Martin Markus Mastný: I jumped into Unity head first, learned C# and learned how to work with Unity. That went on from 2013 until the early access release on October 5, 2015: learning, making the game, trying things. The whole time I had this strong idea and excitement that one day it would be an MMORPG. I built the server layer and databases and connected it all to Unity.

Then Steam slapped me in the face :) Suddenly I had to deal with a million other things: PR, sales, the community, bugs, people's reactions.

When I opened the Steam forum in the morning and questions were still unanswered, I had to answer them myself right away. So my community manager ended up handling bugs and being my quiet advisor. I needed to react immediately so people got a response. I felt I had to accommodate everyone and thank them for playing the game.

The result was total collapse and burnout. It basically ruined the whole game, too.

My day looked like this: get up, deal with the community, work on the game all day and deal with the community while doing it. No time off at all. I went full time like that from early 2016 until 2019, nonstop. And I kept making compromises to please people, to get good reviews, to give everyone what they asked for. The result was total collapse and burnout. It basically ruined the whole game, too. It turned into something it was never supposed to be.

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