Why now
The signals were always there, you just had to be watching.
Every dev log, every stray screenshot, every offhand line about where the engine was headed. That was the map, refreshed at 2am more nights than we'd like to admit. Not hype, just someone building in public and letting anyone paying attention see the shape of what was coming.
MyBlock is what happens when a small studio reads that map for years and finally has the ground to build on. Not a tech demo. Not a clone. A real city, with a real economy, run by the people playing in it, built by people who've wanted this exact thing to exist for longer than we've been able to admit out loud.
We're not a studio with a floor of desks and a publisher breathing down our neck. It's a small handful of us, doing this because we'd rather build the game we've wanted for years than keep waiting for someone else to.