The gaming industry is changing. Because video games is now a multi-billion dollar industry, it has long evolved from the wild wild west of the 90’s where rules and business models didn’t seem to matter (as much). With the arrival of the big studios (like EA) buying out the innovation from the smaller studios, building a game has turned into a series of cogs where taking risks seem to be frowned upon in favor “what works.” Just look at the number of first person shooter clones.
Earlier this year, legendary game designer Tim Schafer (Psychonauts, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island, Brutal Legend) reached out to the community and proposed his idea: he will build a game that’s reminiscent of the role playing aspects of the old with strong focus on plot — just like his recipes for success with LucasArts — if you give him your money. In today’s industry, you’d have to pitch these concepts to game publishers, who, historically, tend to meddle with the overall product and turn say, a point and click adventure game into a first person shooter. It seems that gaming today is either limited to the fast-paced “huge studio” first person shooters like Call of Duty or the more casual mobile games like Angry Birds.
Tim’s crowdfunding was a success with Kickstarter. By reaching out directly the fans of his game, he was able to raise more than USD $3M which was way over the USD $1M requirement.
Essentially, a lot of old school industry game designers took this as a sign to reach out to the community as well. This is a new development in building a game and for 2012, I found myself actually funding three new games. Here they are:
A Game by Tim Schafer (Double Fine Productions)
As mentioned above, Tim and his team will be building a new adventure IP which will run on multiple platforms including mobile. The game is expected to ship early 2013. No idea what the title is yet, but if Tim is going back to his roots, it’s bound to be something worth waiting for. Funded: USD $15.00
Star Citizen by Chris Roberts
Chris Roberts is well known for his success with the Wing Commander and Freelancer IP’s and after taking a long hiatus from the gaming industry, he’s back with a new property: Star Citizen. The reality is that nobody makes space sim’s anymore so Chris has decided to reach out to the fans in building Star Citizen.
The game’s funding started only 7 days ago and it just broke the USD $1M mark which is half of the total funding needed to build the game. If you’re old skool like me, I highly encourage you to support Chris and Star Citizen. The game will be out in 2014. For this, I pledged USD $35.00.
PROJECT ETERNITY
Project Eternity is an isometric, party-based computer RPG set in a new fantasy world developed by Obsidian Entertainment.
Icewind Dale, Baldur’s Gate and Planescape: Torment were time sinks for me in the 90’s. As someone who played D&D casually, the world really came alive when I saw these characters come to life on nice painted backdrops (and me celebrating the fact that the PC was computing for THACO). Project Eternity brings the 90’s back with this new game from Obsidian. The game has been 100% funded and will be delivered sometime next year. PLEDGE: USD $25.00
This game has already been funded.
