This week in MMO crowdfunding news, former SOE/Daybreak CEO John Smedley revealed his new company, Pixelmage Games, and its first game, sandboxy OARPG Hero’s Song, whose Kickstarter is live now and will run until February 18th. In fact, it’s already added new pledge tiers to entice backers; a $25 pledge scores two copies of the $20 game at launch.
Dragon of Legends, Overpower, and Planet Nomads join Hero’s Song in the list of new Kickstarters this week.
We also heard Eternal Crusade reject the idea that its early access Steam launch is a “cashgrab,” witnessed Elite: Dangerous fend off confusion about its Oculus Rift support, learned Crowfall is putting an end to refunds, and saw Gillian Anderson describe her role in Star Citizen’s Squadron 42.
Read on for more on what’s up with MMO crowdfunding this week.
Live campaigns
Citadel of Sorcery (MMO Magic, Inc.): Open donations, no end date. A vast, dynamic world. “Nothing is set in stone; each player will experience the game in very different ways.”
Contested Space (Zon): Kickstarter coming soon. Player-designed spaceships and stations, action-oriented combat, territory expansion and defense.
Dogma: Eternal Night (Prelude Games Factory): Open preorders with donor packs. The Kickstarter ended December 24, 2015. Sandbox with gothic and punk atmosphere, vampires and other mystical creatures. One server, no classes or levels. Live events.
Dragon of Legends (Thrive Games): Live Kickstarter, ends February 21st. Fantasy 2-D pixelart online RPG. Crossplatform. Includes detailed character class and skill system, crafting mechanics, boats, an achievement journal, twitch combat, and user-generated content.
Gloria Victis (Black Eye Games): Open donations, no end date. Fantasy medieval setting with a classless system and unrestricted character development; realistic weather system. Greenlit on Steam. Recent news: Alpha patch
Hero’s Song (Pixelmage Games): Live Kickstarter, ends February 18th. B2P, PvE fantasy, pixelart OARPG “host thousands of other players” in the open world but will boast a solo campaign and allow private servers as well. Recent news: Smed interview, Rothfuss interview, gods and races, new pledge tiers
Neo’s Land (NeoJac Entertainment): Open donations, no end date. Voxel-based sandbox where the community decides development by roundtable discussions.
Overpower (Hydrant Games): Live Kickstarter, ends February 19th. Class-based medieval shooter with MOBA gameplay.
Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen (Visionary Realms): Open donations, no end date. Old-school fantasy MMO with focus on group content, the return of corpse runs.
Planet Nomads (Craneballs): Live Kickstarter, ends February 18th. Sci-fi survival sandbox. Multiplayer support is included as a stretch goal.
The Realm: Reawakened (Stephen Nichols): GoFundMe. Old-school MMO dev seeks to remake his classic game with a “fresh coat of paint.” Recent news: GoFundMe launch
Fully funded campaigns
Ascent: The Space Game (Fluffy Kitten Studios)Â
Camelot Unchained (City State) – Recent news: Website, animations, crafting beta
Crowfall (ArtCraft) – Recent news: Castle building, kingdoms, and refunds
City of Titans (Missing Worlds Media)
Descent Underground (Descendent Studios)
Divergence Online (Ethan Casner)
Eco (Strange Loop Games)
Epic Space (EpicSpace.net)
Ever, Jane (3 Turn Productions)
Infinity: Battlescape (I-Novae Studios)
HEX (HEX Entertainment)
Novus AEterno (Taitale Studios)
Pathfinder Online (GoblinWorks)
Pixel Starships (SavySoda)
Project Gorgon (Elder Game, LLC)
Pumpkin Online (Monique)
The Repopulation (Above & Beyond Technologies)
Shards Online (Citadel Studios) – Recent news: Pants collecting!
Shroud of the Avatar (Portalarium) – Recent news: CMA exploration, offline mode exclusives
Star Citizen (Cloud Imperium) – Recent news: Around the Verse, Gillian Anderson video
TUG (Nerd Kingdom)
Abandoned post-crowdfund
Greed Monger (Greed Monger)
The Stomping Land (Alex Fundora)
Funded and launched
Elite: Dangerous (Frontier Developments) – Recent news: Oculus Rift support
Guns of Icarus (Muse)
Aaaaaaand they’ve pulled the plug on the kickstarter per Smedley’s twitter account. Going with 100% investor backing instead.
Necro Mage I kind of disagree with you. Â From all the Kickstarters that I have watched, they always pick up a lot of funds near the end. Â So I would not say that it is too late. Â Far from it actually. Â I plan on pledging money also. Â The game sounds like it is going to fun. Â Plus Bill Trost is involved which is a huge plus for me.
I find the demographic lists interesting and enlightening. Â However, ones I would also have liked to see are ‘Failed Campaign-Still Going’ and ‘Failed Campaign-Abandoned’ categories.
SallyBowls1 Armsbend BrandywineFred I look at this Kickstarter as a very cheap marketing campaign.. even if it fails the game will still get made, and if it succeeds they are 800k (minus rewards) ahead.
The sad thing about the Kickstarter for Hero’s Song is that if they had
reasonable Tiers to start with, they’d probably be halfway to goal by
now. Instead they blocked out the initial excitement by offering
ludicrous tiers.
It’s good to see that they’ve fixed a lot of
that, but the fact is that it’s too late. If you look at most
successfully funded Kickstarters, they got a lot of their backing off
the initial excitement at the beginning and the rush at the very end,
with very little between. Â Â This one has already missed out on one of
those two.Â
I wish them the best of luck, and in fact, I’ll be
pledging some money. But I don’t see it happening when they fell flat
on their faces right at the beginning of the race.
Siphaed SallyBowls1 Armsbend BrandywineFred Elite: Dangeous is the usual counter there. Ascent as well.
That SEO nonsense you are doing with the links, that’s not serious.
Smed is adding gear now, tiers with T-shirts and Hoodies.
SallyBowls1 Armsbend BrandywineFredÂ
Remember that we’re in an age where nary a few MMO have launched from Kickstarter while an equal -or greater- number have fallen flat on their face. Still in limbo is a whole bunch of the rest who’ve also had to do backer programs of their own outside the initial Kickstarter. Some to an extent have added cash shop after cash shop, focusing more on that than the development of the actual game (looking at you, SotA!).
Armsbend BrandywineFred I can’t belive that Smed has dropped so far that he can’t raise this small amount.Â
But sidekick.epfl.ch does have the success chance prediction back to 0%.