Interview - Xavi Canal

1) I guess we should start with the big one. Do you consider the game to be finished?*

- Since we are on Steam we released 6 major patches and 11 minor ones. You can check our patch notes post to check how many new features we added.

http://www.townsgame.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1420

- By the nature of the game always a new feature can be added, so I stopped at some point and call it finished.
- After some talking with people on our forums I decided to hire someone to continue the work.



2) Do you feel a responsibility to the people that purchased your game, to
continue the development of Towns?*

- Of course, and that's what we did. Actually, after all that time working 24/7 (not only the coding, but all a project involves, from email support to paperwork, ...) I decided that I can't continue. But, as said in the previous answer, I wanted to just stop the development but I hired Florian to continue the work.



3) Florian has suggested that he couldn't afford to continue working on the game with the arrangement you had put in place. You've just stated that "SMP can't pay a full-time dev salary". After grossing $2 million dollars, why is that the case?*

- After vendors (30%), taxes (50%+), splits, fees and the conversion to euros that number is not as fancy. The majority of that money was done on the first months on Steam, at that time we were still developing the game and the money was not needed. Each of us spent it in personal use, mostly bills.

- Actually our sales are not spectacular, so, we are not in disposition to pay a full salary.

4) Do you still believe in Early Access as a concept?

- When we released on Steam the Early Access was not available. We released the game with a warning in the description saying we was still developing it. It's true that it took us 1 week to put that warning, mostly because burocracy, at that time the publishers didn't had the access to modify the Steam store page by themselves.
- So, Early Access and/or crowfunding sites. I think is a good way to finance a project, the problem behind that is that an indie project, normally, doesn't need too much money to be done. You just need a computer and some spare time to code the game.


5) What does the future look like for Towns? Will development continue?

- Actually I am searching for a solution that likes everybody, I do not plan to give up.