Well, here we are, five years ago we officially launched Therian Saga with the opening of the Den and the introduction of our monetization system. The game was already in operation for over a year, in alpha and beta versions, our oldest player accounts dating from April 16, 2012. We started the creation of the game in 2009, the first two years in "after work" mode where we built our vision of the game. It was in 2011 that we really decided to push Therian Saga towards a commercial product, we swelled the team and built the infrastructure necessary to bring it out of the game.
All this to say that Therian Saga is no longer a young game.
If I were asked to say what I liked most about this adventure, I would say that it is the fact that the game was built by a network of friends. From the beginning of the project we presented our ideas to relatives and many of them were grafted to the project for a time or permanently. These friends introduced us to other friends, some of whom have also come a long way with us. I really believe that all this energy pooled by people who primarily wanted to express their creative abilities made that Therian Saga have a charm and character rarely found in other projects.
Where are we today? Like your characters, you could say that games in the industry have high or low skills. Therian Saga's main skill is retention, so we have a loyal community that stays with us for a long time. Our lowest skill is surely acquisition. It has never been easy for us to convince a new player that he should stay with us and take the time to give the game a chance to demonstrate its potential. What is the result of all this? A good community very active and engaged but that does not renew much. It's a bit like playing Dungeons and Dragons: designers are the game masters who build the world for their players. It's still great as a concept.
This text is the perfect time to talk about one of our failures, the Unity version. I know you will continue to ask for this new version, but in the current state of things we will not be able to do it. The revenue from the game just does not allow us such a big development without giving up any content creation, which would reduce our retention and therefore cut the revenue available to develop the Unity version. We have also looked for funding and partners, but there is no interest in technology conversion. We kept our code up to date with Unity's new version it case there was an opportunity to restart the project. At the planning level for Unity, we believe that at the beginning of 2019 we will take radical choices, but currently we are only keeping the code up to date. We will get back at you with our decision.
And for our good old version of Therian Saga, what can we expect? This year we are still going to have content updates, feature additions and we are going to change some basic concepts like the number of characters per account. But I believe that a major decision is awaiting us for the end of the year. As I said we are on Therian Saga for a very long time and taking a step back, sometimes Cloud and I come to the conclusion that we may have reached the point where we are no longer the best people to develop the content of the game. Do not worry, it does not mean we're going to disappear in the mists. But that we can focus on direction / production and bring new blood to the game. People who will have new ideas, new directions and even different visions. So, one of our tasks in 2018 is to train a new generation, we really believe that it will be beneficial for our players, and that's the most important thing.
The entire team would like to take this opportunity to highlight the immeasurable work of our volunteers who have supported us over the last few years. We also add thanks for those who took the time to make tools for Therian Saga. Thanks again!
So now, and as we celebrate our 5 years, we will reduce the price of everything in the shop for a week, have fun!