Draft for Discussion

[c0194112]

I’d like to bring up a discussion topic, purely to hear different perspectives — this is not a proposal or a request.
Eric has mentioned before that the current FBS bounty amounts are relatively low compared to the actual workload and general market rates, which is also why pausing or wrapping things up has been considered.
I was wondering whether, if keeping FBS active were the goal, there might be another possible approach — for example:

• Increasing the bounty amount per milestone
  
• While accepting a slower development pace and longer wait times
  

In other words, trading more time for more sustainable compensation.
I’m genuinely curious how people feel about this in principle:
Would this be something you personally find acceptable, or would you rather keep things as they are now, or see FBS conclude instead?
Again, this is only meant as an open discussion to understand how people feel, not to suggest or push for any specific outcome.


Sorry for my poor english.

[yoshiyoshigraf]

I actually agree with you @c0194112 (and as an Australian, I assure you that your English is better than mine, and English is meant to be my native language :-P ).
I feel like increasing the value of the bounties and/or reduced the amount of value each of our votes is monetarily worth, or decreasing the expectations for additions to GC, would be far fairer on Eric.

HOWEVER

I feel like cost estimates are not the key point of why the FBS' continuation is being reviewed... I distantly recall that the original aim of the FBS was as much about SPREADING the workload as it was about continuing the development of GearCity. And for that reason, I totally understand if the FBS is to be retired, as until AeroMogul is released, I feel like Eric's in a Catch-22 of "keep a commitment that isn't actively making much money" vs "complete a project that may lead to an additional income stream that COULD provide far more revenue, choices and (potentially) sanity."

========

I'm rusty on the details/specifics, but what I recall is Eric saying that the ORIGINAL aim of the "Second Gear" expansion (the first 'round' for the FBS) would be heavy on artwork bounties that would be done by Serhey Pazelskyy, which would lead to unlocking further 'smaller'/'more achievable' bounties into the future too.
Being able to follow this aim theoretically freed up a LOT of time for Eric to work on AeroMogul (the main aim being to get AeroMogul into a releasable state, therefore opening another income stream and HOPEFULLY giving Eric a little more time and sanity), whilst continuing to provide time/effort/love for GearCity through Serhey's specialisation (who, based in Ukraine, theoretically required far less $US than Eric to have a liveable income, at least relatively speaking).

You probably noticed that Serhey is located in Ukraine..! Thanks to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where Serhey lives, it's very easy to understand that Serhey was very suddenly (and completely) unavailable to fulfil any bounties or work. As long as the war continues, we cannot expect Serhey to be available to work on GC (or AeroMogul to be fair).

And without Serhey, from what I understand the FBS is literally 'just extra work' for Eric to carry, sadly :-(

I'm a GearHead (i.e. I ADORE GearCity and have learned HUGE amounts from the game), but I'm far more interested in Eric having a sustainable income/ability to keep working on VentDev altogether. If jacking up the value of the GearCity bounties allowed the FBS to continue, I'd be stoked, and would continue to support it..!

BUT

For many reasons (some of which I haven't listed) I get the feeling that the FBS is literally an impediment to Eric's chances of completing AeroMogul. If that is restricting his prosperity and long-term flexibility/sanity in a significant way, I will totally understand if the GearCity FBS needs to be retired.

[c0194112]

I actually agree with you @c0194112 (and as an Australian, I assure you that your English is better than mine, and English is meant to be my native language :-P ).
I feel like increasing the value of the bounties and/or reduced the amount of value each of our votes is monetarily worth, or decreasing the expectations for additions to GC, would be far fairer on Eric.

HOWEVER

I feel like cost estimates are not the key point of why the FBS' continuation is being reviewed... I distantly recall that the original aim of the FBS was as much about SPREADING the workload as it was about continuing the development of GearCity. And for that reason, I totally understand if the FBS is to be retired, as until AeroMogul is released, I feel like Eric's in a Catch-22 of "keep a commitment that isn't actively making much money" vs "complete a project that may lead to an additional income stream that COULD provide far more revenue, choices and (potentially) sanity."

========

I'm rusty on the details/specifics, but what I recall is Eric saying that the ORIGINAL aim of the "Second Gear" expansion (the first 'round' for the FBS) would be heavy on artwork bounties that would be done by Serhey Pazelskyy, which would lead to unlocking further 'smaller'/'more achievable' bounties into the future too.
Being able to follow this aim theoretically freed up a LOT of time for Eric to work on AeroMogul (the main aim being to get AeroMogul into a releasable state, therefore opening another income stream and HOPEFULLY giving Eric a little more time and sanity), whilst continuing to provide time/effort/love for GearCity through Serhey's specialisation (who, based in Ukraine, theoretically required far less $US than Eric to have a liveable income, at least relatively speaking).

You probably noticed that Serhey is located in Ukraine..! Thanks to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where Serhey lives, it's very easy to understand that Serhey was very suddenly (and completely) unavailable to fulfil any bounties or work. As long as the war continues, we cannot expect Serhey to be available to work on GC (or AeroMogul to be fair).

And without Serhey, from what I understand the FBS is literally 'just extra work' for Eric to carry, sadly :-(

I'm a GearHead (i.e. I ADORE GearCity and have learned HUGE amounts from the game), but I'm far more interested in Eric having a sustainable income/ability to keep working on VentDev altogether. If jacking up the value of the GearCity bounties allowed the FBS to continue, I'd be stoked, and would continue to support it..!

BUT

For many reasons (some of which I haven't listed) I get the feeling that the FBS is literally an impediment to Eric's chances of completing AeroMogul. If that is restricting his prosperity and long-term flexibility/sanity in a significant way, I will totally understand if the GearCity FBS needs to be retired.

Haha, English actually isn’t my native language — my first language is Chinese. I used GPT to help polish and translate my thoughts into English.
I completely understand where you’re coming from. Speaking purely from a personal perspective though, I’ll admit that I’d naturally prefer not to see the FBS end. Between the two, I’m personally much more interested in GearCity and the automotive industry side of things than in an aviation management sim like AeroMogul.
That said, it’s not that I don’t support AeroMogul. I’ll most likely buy a copy when it’s released, even if I don’t end up playing it much — largely as a way to support Eric as a developer rather than for my own gameplay preferences.
Coming back to FBS, my thinking is simply that it would be great if there were a way to make continuing the FBS feel clearly worthwhile for Eric. For example: keeping sponsorship active, increasing the value of each bounty, having a much slower and more predictable update cadence (say, one update per year or even every two years), and perhaps making Second Gear free only for those who participated in funding at the time, while others would need to purchase it later as DLC.
To me, something along those lines would feel a bit fairer overall — both in terms of sustainability for Eric and in terms of expectations for supporters.

[Eric.B]

Yoshiyoshigraf covers it pretty well.

I will note that I am only permanently pausing FBS/bounties after 2nd Gear. I will lift that pause when the war in Ukraine is over and if Serhey is back working full time. The main stipulation is that the war in Ukraine ends. I have had too many false starts from Serhey over the last 4 years. Something war related always screws stuff up.

When the war is over and he can work again the bounties will likely resume. Prices will may go up, but not as much as if I had to continue alone. (10-25% or so.) And likely the first 10-20 milestones will be artwork only to catch everything back up.

If I were to continue the FBS/bounties alone, prices will need to go up 500-1000% to fully justify the work. I'm not sure many people will be happy with that. Even a 100-300% increase would help, but I would still be losing money on the system. And without artwork, there is minimum prospects of recouping losses with new sales. (Artwork is the main thing to draw new blood to the game.)

At the same time, I understand there are some contributors here for AeroMogul. And there are many of you here to support me regardless of new things for GC. I am contemplating keeping fund raising open after GC:2G ships to accommodate that. I would heavily discourage people from contributing then. I don't think I provide enough value with devblogs and prototype builds to justify contributions. If that were to happen, contributors would still gather votes. They could use the votes when bounties resume. Or if AeroMogul has persistent online games, use those votes to buy subscriptions.

Anyway, it's still fluid. We've got 2 milestones and an Alpha and Beta build remaining with 2nd Gear. (2.6.0.0 has one more pending bug and a few play tests.) So, these decisions are ~2 years away. Let's hope everything gets cleaned up by then.