PRPR Farewell

Alright @everyone - it's time to make a call. I've been trying to keep too many plates spinning in life lately and there's just no way I can manage this community and the game as well as all the other stuff going on irl. It's time to shut down PRPR. Part of me wants to make a long post thanking everyone for the years of community we had and another part knows this game has been dead for at least 3 years now and most of those people have already left. So I'll compromise.

There are three pillars which hold up any community-based project. Firstly, you need someone with a vision to drive it. That was me. Then you need someone (ideally many someones!) to build the vision. That was also me, and to a lesser but far from insignificant extent, several of you. Lastly, you need a community that actively participates. That was all of you for at least 10 solid years. But if more than one of those pillars crumbles, so does the project. And given the circumstances, that happening was almost inevitable.

First BYOND turned its back on us (likely because lawyers came knocking), and PRPR was actively hidden from the site where it lived. The community began to dwindle because nobody new found the game and nobody old played it anymore. And my free time dwindled even faster than that. Pretty soon, it was just us hanging out in discord. Between work and my never-ending health issues, the prospect of major updates slowly became less and less feasible. Plus, to this day, I've made a total of $0 from PRPR. There was just no way for me to make it work and not end up jobless and homeless. With the majority of the community gone or passive, it was just me and pure effort driving the game onwards. But for what?

If PRPR had been a way for me to make a living and get by, I'd have likely kept making the game until I died of old age. However, the legality of everything is clearly not on my side, and I never did come up with a satisfying way to create a Pokemon fan game that was something I could actually afford to make both financially and effort-wise. It was a 15 year act of charity that old got harder to accomplish as time went on, and people became less and less interested alongside. And since I represent two (and sometimes three) of the three pillars purely by myself, there's nobody for all that work to fall back on.

I am not "retiring" from creating stuff or giving up by any means. I have many other works in progress that can't be lawyered away, and I am still doing what I started doing 18 years ago, just in a different form. But PRPR will never be sustainable for me like this. I can't continue carrying the entire game and community on my back anymore, knowing that even if I revive the community (and somehow make enough money to pay rent at the same time!) that lawyers could come shut it all down again at any moment. It's better to leave it be and focus my efforts where they might someday be rewarded.  I mean, if someone at Nintendo wants to throw me $20 million to make a new Pokemon MMORPG, I'm totally in. Seems a little unlikely though.

In PRPR's heyday we had tens of thousands of players and a thriving community. Today we have a handful of loyal folks in discord and some new people hoping to scratch that roleplay itch. The core principle remains the same regardless of size. The idea behind PRPR was that the creative spirit never dies, and as long as people wanted to play and someone was willing to facilitate that, then PRPR would keep on coming back in whatever form it needed to. This is still the case. If you want to build your own Pokemon world and community, nobody except Nintendo lawyers can stop you.

But remember the story of PRPR. It's better to choose something that people can't just take away from you with lawyers and mismanaged gaming websites. Make something that you own and can support you, no matter how much harder it is than copying an existing idea. And no matter how hard things get, rise again.

I'll see you out there.

- Sirus