Some months ago, Doug (here at SimHQ) advised us that they were cutting back on some of the forums. Since we are a minor topic, we were not surprised to be on that list. We would first like to thank SimHQ for giving us the time to develop an alternative.

More than that, we would like to express our gratitude to Doug for his generosity. SimHQ has provided us with a place to show our wares while we developed them. We were able to sit alongside fully-funded real live gaming companies (as well as vaporware, has-been's and dreamers). We were able to show what we were doing to gamers of which some were our target market.

Yankee Air Pirate and Rising Sun are played on every continent, in most of the countries, in history classes at universities, fighter squadrons, forward combat areas, at sea, and many of the military bases on Earth. We are very proud of that. SimHQ provided the platform.

The facility of using SimHQ had its downside. Allowing us to develop made us lazy. It allowed us to avoid going out and finding the people we think exist...our market. We know our customers are 30-60, male, read (paper) books and are serious lovers of history. They are not necessarily gamers. They are willing to spend a reasonable amount of money to be put into a story they know happened. That's who we are and we hope there are more out there like us.

We appreciate Doug's focus on where games are going and not on where they have been or where they are stagnated. It is a service that needs to be performed well and having clutter is not good marketing. We think it is a smart move.

We will move to our own world. We will be on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/YankeeAirPirate/284823034925452)

and the Internet at www.yankeeairpirate.net.

We wish Doug and SimHQ success (and peace) in these endeavors.

Thanks, Doug

John Shelton