Camelot Unchained senior engineer Brian “Psychochild” Green has published a blog post examining his experiences on CityState’s crowdfunded RvR title. While he doesn’t offer any juicy details about CU or its systems, the piece is worth reading if you’re curious about the industry’s ongoing flirtation with open development.
Green says that crowdfunding forces developers to develop strong community ties as well as strong code, and he says that mistakes are often easier to spot than in traditional development where there aren’t thousands of players poking and prodding at an alpha state game. Green also touches on a reader question about possible burnout due to the massive amount of information typically available on crowdfunded games well prior to their release. “I know that when I relaunched Meridian 59 years ago, some of the most passionate testers showed a lot less enthusiasm for the game after it launched,” Green said. “But, there were still plenty of people who were overjoyed to play the game when we actually did launch.”
