Barkhorn1x 14 Posted November 25, 2011 Message from Jason & Team: Dear Friends, As the end of 2011 approaches we want to send a sincere message to all of our friends and supporters and give you a candid and honest update on where we stand and what we want to accomplish in the future for Rise of Flight and 777 Studios. First, we want to say THANK YOU to all who have supported us with your kind words of encouragement, your hard work, your amazing content contributions and important monetary support in 2011. It’s a simple fact; we could not have made it this far without you. The current state of our product is a direct reflection of your dedication to the flight-sim hobby and your love for Rise of Flight. Again, to all of our supporters out there in the flight-sim community, thank you very much from the bottom of our hearts! As you know, ROF is a labor of love from a devoted team of developers. We wake up every day with one simple goal in mind – to make ROF better! The past two and a half years since its release has been a challenging journey for all of us and we are proud of what we have accomplished so far. We never ever stopped working to improve ROF even in the toughest of times. ROF has evolved into an epic flight-sim despite her critics and persistent cynics. We’ve endured changes in ownership, gone months without pay, been let down by big name investors, mistreated by distributors and dismissed by major retailers. We have been and still are the underdog in this crazy, niche industry. If it weren’t for our steadfast supporters and some special help in the gaming media, we would be long gone and ROF would be another incomplete flight-sim failure. However, even though we have accomplished a lot, the war, the battle for survival is far from over and we STILL need your help. We’ve tried to think outside the box, to do things differently in the flight-sim industry, to give us a real chance to make ROF something special. Overall, this approach has worked pretty well to keep us moving forward, had we not tried a new approach we would have been done two years ago. Fortunately, the ROF community has responded positively to our way of doing things and we are thankful to God for it. However, for us to make sure we can be here next autumn talking about more new features for ROF we need your continued help and support. We send you this message, not out of desperation or frustration, but out of DETERMINATION to make ROF the best sim possible and beat the odds. We’re simply not done yet and more unique features are in development. Pilot scarves, streamers and pilot pistols are currently in development along with other announced features such as searchlights, improved AI and even more fascinating aircraft for you to fly plus a new stats system and many other fixes and improvements. However, as with any product, sales fluctuate, some customers lose interest and other gaming products compete for your time. This is to be expected and is part of business, but for a special, niche product like ROF this can spell disaster. We have never had a big budget and we operate a very modest studio. What we lack is the capital to make certain long term development commitments and investments so we can tell you with high confidence that we can accomplish difficult development goals for you. What we need is more time. Every dollar you send our way, buys us more time to develop new features or fix lingering issues. For instance, we’d love to disconnect the Career from the online requirement, develop a Multiplayer chat lobby and research more cool technologies, but these efforts take valuable time and in many cases special hardware and resources. Efforts like correcting old flight models and tweaking the Career mode also takes a lot of time, resources and manpower from our small team. It’s a never ending battle for perfection, but we love doing it and we love it when we see how pleased our customers become after a successful result. We read the forums, your PMs and your emails, we know what you want and we want to be able to give it to you. That brings us to our special request for this Christmas season. Our current customer base has the power to propel us well into 2012 and beyond. For example, if 70% of all ROF users made a purchase of just $7 this Q4’ we would have enough money to fund development for an entire year! Our wish for this Christmas season is for all ROF fans to help buy us more time to make ROF even better. We know times are tough right now, the world economy stinks, but if you have the means and love ROF, please consider a purchase from our store this Christmas season. We know many of you make regular purchases and support us every single month. Your purchases do not go unnoticed and are always appreciated. Some of you go above and beyond the call and buy Gifts for your friends. It’s amazing to watch this generosity unfold, but the hard reality is that we need your continued support this Christmas season. As always, in return for your continued support we will work to improve ROF for you every single day rain, snow or shine. That is our promise to you. Special Giveaway In appreciation of our awesome community and in the spirit of the Christmas season, we are running a special contest for the next 30 days. Each day from Nov. 25th to Dec. 25th we will randomly select two winners from our user database. One daily winner will be a Free2Play/Demo user who has not upgraded his or her copy yet and we will award them a free ROF:ICE Demo Upgrade! The other daily winner will be drawn from our database of users who have already purchased a retail copy, bought an upgrade or an airplane from our store. These winners will be given a credit of $30 to be used in the ROF Store! We hope this contest brings some holiday flight-sim cheer to you the ROF community. Massive Aircraft and Field Mods Sale Nov. 24-28 To kick off the Holiday Shopping Season and to help you fill up your hangar for the long winter months ahead, we have launched a massive 50% off sale on ALL Airplanes and this time Field Modifications are included. We are also offering the ROF:ICE Upgrade for just $19.99! Now is the best time to purchase some planes as early Christmas gifts for your fellow squadron mates or even for you. Santa told me you deserve a new airplane in your hangar! Again, we want to say THANK YOU to ALL of you who have supported us and helped us make ROF better and better in this long, busy year. We look forward to continuing the journey with you. Warmest Regards this Holiday Season, Jason Albert Daniel Sergey Viktor Vitaliy Anton Ilya Michael L. Michael S. Alexey Vova Valeriy Evgeniy Konstantin Vladimir Max In addition to the sale, patch 1.22 was released last week and it was a big one. I just picked up 3 more planes as I want this sim to continue to develop. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Dagger 21 Posted November 25, 2011 One thing Jason and his team are great for is keeping the community informed of whats going on, and where the game stands. Good to see so up front honesty from a dev. team. and owner. I also will continue to support this great sim. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
