hiring in the Netherlands? I'd love to live there. I'm good at writing Java code. Just don't put me in charge of marketing or legal.

That's the problem with America-it's not that people aren't hiring, it's that the unemployed don't have the skills needed. And then those skill-less people just bleed the country dry getting unemployment benefits and whatnot.

Not exactly. People are not hiring. Period. There's a lot of talk that employers have a high demand for skilled workers, but in times of high demand the price people are willing to pay for that thing increases and the quantity of items that they are willing to pay for increase. Employers want people to wear several hats, pay for their own training, have worked for a competitor of theirs, and be willing to work for less pay (for both experienced and inexperienced workers) than new graduates did five years ago. Employers ask that their employees be engineers and secretaries or be software developers and tech support people or astrophysicists and janitor. You could hire both an astrophysicist and a janitor, but they wouldn't be the same person and you can't expect the best of both worlds by getting the skilled worker for a less-skilled worker's salary. It's unreasonable to expect that unless people become isolated, mutually hostile, and desperate.

They tell people via the media that they want more skilled workers in order to create hype (even retail stores - apparently Americans are either too dumb to count money or are so dumb that they believe that retail stores can't find sufficiently "skilled" workers). If the market (demand) matched the hype, every new graduate would have full time employment and be rich. The whole unemployment benefits as being harmful thing is also imagined. If the program were allowed to do its job (and not "reformed" as soon as they start to kick in - sort of like shutting off the fan in your computer because it starts spinning faster...) they would act as an automatic stabilizer and prevent a snowball effect from wiping out other jobs by slowing cyclical recession. Although if powers having nothing to do with imaginary things like economic theories continue along current trends, the "recession" is permanent and systemic and America is not capable of recovering skilled jobs even if it has many more skilled un-employees than other countries.

@nate: and your food and bills?

I live off savings, travel, and crash on couches, for 2+ years now. Money only goes one way (away), so something has to change eventually. I hope to release some software to keep the good life going. Admittedly this is sort of like a job, but being the boss is so much better (and easier to slack off).

I'm currently reading the 4-Hour Workweek (Timothy Ferriss). Sounds like Nate already has the lifestyle figured out.

@ReBirth - don't worry about hijacking this thread. The Kickstarter project is complete, so this discussion might as well wander about.

Drug mule, I guess 

So much confusion...


So let's look at the options of what our beloved Nate actually meant:

Pick one and live your life like Nate.