Somehow its really amusing... After all those years of watching people saying obvious things... You finally all woke up and say... exactly the same thing what those people where saying....

And of course you have, quote: "Solid Plan". Probably the same solid plan as for past 10 years, and probably also so solid like Falcon experience in running dev team, who know maybe so solid like Shoozza qoute: "Today I am leaving Soldat and also resign as Soldat dev team lead."



It so solid that you choose worst date of releasing game, as Loner mentioned, because if you would really have solid plan, you would know that putting Soldat on steam in that time is like putting one m&m's in the middle of Christmas Table filled with cakes and cookies(read: all Christmas promotions and sellouts).



Not to mention that you seriously lack of any market sense. Time of simple 2D indie games pass out last year, now market is going again toward open massively multiplayer online games. Without proper marketing that you dont have for Soldat you will get the same results as with recent release of 1.7 version: You will get initial hype, some older players will show up, some new players will try, and after about two weeks everything will slowdown and you get maybe 50 new solid players that will play it.



Steam is not magic box that will give you 1000 new players just because you are there. Steam is platform where most of players are young people with particular needs, that soldat dont have. You will not get proper respond just by advertising game as "old school 2D shooter". If your advertising plan look like soldat development now, you can just skip that release. Because its look like even MM who have some experience with that, dont really take it seriously, and whole plan is to just move it from his desk because its annoying.



Soldat have huge potential but it lack proper features that are needed to gather proper audience. Market is saturated with 2D games after those years of indie games boom. If you really care about Soldat and really want to keep it alive you need proper look of game, basic statistic system for players, proper advertising methods and background support for players and ideas/features.

You seriously need to look at market you aiming for, Steam is demanding and if you plan is to just get it on steam and wait for miracle because "its Steam", you may as well just give a break.



Last thing is that you really messed up for all those years power of community. Simple donation system would be enough to at least pay for proper advertising, And right now, with aiming for steam, you would need that support, even 8-10$ a month is enough to get good results that will keep game on top of any lists, making sure that it show people that game is live.

And advertising is just one thing that you could do. But its not only about money, for all those years Soldat had great community that where ready to make shit for free, all what you had to do is... ask. Then you would just need to pick what you liked and put it in game... Now of course it dont make sense because you lost good 90% of people, but if developers, like eg, Falcon stop being so full of them self and stop acting like they know what they doing, you still can get small help of people.

You dont need separate group of developers, If you dont want to open source game, open development, and put official list of what is needed, starting from such simple things like advertising banners and videos, ending in actual game graphic, sounds and other components that you need. If people here would stop being so cocky you would right now have few WM versions that would be on public servers to test, and on forum you would discuss all of them. No closed Irc channels or PMs between just few people. If remaining community is so mature as they say, it would be done already.



Basically if you really think about changing Soldat to proper game, not some annoying weekend project for few friends start thinking about it as game, and take in to the account market and people. Free work or not, if people accepted to help developing game, they should put 100% in it as often as possible. With proper strategy and plan, you can even make money from it without making game paid. There are lots of ways, especially using steam and donations to make game work and keep players and devs happy.