All in all, I agree with most of Fred’s points. However, I’d like to share some of my thoughts on specific topics to those who are interested.
I started working on Northwind around October or November of 2019, marking about three years before this post. In that time, a lot has happened, and yet we are often left feeling like nothing has changed. This mostly stems from the frequent stagnation the game experiences, often as a result of burnout or outside responsibilities for the team. Additionally, work is not always plainly and evenly distributed, and communication between team members varies from no contact for over a month to rare weekly meetings. The game’s setting is also often limiting, and I always wonder how long it will be before we run out of new content such as items, weapons, etc to add to the game. Ultimately, I have not been enjoying my work on the game for some time, and the volatility of the revenue stream makes for a stressful environment when Fred is absent.
However, this is not to say all is doom and gloom. I see most of these issues as being things that can be fixed with creativity, and with time. For example, a goal of mine lately has been to make some of our work more interesting, and I plan to make the stonemore and ellesmere remakes especially exciting to work on and play. I have also distributed some of my own workload to better prioritize tasks. Aside from these things, I believe that Fred will be active again after graduation, and that we can get much more done at that time, with much less of the frustrations we currently experience.
Technical Thoughts:
There are many technical tasks which are often not fun, usually including bug fixing, anticheat, or trying to work around something Roblox has done. Additionally, these tasks vary wildly in difficulty/complexity, with many requiring Fred’s intervention, which is usually not available to us. This results in us typically having to pick one of three paths: holding off on creating/releasing content until Fred is available, ignoring the problem and trying to go forward without fixing it, or somehow fixing the bug which is usually in a worse manner than Fred would have done himself. All of these solutions tend to present their own problems which disappoint the community as well as ourselves.
This is further affected by the fact that I am not a very experienced or learned programmer. Most of my programming experience has come from Northwind, and I am quite familiar with the game’s framework. However, there are many situations where I am faced with problems that I cannot fix adequately because I do not have the same knowledge which Fred or Rodrigo have. I was also not originally brought on to do programming, or most of the things which have become my tasks. I began working on Northwind by filling houses with furniture and setting them up to spawn properly, which is something I still do to this day. Everything else has been tacked on since then.
Community Thoughts:
My thoughts on the community are mostly in concert with Fred’s. It’s not very fun to work on a feature or new content and release it to be met with instant hostility and harsh criticism. All it really takes is one message to leave a lasting thought on the matter. Beyond this, I generally avoid interaction with the community for a myriad of reasons. Primarily, I just end up regretting it as soon as I do something such as typing in the Discord, where I can expect to get dogpiled with questions and/or le epic meme remarks which are just awkward and not actually funny. However, I do very much appreciate the thoughtful and polite members of the community who do not cause such issues. We wouldn’t be where we are without their support.
At the end of the day, the person on the other end of any conversation or comment online is just another person behind a screen, and sharing more common courtesy would make the community more welcoming and friendly for everyone.
Roblox Thoughts:
Much of our success can be attributed directly to the work we put in, with playercounts increasing significantly after updates. However, our most beneficial success came after we were included in front page sorts upon going free-to-play with update 16. Our position in the front page was removed after privating the game to move data to the DataStore (a solution which should have probably been done without making the game private) and we have not been there since. We have reached similar playercounts (500-800) since then, yet have not been added back to any sorts. This is a detriment for us, especially as the additional exposure and income from being on the front page allowed for more flexibility in development. It was also just nice to see so many people enjoying the game after having been a relatively niche, closed off experience for so long.
Additionally, Roblox has often stated their intention to “age-up” the platform with its audience, yet a game such as ours has not seen much benefit from this in either exposure or allowance of more mature content. We have considered applying to the Game Fund, which seems to be a major push for more mature & diverse content on Roblox, but we are not sure if they would fund an existing project. We will provide an update if that comes to fruition. 
Thanks for reading, and remember to
Play NORTHWIND.
– Mason (Terabyl)