Tag: Kickstarter

Missing Worlds Media Talks: City of Titans


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The story behind Missing Worlds Media and City of Titans is one of true inspiration and dedication. When NCSoft announced that City of Heroes would sunset along with Paragon Studios, members of the community rose up to answer the call to action. By the time City of Heroes shut down for its final maintenance, plans were already underway on several spiritual sequels to fill in the empty void of super hero MMOs. The subject of today’s discussion is City of Titans, code-named The Phoenix Project, under development by Missing Worlds Media.

Last year, Missing Worlds Media put their project to the test, via a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to purchase software and license engines. The team is made up of volunteers who initially met up to try and save City of Heroes, and then turned their focus on creating a new home. The Kickstarter was a massive success, bringing in $680,000 compared to the $320,000 goal.

I managed to sit down with a few members of the Missing Worlds Media team: War Cabbit, Nate ‘Dr. Tyche’ Downes (Tech Lead), Timothy Ross (Writing Lead), and William Strickland. Not all of those are real names. Thank you to everyone from Missing Worlds Media for taking the time to come talk to us.

Connor: So how big is Missing Worlds Media right now?
Nate Downes: We have 83 active members, with 144 people total volunteered.
War Cabbit: Eighty five as soon as two people respond.
Timothy Ross: The number is not set, of course.  We have slowed recruiting down, but not ended it.
War Cabbit: We are, I confess, always looking for experienced 3D people who are willing to assist with the project.

Co: How do you collaborate without an office?
TR: We use a number of different remote services to work together.
WC: We have a chat server, which really keeps us tightly connected, we have a document server, a code repository, a graphics repository, and a game server.
TR: You can imagine the amount of money we save by not having to pay rent on a physical building, not to mention working out transportation and then STILL having to have remote systems for our people in, for instance, Bulgaria.

Co: Do you have any people on City of Titans that worked on other games?
TR: Many.
WC: Oh, certainly. From paper and pencil to computer.
WS: A few. You can tell by the way they jump when you drop something.

Co: Do you have any contact with the ex-developers from Paragon Studios?
ND: Informal. I had a biweekly D&D game with Castle, for example, and I’ve talked to Statesman at PAX Dev last year.
WC: Not technically – they’re forbidden. We have well wishes, the occasional shout-out and a number backed us. That is, they can’t give us help with the project but if we didn’t have their blessing, we wouldn’t be where we are.

Co: How is the reaction to the new Unreal licensing deals? I’ve seen very mixed reactions especially among independent developers.
WC: Well, we’re not using it. Which is a darn good thing – it’d be ruinous to a group our size, per-person. Our licence got set up three months before they announced that.
ND: Their licensing for new clients is a boon for independent small-team developers.
Co: So the monthly fee is per person on the project?
WC: Something like, if I recall. Nate?
NC: At least per-person working with the engine directly. As our goal is to have everyone working with the engine on one level or another, this could get very pricey for us.
WC: You get six-eight programmers, it can add up. It’s great for single-person tinkering, though.

Co: Has the Unreal 4 engine been smooth to work with so far?
WC: It’s beautiful.
TR: It has exceeded all of my personal expectations so far.
WC: It’s like getting your hands on a Rolls Royce. Damn thing is machined.
WS: It’s also friendly, and the Epic staff have also been friendly. It’s almost like they want people to actually buy and use their engine, or something.

Co:  Unreal 4 has better systems for types of damage, if I’ve been reading correctly.
TR: Not just damage, but it really pushes the envelope for what a game can deliver.
WC: It does. It is a ten or fifteen year platform – which is perfect for us. I’m dead serious about treating City of Titans and Missing Worlds Media as something like Marvel Comics – we are here for the long term. We can keep pushing it for the MMO’s lifetime. We may have to do CoT 2.0 and 3.0 sometime, but we’ll handle it.

Co: To what extent is City of Titans going to be procedurally generated?
WC: We intend to lay out the roads by hand, but have the ‘road’ itself, the grade, the turns, be procedural in nature – same for the train tracks and power lines. We’re going to design the character of our neighborhoods, and then procedurally generate the blocks. There will be individual landmarks that we want exactly so and will build ourselves. Eighty percent of any average location will be a procedural block. If we can get it working finely enough to make procedural mission maps that always make sense, I’ll be even happier.
TR: And if we run into problems, we may be able to fix the rough spots the old fashioned way.

Co: You’ve ended preproduction, correct? What does that mean?
ND: No, we’re ending it. Last few bits need to be finished up.
WC: When it ends, we are essentially ‘building the game’ and no longer ‘designing the game’.
TR: Among other things, it means we are now building the systems that will make actually building the world not only much easier, but probably actually fun.

Co: Going on to content for a minute. How are the roles set up? There are five primaries and multiple secondaries for each?
WC: We have a number of primaries and a number of secondary options. By mixing and matching them, we create classes. At the moment, at launch, we are going to have five classes, created by the intersect of primary and secondary.
TR: Where it gets fun is the modular mixing and matching with secondaries, which results in what we call Classifications.
WC: To simplify: Scrapper would be Melee/Defense, Tank would be Defense/Melee. If you choose the right Masteries, of course.
TR: Melee is the Role.  Melee/Defense is the Classification (but it will have a better name).  That Classification would have 5 power sets at launch.

Co: The community is very dedicated and supportive, I’ve noticed.
TR: We love our community.
WS: We ARE our community.
WC: That’s the best thing we brought over from CoH. A very strong culture of helping each other.
TR: And we fully welcome all of the great folk out there who never had a chance to play CoH, and even those who never wanted to. Besides the fact that this is a great time for superheroes in a lot of different media.  Who hasn’t watched The Avengers and thought, “I want to DO that!”  Including people who have never played an MMO.

Co: When are you looking at a release?
ND: Release, likely in 2016. But accessible beta, late 2015.
WC: And costume creator before that.

Co: And one more question before I guess we can call it a wrap. Is there, or will there, be a way for people to pledge who missed out on the Kickstarter?
ND: We have been discussing a second-chance opportunity for those people, yes. We want to finish getting the people who did pledge with Kickstarter processed first.

Co: Thank you for taking the time to answer some questions.
ND: Anytime.
WC: Been a pleasure.
TR: Talk to us anytime.
WS: Thanks for having us, Connor.

Check out City of Titans at the official website.

Face of Mankind Open Beta Starts April 18th


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Following its successful Kickstarter campaign and closed beta testing period, Face of Mankind will be entering open beta on April 18th according to the latest announcement by Nexeon. Players eager to get in can register their account and start downloading the client now.

On April 16th, we will be wiping the Closed Beta and giving our dedicated testers and backers early access to the game. As there will be no wipe during Open Beta, we felt it was important to make sure this promised reward was delivered prior to Open Beta to ensure the largest impact.

Check out Face of Mankind at the link below.

(Source: Face of Mankind)

Pantheon's Forum Subscription


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If you’ve been following Pantheon’s Kickstarter, then you already know that the project has failed to meet its goal within the allotted time. Like many other companies, Visionary Realms has ventured into a self-hosted private funding system where people donate directly to the the company rather than through a third party. Those with money to burn can head on over to the Pantheon website and throw in anywhere up to ten thousand dollars for the highest tiers of rewards. The $100 tier is actually a great deal, when you consider that it includes two copies of the game, plus alpha and beta access and a bunch of exclusive items and titles that gamers tend to go nuts over.

The $100 tier and higher also give lifetime access to the supporter and apprentice developer benefits. What are those, you ask? You must not have looked at the picture at the top of this article. For $5 a month, you gain the privilege of posting in the public areas of the forums and wikis, and access to the supporter forums. For $15, you get all that plus the ability to chat with the developers during live streaming. Oh and you get a special color for your forum avatar for both.

Now I fully understand people wanting to help get a game out the door, which is why Kickstarter exists, but fifteen dollars a month? For the privilege of posting on a forum and being either ignored or drowned out by the sea of voices? For the special opportunity to communicate with the developers while they Live Stream, a feat that a growing number of early-access developers have managed to provide for absolutely free? A special color next to your name? The chance to fully understand how to sink money into a pit and receive nothing in return? Because aside from what is essentially a more expensive and recurring version of Something Awful’s forum fee, you are ultimately paying for the good feeling of saying at least you tried to help. Subscribing over the course of a full year would cost $180, and you get nothing. Not a free copy of the game, no items, no titles, no nothing.

At this point you’re probably thinking “why not just pick a higher tier?” Understandable, but fifteen dollars a month for a lot of people is more feasible than a straight up payment of $180, and easier to convince those who have the money but might simply not want to part with such a sum at once. This is why many stores adopt a layaway plan, and Visionary Realms obviously understands this concept because they are using it themselves. Plans that cost over one thousand dollars all have the option to pay off over the course of a year, plus what appears to be about 20% interest.

So because I’m a problem solver, and I believe that this is a factor of bad planning rather than malicious intent (dear internet trolls), I have devised a method that I believe would bring more interest to the Pantheon forum subscription. The idea is simple, take the subscription and tie it into the layaway plan. Take the standard reward tiers and boost them up, and allow accounts to automatically fall into those brackets once they hit a certain cumulative total.

Just as an example and a rough idea, I’ve listed a personal draft of the new tiers, compared to the one-off price, which I would submit had I worked at Visionary Realms.

  • $25 Seeker’s Pledge – $40 (3 months). Includes beta access, digital copy, and name reservation.
  • $35 Fallen’s Pledge – $55 (4 months). Seeker reward plus title of “Fallen.”
  • $45 Explorer’s Pledge – $70 (5 months). Seeker reward plus title and item.
  • $60 Risen’s Pledge – $90 (6 months). Seeker reward plus title, item, and character slot.
  • $75 Founder’s Pledge – $110 (8 months). Seeker reward plus title, item, character slot, backpack.
  • $85 Warder’s Pledge – $140 (10 months). Seeker reward plus title, item, character slot, backpack, tunic.

And so on and so forth.

If you figure that the Kickstarter estimated date for delivery was January 2017, someone who pays $5 a month starting now would have put in $175 by 2017, or enough to go over the inflated Warder’s pledge by a fair amount. A person who pays $15 a month during that same time period would generate $525. Now I am not a marketing expert, but I think it is safe to say that offering reward tiers, even at the greatly inflated prices I have set above, would bring in more revenue than what I can only assume is a hope that people will simply choose the $100 or higher options to avoid the forum subscription altogether.

Like I said, I’m not a marketing expert, but I do know that $140 for the top pledge over the course of ten months is a lot more money than no dollars over the same time period.

Any thoughts? Drop a comment below.

Pantheon’s Forum Subscription


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If you’ve been following Pantheon’s Kickstarter, then you already know that the project has failed to meet its goal within the allotted time. Like many other companies, Visionary Realms has ventured into a self-hosted private funding system where people donate directly to the the company rather than through a third party. Those with money to burn can head on over to the Pantheon website and throw in anywhere up to ten thousand dollars for the highest tiers of rewards. The $100 tier is actually a great deal, when you consider that it includes two copies of the game, plus alpha and beta access and a bunch of exclusive items and titles that gamers tend to go nuts over.

The $100 tier and higher also give lifetime access to the supporter and apprentice developer benefits. What are those, you ask? You must not have looked at the picture at the top of this article. For $5 a month, you gain the privilege of posting in the public areas of the forums and wikis, and access to the supporter forums. For $15, you get all that plus the ability to chat with the developers during live streaming. Oh and you get a special color for your forum avatar for both.

Now I fully understand people wanting to help get a game out the door, which is why Kickstarter exists, but fifteen dollars a month? For the privilege of posting on a forum and being either ignored or drowned out by the sea of voices? For the special opportunity to communicate with the developers while they Live Stream, a feat that a growing number of early-access developers have managed to provide for absolutely free? A special color next to your name? The chance to fully understand how to sink money into a pit and receive nothing in return? Because aside from what is essentially a more expensive and recurring version of Something Awful’s forum fee, you are ultimately paying for the good feeling of saying at least you tried to help. Subscribing over the course of a full year would cost $180, and you get nothing. Not a free copy of the game, no items, no titles, no nothing.

At this point you’re probably thinking “why not just pick a higher tier?” Understandable, but fifteen dollars a month for a lot of people is more feasible than a straight up payment of $180, and easier to convince those who have the money but might simply not want to part with such a sum at once. This is why many stores adopt a layaway plan, and Visionary Realms obviously understands this concept because they are using it themselves. Plans that cost over one thousand dollars all have the option to pay off over the course of a year, plus what appears to be about 20% interest.

So because I’m a problem solver, and I believe that this is a factor of bad planning rather than malicious intent (dear internet trolls), I have devised a method that I believe would bring more interest to the Pantheon forum subscription. The idea is simple, take the subscription and tie it into the layaway plan. Take the standard reward tiers and boost them up, and allow accounts to automatically fall into those brackets once they hit a certain cumulative total.

Just as an example and a rough idea, I’ve listed a personal draft of the new tiers, compared to the one-off price, which I would submit had I worked at Visionary Realms.

  • $25 Seeker’s Pledge – $40 (3 months). Includes beta access, digital copy, and name reservation.
  • $35 Fallen’s Pledge – $55 (4 months). Seeker reward plus title of “Fallen.”
  • $45 Explorer’s Pledge – $70 (5 months). Seeker reward plus title and item.
  • $60 Risen’s Pledge – $90 (6 months). Seeker reward plus title, item, and character slot.
  • $75 Founder’s Pledge – $110 (8 months). Seeker reward plus title, item, character slot, backpack.
  • $85 Warder’s Pledge – $140 (10 months). Seeker reward plus title, item, character slot, backpack, tunic.

And so on and so forth.

If you figure that the Kickstarter estimated date for delivery was January 2017, someone who pays $5 a month starting now would have put in $175 by 2017, or enough to go over the inflated Warder’s pledge by a fair amount. A person who pays $15 a month during that same time period would generate $525. Now I am not a marketing expert, but I think it is safe to say that offering reward tiers, even at the greatly inflated prices I have set above, would bring in more revenue than what I can only assume is a hope that people will simply choose the $100 or higher options to avoid the forum subscription altogether.

Like I said, I’m not a marketing expert, but I do know that $140 for the top pledge over the course of ten months is a lot more money than no dollars over the same time period.

Any thoughts? Drop a comment below.

Pantheon Flying Under Kickstarter Goal


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In case you haven’t been paying attention, Pantheon’s Kickstarter ends in just under a week. With six days left in the campaign, Pantheon’s Kickstarter has still yet to reach the halfway mark towards its $800 thousand goal. The fact that several high-level backers have apparently withdrawn their pledges doesn’t help the overall figures either. Regardless of what you blame the shortcomings on, it is more than evident at this point that, barring some magical second coming of Donald Trump, that Pantheon will not be meeting its goal.

As far as Pantheon goes, failure on Kickstarter is not the end of the game by a long shot. Brad McQuaid has posted numerous times on Twitter that work shall continue on the MMO while Visionary Realms seeks out alternate forms of investment.

(Source: Kickstarter)

Akaneiro's Team Down To Two People


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Akaneiro has fallen on troubled times. In a post on the Kickstarter page, American McGee commented that the game’s two hundred grand pledge goal was set on the grounds that revenue from the game would be enough to sustain further development. It wasn’t. A number of unexpected costs coupled with feedback that the game simply wasn’t fun led to a massive financial hole for Spicy Horse.

In total, around 360 man-months have gone towards development, bringing our investment in dollars to nearly $2 million USD. In that same period, we’ve generated roughly 300kUSD in revenue – this includes funds collected via the Kickstarter campaign, F2P purchases in-game, and one-time purchases via Steam. In simple math: We’ve spent $2 million, we’ve made $300k, we’re “in the hole” $1.7 million.

So what does this mean? The development team for Akaneiro has been reduced to two people, slowing progress for the foreseeable future. Depending on the performance of The Gate, Spicy Horse may divert more resources to Akaneiro in the future. For now, the future doesn’t seem so bright.

(Source: Kickstarter)

Brad McQuaid Responds To Vanguard Criticism


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Brad McQuaid is seeking eight hundred thousand dollars via Kickstarter for Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, and not everyone is falling over themselves to hand their money over. For many, the disastrous launch of Vanguard is still fresh on their minds, an event that is causing them to be less than confident in Pantheon’s prospects.  One gamer, Clmeas left the following comment on a Kotaku article promoting the Kickstarter.

Microsoft gave him $40,000,000 to make Vanguard with almost absolute creative control and he still released an unfinished, buggy, POS of a game after 5 YEARS in development.

The comment garnered a response from McQuaid himself, noting some of the challenges that Vanguard faced in its development from internal and external sources.

Microsoft funded us to almost $30M, after which there was a regime change at Microsoft and virtually all of the people we had been working with disappeared. The new people didn’t want to make Vanguard… they really didn’t want to make an MMO at all, and if they were, they wanted a Wow-clone-beater. We broke away from them and I turned to SOE and got them to fund as much as they could. Unfortunately, it fell short of the 6 months we needed, and the game was released too early.

WoW came in around $80M and they took at least 3 years to develop it (probably more, but 3 years after they *announced* the game — I have a feeling they were already working on it).

Star Wars: The Old Republic took at least 3 years, had hundreds of people involved, and cost between $150M and $200M (no one really knows for sure except the publisher).

Anyway, just some numbers for perspective. In any case, Vanguard was released too early but if you go check it out now it’s a solid game. The world is underpopulated but beyond that I’m still very proud of what we accomplished. 

It’s good to see that McQuaid is proud of what Vanguard has become. You can check out the Kickstarter for Pantheon here or follow the link on the side-bar.

(Source: Kotaku)

Lessons From 2013 #9: From Failure Comes Greatness


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Storybricks has become my new grammar peeve for this year. When people refer to the cancelled story-building MMO, they are thinking of the Kingdom of Default project. Storybricks, unless I have read the whole ordeal wrong, refers to the platform through which the AI is given its behaviors. Who could have thought that after Storybricks had its rather disastrous Kickstarter campaign, that the next announcement would be partnering with a major game studio? Yes, Storybricks as a product on its own may not have drawn cash from Kickstarter, but it was certainly promising enough for Sony Online Entertainment to take notice.

Hopefully this will be a success story worth talking about when Everquest Next hits next year.

City of Titans Breaks $675,000 As Clock Hits Midnight


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Missing Worlds Media never stood a chance of failure, not if its devoted community has anything to say about it. As the sun sets on the City of Titans Kickstarter campaign, the team comes out with a grand total of over six hundred seventy five thousand dollars. That level of pledge ensures the release of the City of Titans character creator app on iOS and Android, a Mac version of the game available at launch, auras and travel powers, wings, more powers, and more costume sets.

The success of this venture into crowd funded and community-built gaming is truly impressive, and we wish the best of luck to our friends at Missing Worlds Media. Now comes the hard part.

(Source: Kickstarter)

City of Titans Interview At Worlds Factory


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City of Titans, formerly The Phoenix Project, has blown through its Kickstarter goal and currently sits well over four hundred thousand with twenty days left to go in the campaign. Our friends over at Worlds Factory managed to get a word in with Chris “Warcabbit” Hare from Missing Worlds Media to give a few more details about City of Titans.

The core of our game will be a “Themepark” ride, and it will be relatively easy for a new player to follow that all the way to the end. But as they learn to play, and as they explore, more and more gameplay will open up to them, all the way to writing their own stories, making their own enemies to fight, designing their own maps, and running other people through them.”

Check out the full interview at the link below.

(Source: Worlds Factory)