Happy Halloween, fellow inhabitants of our online communities!

I address you here from my corner office on the 53rd floor of the JuixGames studio building; as I toss a plastic red stress ball up into the air and catch it repeatedly, don an overtly expensive designer 3-piece suit, and brood passively looking over the beauty of New York City to help articulate my thoughts.

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Of course, I’m kidding. I write to you, our community, from the comfy chair of a small-town coffee shop. This spot being where I start my workday at the chirping time of 6am. This spot being where I have conceptualized the grand majority of content you will see over the next few months. This spot being where I have written almost every signature letter to our community for nearly two years.

And while this spot will continue to be where I accomplish those things, it will also become the spot from which I oversee accountability for our operations as a company. This includes our previous mistakes, the ones we are currently at fault for making on a day-to-day basis, and the ones we will undoubtedly see ourselves responsible for in the future.

As of very recently I have taken the role of Chief Operations Officer (COO) within JuixGames. Which, to those unaware of our company structure, may seem like an unnecessary position to grant in a group of our size. But to those that have an inside eye at the way we have operated in the year, namely those active within our volunteer teams, this probably comes as an unsurprising step in the right direction.

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We are on month ten of what was intended to be a three-four month development cycle. As I addressed in the August Producer’s Letter, we have already entirely rewritten the game once in Unity. That rewrite neared its open beta right around late early May, which while already being month five of the cycle, was still much more the glow of accomplishment to be completed by our team than it was a month-delayed update. When we determined not long after that it would be within our best interest to start from scratch once more, as Unity was not a viable base for our project, there was a lingering and unanimous feeling of apprehension that would plague the final deciding conversations and many thereafter.

The truth of that worry came true just as well as any of us could have expected, burnout reared its head around the corner of our working minds. This, of course, would affect Juix most heavily. Being the solemn client developer due to Linqx’s unfamiliarity with the base and otherwise obligation as a full-time student, it would be Juix continually putting in 40–60 hour weeks doing the exact same tasks he had just barely gotten done completing and seeing no return for.

That level of conditioning and discipline is not easy on a seasoned developer being paid his worth. It is not a discipline I can expect Juix to have mastered with only two true years of work experience under his belt, being paid under his worth, and having no one to reasonably check him on his productivity.

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That lack of accountability for Juix, however, is exactly why I am stepping into the responsibility of COO. As an immediate result I will be setting the pace and expectation for what needs to be accomplished within any given time-frame, also then being the one held fully accountable for doing everything possible to hold to them; I will be working to meeting and maintaining a much higher standard for quality level of internal discussion, making sure that above all I am able to have an in-depth understanding of where we are as a company so that I can make earnest and informed statements to you all; and lastly, starting next week, i’ll be back here every Friday to write one of these in order to insure that everyone knows exactly what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, and why we’re so darn excited to put it in-front of you to play.

This game, as many of you know, has been a strong passion project for me ever since its inception; before I was even a part of the team. When we miss a date we thought was for-sure, when we can’t hold to our word, or when we mess up to the point of disappointment from our core fans, it is as sharp a pain in my heart as it is for anyone else.

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Oh, and also, Open Beta is ready on our end. We’re waiting on Steam to update our store-page so it can be ready, which usually takes 1–2 days. We’ll put an announcement out about it tomorrow. See you out there.

Typ.