Update: Sunstone Games owner Simon Strange told GamePolitics this afternoon that legal counsel for Wizards of the Coast contacted him way back in December of last year to complain that "Kaiju Combat" was an infringement of its trademark "KAIJUDO."
Update: Sunstone Games owner Simon Strange told GamePolitics this afternoon that legal counsel for Wizards of the Coast contacted him way back in December of last year to complain that "Kaiju Combat" was an infringement of its trademark "KAIJUDO."
With 18 more days to go, Richard Garriott's Kickstarter campaign for Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues has surpassed its $1 million funding goal. With that challenge out of the way, Garriott and his studio Portalarium have added a few stretch goals. As of right now, the Kickstarter has generated $1,031,716 from nearly 15,000 backers.
Richard Garriott's Kickstarter campaign for Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues is within striking distance of being fully funded. The campaign has generated $905,628 of the $1 million in funding it needs, and a new announcement today from his studio Portalarium will likely put it over the required threshold.
A Kickstarter campaign is underway for a Kinect add-on device that supposedly enables consumers to control their computers using eye tracking. The add-on technology is called the NUIA eyeCharm and it is the creation of Munich, Germany-based firm 4tiitoo. The creators of this technology claim that it will allow users to select items on your computer screen "just by looking at them," control games and even "automatically scroll" windows to adjust while reading.
InXile has managed to raise over $2.1 million dollars in just a few short days for its spiritual sequel to the hit RPG Planescape: Torment. Initially the company was looking to raise $900,000, but that number was surpassed in the first six hours of the crowd funding campaign. Torment: Tides of Numenera is a single-player role-playing game based on designer and writer Monte Cook's new tabletop role-playing game, Numenera. The game will be distributed DRM-free for Windows (PC), Mac, and Linux and will be available in English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Russian, and Spanish.
While Richard Garriott (also known as Lord British in most circles) may no longer hold the rights to the Ultima series of classic CRPG games or Ultima Online (he sold it, along with Origin over a decade ago) that hasn't stopped him from returning to his roots. Today Garriott announced that his Austin-based studio Portalarium is hard at work on his newest game, Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, a sort-of spiritual sequel of sorts to the Ultima series, but set in a whole new universe.
A new Kickstarter campaign has been launched to raise $125,000 to create a documentary about the "queer side of gaming," or the LGBTQ presence in the game industry and in the gaming community. The documentary is called "Gaming In Color: Queers and Gaymers of the Pixelated World" and hopes to expose the masses to another side of gaming culture - a side that is often hidden among the dudebros and gamer gurls of the community.
While the crowd funding campaign for Torment is going gang busters on its first day, developer inXile is taking a preemptive strike against anyone ready to accuse it of neglecting its previously crowd funded project Wasteland 2.
inXile raised millions with its first Kickstarter campaign for Wasteland 2, and within six hours of launching its latest crowd-funding campaign for the spiritual sequel to Planescape: Torment, it has hit its goal of $900,000. It looks like they'll be spending the next 30 days left in the campaign to come up with crazy stretch goals. Torment: Tides of Numenera is a single-player role-playing game, and a sort-of spiritual successor to Interplay / Black Isle Studios hit CRPG Planescape: Torment.
Project Awakened, a game that lets you play a highly customized super being of your own making is nearing the half-way mark of its funding goal on Kickstarter but only four more days remain for developer Phosphor Games Studio to raise the rest of the funds. As of this writing, Phosphor Games has raised $210,596 of its $500,000 goal from 5,324 backers.
Ouya announced that its $99 Android based console of the same name will begin shipping to backers of its Kickstarter crowd funding campaign on March 28. Consumers who were not involved in early funding will have to wait until June when the system hits retailers like Best Buy, GameStop, and Amazon, among others.
Chris Roberts' Star Citizen has surpassed the $8 million dollar funding mark from several sources including over $2.1 million on Kickstarter alone. That milestone is leaps and bounds above the original pitch for $500,000. The PC based space sim from the man behind Wing Commander, Privateer and Freelancer continues to break new ground for a crowd funded game, raising more than a half million dollars in February alone.
Popular crowd funding platform Kickstarter has launched an app for iOS devices today that allows users to have more streamlined access to their favorite projects. The app promises the community the ability to "discover new projects, watch project videos, and get updates from projects and your friends." For project creators looking to get some funding from the community the app allows you to "stay connected with your backers, track your project’s progress, and post updates from wherever you are."
With only four days left to earn the other half of its $1.1 million funding goal, Gas Powered Games boss Chris Taylor decided to end the WildMan Kickstarter Campaign.
An update to the OUYA Kickstarter page reveals that the tiny little Android-based console that raised millions in crowd-funding will be available in select retail stores, with some even offering pre-orders.
"We have some good news today," the update reads. "Because of the support for OUYA you showed, some of our favorite stores are going to carry OUYA when it officially launches to the public in June."
With just two more hours to go in its Kickstarter campaign, Goldfire Studios has managed to go slightly over its funding goal of $20,000 for its gambling-based MMORPG, CasinoRPG. As of this writing the Kickstarter raised $20,161 from 197 backers. The next step for the persistent virtual world gambling game is a private beta test, though some of that testing will likely be tied to various reward tiers.
As mentioned by E. Zachary Knight on Episode 39 of the Super Podcast Action Committee, today is the last day to contribute to the Kickstarter for Oklahoma City, Oklahoma-based Goldfire Studios' Vegas-themed MMORPG CasinoRPG.
Former id Software, 3D Realms and Ion Storm superstar Tom Hall has launched a Kickstarter for a new game and game creation environment called Worlds of Wander. The idea behind the project is to create an easy-to-use game creation environment for Apple devices, Android, Linux, Mac and Windows that allows creative types to make and share their own platformer games. The whole idea is inspired the very first game id Software made - Commander Keen.
This week's show focuses on indie developers and an excellent editorial on various bills aimed at video game violence. This week hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight talk about an indie game that got a Canadian gentleman fired from his day job, another indie developer calling Kickstarter stretch goals "bullsh*t," and a discussion on this Popcults.com editorial. All this and the latest GamePolitics poll results await in Episode 39.
No one can deny that PlayJam's Kickstarter campaign for its GameStick Android console has proven successful, though not as successful as that other Android-based console Ouya. The Kickstarter campaign closed with $647,658 - $547,658 more than it was seeking with its original goal of $100,000 (the Ouya closed with nearly $8.6 million raised).
Indie game developer Andy Schatz thinks that stretch goals for all these Kickstarter crowd funding campaigns are "bullshit." Speaking recently to Penny Arcade Report, Schatz said that Kickstarter stretch goals are total bullshit and can lead to unnecessary new game features, the developer of the upcoming indie game Monaco said that the use of "stretch goals" - the promise of more game features if a certain amount of money is generated
At its current trajectory, Gas Powered Games' Kickstarter crowd funding campaign for its game Wildman will not be funded if it can't raise around $44,000 a day for the next 17 days. As of this writing the Kickstarter is at $352,827 of its $1.1 million goal. That leaves an outstanding funding deficit of $747,173...
Eurogamer reports that indie developer teamPixel has launched a crowdfunding appeal on Indiegogo to purchase the rights to THQ's cult classic space strategy series Homeworld. While Sega now owns the studio that originally made the game, team Pixel hopes that it can raise some funds to secure the original game and re-release it on Steam and Good Old Games.
Gas Powered Games is on its way to staying alive, as its Kickstarter campaign for its latest game Wildman heads towards the $280,000 mark. Late Friday Chris Taylor posted a video on the Kickstarter page explaining that he had to lay off most of the company's staff and that the only way to save the company and hire those people back could be the Kickstarter campaign for its single and multiplayer action RPG. Since that appeal GPG has raised right around $69,000.
After multiple reports from various sources revealed that a majority of the staff at Gas Powered Games had been laid off, Chris Taylor took to the Internet to comment. Apparently Taylor and a few employees are the only ones left at the studio behind such titles as the Dungeon Siege series, Demigod, and Supreme Commander. Recently Taylor and company launched a Kickstarter for a new game called Wildman but concerns over its early performance cause Gas Powered Games, who is short on cash, to lay off its staff.
Chris Taylor's and Gas Powered Games' Kickstarter for their MOBA-style action RPG strategy hybrid Wildman is well on its way to raising the $1.1 million it is seeking on the crowd sourcing site from the community. Yesterday after the announcement I posited on Facebook that they would need to raise at least $50,000 a day to be well over their goal in the time remaining (around $1.6 million).
Gas Powered Games founder Chris Taylor today launched the official Kickstarter campaign for his next big game called Wildman. Taylor and GPG are seeking $1.1 million in funding for the development of what he calls an action game that combines some of the best elements of his previous titles including Dungeon Siege, Supreme Commander and Demigod. Taylor is best known for creating the ultra popular real-time strategy game Total Annihilation while at Cavedog Entertainment.
In a bizarre move, Kickstarter issued a message to backers of the Android-based high definition console, the Game Stick. The crowd-funding site told backers that the device, which has already been fully-funded and is working on stretch goals, had become the subject of an intellectual property dispute. Because of this Kickstarter said that - under the law - it was required to remove the project from the "public view" during the dispute process. They said at the time that if they could not put the project back up within 30 days than the Kickstarter campaign would be cancelled.
Crowd funding company Kickstarter revealed numbers for 2012, including some interesting data related to the games that were successfully funded during the year. That data, located in this report, offers some pretty interesting statistics on game related projects. According to Kickstarter, the site saw more than 2.2 million people donate nearly $320 million to game-related projects, with over 18,000 projects successfully reaching or exceeding their funding goals in 2012.
According to Kotaku, game designer American McGee and his company Spicy Horse Entertainment need more money to finish the development of their free-to-play action-role-playing game set in ancient Japan that combines role-playing and Japanese culture with a grim retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood fairytale.