It's with a (somewhat) heavy heart that I am announcing the indefinite hiatus of MetaPunk.

The idea for a cyberpunk MMO was quite quick in coming when the MetaPlace forums first opened up, which illustrated that the genre could really use something like MetaPunk. It's an under-represented genre in the MMO field, either because of a perceived lack of interest from potential players, or because there were technical hurdles...I have no idea. The initial response to the MetaPunk ideas were absolute wonderful. People seemed to love what we had planned, and were very encouraging.

Unfortunately, games don't get made on encouragement alone. Despite the enthusiastic response to the concept, the materials we had put out there thus far, and the plans we had, my repeated attempts to assemble a solid, dedicated team to bring this project to life have failed. The majority of work done of the project thus far has been speculative, but when the rubber meets the road, turning ideas into code is like the tip of the iceberg is to the iceberg itself. Generating ideas was the easy part, but getting them working requires far more then I can manage alone.

Part of the problem, I believe, is that those who are interested in MetaPlace are interested for the same reason that I am: they want to build something, but not just any something: they want to build their game. That's understandable. It's how I feel as well. But if everyone wants to build their dream game, then there's bound to be a shortage of community manpower that is absolutely needed to make those dreams a reality, especially for projects the size of MetaPunk.

Another issue is the "I don't know how to code, so I can't help you" excuse which -- no offense to anyone -- is rather lame. Granted, with MetaPlace being in closed Alpha, there's not a lot of involvement for everyone, but LUA as a language isn't at all difficult to learn, even for non-programmers. In fact, I'd say that if you want to start with programming, LUA is as good an entry point as any. There was no set standards for MetaPunk as far as "you must have X years of development experience" goes. It would have been a hell of a work-study project had people been willing to give it a shot.

In the meanwhile, I'll be working within MetaPlace, probably on other people's projects, and in the creation of modules and stylesheets for others to use. If I feel that a system I've created on my own is particularly well suited towards MetaPunk, I'll probably keep it to myself. If I'm lucky, those myriad of parts will self-assemble into something great  :D

I'm keeping in mind that there's a whole lot of people out there who won't approach MetaPlace until it goes live. Maybe when that happens, we'll revisit the MetaPunk idea, and hopefully be able to build a dedicated, driven team.

Thanks for all your support,
Chris "Scopique" Smith