- Joined
- Nov 15, 2014
- Posts
- 155
On January 12th, 2019 not only will the Relic Castle Archive be closing (more on that here), but I will be departing from the staff team entirely and passing ownership of Relic Castle to Marin. At an undecided later date, Aki and Shgeldz will be departing from the staff team as well, but I won't speak on their behalf.
To say it's been an absolute pleasure would be an understatement. Me and Atomic Reactor started planning this community in 2014 with the goal of maybe getting 100 members; I think we surpassed that not even a month after launching. We really wanted to build a community where you could easily receive feedback for your project, and where seasoned fan game developers could interact with newcomers to the scene and help guide them. Given the influx of new developers on the scene over the past couple years, I'd like to think we succeeded in this regard.
No doubt that our biggest success was the Relic Castle Game Jams. What started as an experiment (considering past game jams on Pokecommunity had received minimal, if any entries we weren't sure what to expect) ended up being a cornerstone of the community. While it's definitely difficult to correctly estimate how many games have been made in Essentials, I recall checking the Essentials Wiki after the third game jam and entries for the Relic Castle game jams made up more than half of the listed games on the wiki. That's pretty damn incredible, and that's all thanks to the amazing developers who pushed themselves to get something out in a month. Not only that, but some of the entries are some of the most original and highest quality fan games we've seen. You guys made judging the game jams very difficult, it was usually pretty close!
I think this community really tapped into something special. It's full of wonderful and creative people, but over the past year I've been thinking about passing the torch over to someone else. My personal interest in fan games has been wavering for a little while, and I don't think it's fair to be a bottleneck for improvements and growth to the community. When organizing the previous game jam, I said to myself that I would start searching for a suitable person to take over in September.
Knowing that Aki was also planning on departing sometime later, we talked about our various options. We know that we didn't want the community to be discontinued because we couldn't find a suitable owner. We wanted there to be a new generation of leadership. New leadership that would drive the community forward, and in a different path. I firmly believe that every staff member we've ever had (myself, Atomic Reactor, Cilerba, Yuoaman, Aki, Shgeldz, Jayrodd, Mr. Gela, Dawn Bronze, Marin, Arma, Vanilla Sunshine) had something new and different to bring to the table. I wouldn't want the person leading the community to run things exactly the same as myself and Aki, as I believe the community itself has much more to gain from different leadership and ideals.
With that in mind, we chose Marin. I believe he's a solid choice and his experience in helping manage other communities is a huge plus. I've specifically told him to not feel pressured by our leadership style and to do what he feels is right for himself and the community -- there's no "gap" missing that he has to fill with me and Aki going, he should carve out his own niche with his leadership. I'm very confident in his ability to keep things running smoothly, and to improve the community as a whole. There's no conditions I've given him with running the community -- he's free to do as he pleases and has 100% ownership of the site, Discord, and everything; but I've also not hesitated to explain my stance on things such as monetization and the past mistakes we've made running the community. You're in really good hands with him at the helm.
This is definitely a bittersweet goodbye for me, but I'm really privileged to have worked alongside this community for this long. Thank you for that. Best of luck to everyone in all of your future endeavors!
To say it's been an absolute pleasure would be an understatement. Me and Atomic Reactor started planning this community in 2014 with the goal of maybe getting 100 members; I think we surpassed that not even a month after launching. We really wanted to build a community where you could easily receive feedback for your project, and where seasoned fan game developers could interact with newcomers to the scene and help guide them. Given the influx of new developers on the scene over the past couple years, I'd like to think we succeeded in this regard.
No doubt that our biggest success was the Relic Castle Game Jams. What started as an experiment (considering past game jams on Pokecommunity had received minimal, if any entries we weren't sure what to expect) ended up being a cornerstone of the community. While it's definitely difficult to correctly estimate how many games have been made in Essentials, I recall checking the Essentials Wiki after the third game jam and entries for the Relic Castle game jams made up more than half of the listed games on the wiki. That's pretty damn incredible, and that's all thanks to the amazing developers who pushed themselves to get something out in a month. Not only that, but some of the entries are some of the most original and highest quality fan games we've seen. You guys made judging the game jams very difficult, it was usually pretty close!
I think this community really tapped into something special. It's full of wonderful and creative people, but over the past year I've been thinking about passing the torch over to someone else. My personal interest in fan games has been wavering for a little while, and I don't think it's fair to be a bottleneck for improvements and growth to the community. When organizing the previous game jam, I said to myself that I would start searching for a suitable person to take over in September.
Knowing that Aki was also planning on departing sometime later, we talked about our various options. We know that we didn't want the community to be discontinued because we couldn't find a suitable owner. We wanted there to be a new generation of leadership. New leadership that would drive the community forward, and in a different path. I firmly believe that every staff member we've ever had (myself, Atomic Reactor, Cilerba, Yuoaman, Aki, Shgeldz, Jayrodd, Mr. Gela, Dawn Bronze, Marin, Arma, Vanilla Sunshine) had something new and different to bring to the table. I wouldn't want the person leading the community to run things exactly the same as myself and Aki, as I believe the community itself has much more to gain from different leadership and ideals.
With that in mind, we chose Marin. I believe he's a solid choice and his experience in helping manage other communities is a huge plus. I've specifically told him to not feel pressured by our leadership style and to do what he feels is right for himself and the community -- there's no "gap" missing that he has to fill with me and Aki going, he should carve out his own niche with his leadership. I'm very confident in his ability to keep things running smoothly, and to improve the community as a whole. There's no conditions I've given him with running the community -- he's free to do as he pleases and has 100% ownership of the site, Discord, and everything; but I've also not hesitated to explain my stance on things such as monetization and the past mistakes we've made running the community. You're in really good hands with him at the helm.
This is definitely a bittersweet goodbye for me, but I'm really privileged to have worked alongside this community for this long. Thank you for that. Best of luck to everyone in all of your future endeavors!
