I've been very bad about posting on the forums

[Valknor]

Hello everyone,

This is a quick update from Christopher, Dixie Ball's lead developer.

I have been posting updates about the game to places like Gab, and our company's homepage. I haven't really used the forums much. If there are any fan's of the game reading this, I encourage you to reply. Let's see if we can get everyone to come together and talk about the game.

So, you might be wondering, what's happening? Well, one of our team members had allot of things come up, and he hasn't been able to get much done for the 2.5 update. I have been trying to find some way of making money with this company. So far, Dixie Ball has been a black hole that I shovel funds into. I suppose that's normal for Indie Games. I've been trying to figure out ways to show the game to more people. Even paid for advertisements on Gab the other month. The results where rather poor. The Cost Per Click for the sidebar campaign was $0.81. The social feed adds where much cheaper, at a CPC of $0.18.

[Valknor]

Oh, and I made a devlog

[Valknor]

So, we used to talk about the game on the Godot Forums. Our game thread got taken down because it was "promoting hate". We got the same treatment on Reddit. Itch.io shadowbanned us. I could go on and on. Sufficed to say, in "current year", most places are openly hostile toward anything to do with the Confederacy. Oddly enough, not even the official confederate organizations like the United Daughters of the Confederacy or Son's of Confederate Veterans have expressed any interest in our game. I've reached out to them on multiple occasions and have had no luck gaining any support.

I could have made a game that was politically correct. Could have had positive reviews on itch.io, gotten it on steam, maybe turned it into a financial success. But I felt like I had to do something about the monuments to southern heritage being destroyed. I still believe this is a worthy cause, but I have to find some way to make this company financially viable. Otherwise I'll continue burning through my savings until I have to work a 9-5.

[Valknor]

What I'm trying to get at, is development on Dixie Ball will be slower for the forseeable future. There's still things I want to do, like add birds, more plants, easter eggs, etc. We have a whole haunting system planned with ghosts, new ambiance, all sorts of cool stuff. We planned to add allot more historical models such as components to campsites, an ambush scene with wrecked carts and possibly dead horses. I could keep going into detail. Sufficed to say we have built up a massive wishlist of what we want to accomplish with the game.

I know it still feels a bit empty. Maybe we bit off more than we can chew. At this point, development of Dixie Ball is going to have to be more of a hobby, at least until it can generate money, or shows some signs that it might. I wish I could say we would meet our quarterly release schedule. I feel terrible about the game being neglected like this. But bills have to be paid. We simply can't go on without a source of revenue. This is why we are pivoting to building websites as a service.