If he didn't care about money, the game would have been free. If he really had no interest in developing it anymore, the new content wouldn't be coming out. If he REALLY only wanted money, this would all be a DLC, coz you know the die-hard kids would buy it up.
Right, and in my lesser moments of butthurtness, I give him all that. The fact he came back at all should mean something. The family thing though? What do politicians say when shit blows up and they need to make a quick exit? Is that the truth? I don't know and will never know. But it has never really evoked my sympathy.
It was ultimately his passion and seeming commitment to the project long-term that had me interested. And if I'm honest, I was *always* looking to the future when playing Terraria. What's there is nice but I was generally playing to kill time, hoping the game was going to evolve beyond its simple origins. It never did, and never will. So it's hard for me to look at Terraria without wondering what it could have been if he'd, I dunno, taken it seriously as he said he was going to.
I mean, with a fat bankroll, no need to work anymore....exactly what better point is there to develop something long-term?
I still think this is more of an awkward guy getting in way over his head with his first big project and not having the head for business or PR to make it work well. I also don't really expect him to make anything else, and I will probably move on to Starbound for my 2-D building needs, once it's out.
Here's the thing. Redigit was not a newb when he started Terraria. I checked his background, he's managed some websites that host flash games and such, and I think he even put some of his own smaller games up there. The guy was in the industry, not necessarily at the head of a development team or selling games on the open market....but he definitely had practical experience, both in games and in business, before Terraria. So I don't feel a lot of "fish out of water" sympathy for him.
I mean, even consider how long it ultimately took to get the game out. About 6 months, 7 to 8 months if you add the pre-announcement development time, iirc. Consider what it would have been like if the full release had been delayed a few months. The mostly-complete game would have come out, and that would have been the end of it. Sometimes it feels like development only truly started on a deeper level, when it just stopped.