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General: City of Titans Fully Funded
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
In a mere three days, the KickStarter project for City of Titans, the self-described "spiritual successor" to City of Heroes, has reached its funding goal of $320,000. The team will likely be adding stretch goals over the next twenty-seven days until the KS expires.
Read more about the project on the City of Titans Kickstarter page.
Comments
As much as i loved City of Heroes
I do not give this much of a chance. I follow two other very indy game projects. One is over seven years old and the other is in essence a mod with hubris.
But i guess it will be cool if they manage to do it. After all CoH was a cool game. I think it will be a bit optimitstic to expect anything but a 2017-2020 release.
This have been a good conversation
Well for starters 320k, even 1 million, even 10 million isn't a blip on a major companies radar.
Then there is the fact NCSoft saw exactly how much they weren't making with CoH, so I don't think there will be any regrets.
Lastly, this amount is not enough to make an MMO. I don't know how these guys plan on getting something out the door and how much quality they expect it to have, but I wouldn't expect this to bring in hordes of players on that type of budget.
Keep in mind that they can get other investors (investment companies) based upon the interest they have generated.
Those investment companies will invest x amount of dollars with the idea of recouping that money as well as a profit over a certain amount of years that they are in business.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Wow, that was quick. Hopefully they can actually make a game.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
That would be very contrary to the entire point of kickstarter in the first place and since investors of that size would have say, it would also likely anger those who did toss some money into the kickstarter.
I think it is far more of this huge group of people who wants X MMO to exist, or X MMO to come back, but at the same time doesn't quite understand the massive amount of time and resources it really takes so they set low kickstarter goals only to find out later they can't finish what they promised on the budget they have. We've certainly seen some video game kickstarter projects go down that very path.
Hay There everyone. I am LuchRi, a member of the Writing Staff for City of Titans.
I saw this and honestly felt that I should clear a few things up quickly, specifically on the matter of money. 320K is not much at all. In fact when it comes to game development it is nothing. The cost of keeping the lights on alone is often more than this for major studios and paying even a few token employees would be far more than this. That is the beauty of the whole project though, we are not currently running things like most studios would.
First, there are no employee costs, At least not yet. Personally I would love to have a check with my name on it from MWM some day. But the fact is that as of now we are an all volunteer staff. Most of the people working on this game as of now are professionals in other fields who simply felt a passion for the game and wished to see a spiritual successor in some form or another. This is not to say that we lack for talent by any means. Anyone currently in the 'inner core' of development has skills on par with professionals in the field for writing, graphics design or other such. In fact many of these professionals would be making a decided 'downward' move if they stayed on full time with us rather than keeping the jobs they have after launch.
So while I refuse to even suggest we suffer for it, currently the employee cost on every level is 0
This is also being done online which has numerous benefits, including my own personal favorite. No Office. At this point we simply have no use for one and between geographical gaps for the Devs and the cost of keeping the lights on it is a huge saving when compared to how most traditional companies operate. Ignoring how nice it is to simply wake up, get on the computer right away and simply jam out lore until one has to run errands or go to a 'day job' we have basically zero cost for operating at this point because everything is done over the internet. Security is again handled by volunteers who know what they are doing and really an office would be a liability to us at this point.
So that is another area where the cost is 0
In the end what this KS pays for really boils down to a base fee to Unreal as part of our deal with them (covered in previous interviews with people higher up the ladder than I, so I will not go into detail here) and 'seats' for art programs so our artists can stop using free versions of rather poor programs that do not work well.
This is still a considerable cost, and reason you should throw some money at us if you have not already. The more we have the more we can do. But this 320K is not the end cost of the game. We have slashed the overhead to ribbons, and will probably be looking at sources of funding outside of this campaign as things progress. The KS was and is simply a way for us to get the Artist types their tools so they may do their job properly here and now, so that they can keep up with those of us doing Composition or the programmers who are able to work with Unreal unhindered.
I understand the worry, and to be honest I personally have my worries that we can do this at times. But speaking as someone on the inside I know that my fellow Devs and I are motivated, we are skilled, and we are driven to a singular goal. Matters of Ego have been settled and put aside. Matters of Money were never really the issue for any of us going into this. We simply want to make a game, and trust me when I say we are pouring everything we have into it, and we all think you will like the end result.
Also for the TL;DR crowd
This money is by NO means the end budget, and we have cut many of the costs usually associated with making a game. Kickstarting a game of this scale is, as far as I know, Unprecedented. But it is only to get us what we need to keep going, and because we are not doing this for profit on the outset we are actually offering MORE quality. This literally is not 'just a paycheck' for any of us.
Trust me Wolf, we know all too well what it takes to make a game like this. I am not permitted to go into details but feasibility has been the prime focus of the upper staff from day 1. They have spoken with people all over the industry (Including a few former CoH Devs I won't name) and checked every angle that could be brought to them. It won't be easy. We have no illusions that it will 'just' happen. But It is far from impossible.
Would it?
Kickstarter "started" Camelot Unchained but the Jacobs has said that there are other investors or "interested parties".
Its crowd funding campaign raised $2,232,933 through Kickstarter, with Jacobs promising to contribute an additional $2 million from his own assets, as well as an additional $1 million from investors pending completion of a successful Kickstarter campaign which occurred on May 2, 2013.
It probalby depends on what deal they can get from an investment company.
It's also possible that they will have larger "independent" investors (probably much like Camelot Unchained) who are willing to invest more but wanted to see what the kickstarter would do.
or...
Maybe they are really going to try with the (current) 345k.
It's my understanding that Kickstarter is just that a "kickstart" to get a project off the ground. IS there something in the bylaws that specifically state that they can't get additional funding from other sources?
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
There is not Sovrath. However I should note that the people at the top are being very picky about the idea of who funds us beyond the KS. The reason we can use Unreal to begin with is because they cut a funding deal with us (not donation, but not making us pay up front for it all) and I don't think we will be turning money down just to be all stuck up and 'indie' snooty. We just want to make sure that if we make this game, we don't see another instance of NCSoftism where the game gets shut down for little reason without so much as a consideration of selling the Company or IP.
We are not 'remaking' City of Heroes. We are making something new, with CoH as the inspiration. But if we are going to make it, we don't want to see it just go down a year later because a few backers don't feel they are getting enough return on investment. We want companies who will give us money hoping to at least try for a longer haul, who think that what we are doing is good for the industry and that they can make money from our quality, not from a quick exploit on CoH Nostalgia.
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I'm glad they hit their targets, although out of the three CoH replacements in my mind it's the least impressive. What's even worse is I'm betting this project essentially eats CoH's "halo effect" on KS for the others. There's a lot of great people attached to it so maybe I'm being overly pessimistic (already "donated" to their cause).
The projected budget frankly made me cringe, 24 seats max/zbrush/substance etc (+tax) = budget gone . Although since there's a fair chance it'll do much better in the end which may actually mean the project is achievable. Could outsource the artwork to somewhere cheap for the same cost and have sizeable set of assets rather than a set of well meaning non-paid workers.
Unreal is a spectacularly poor choice for a future (low budget) MMO, although if they're getting a full license rather than the UDK it's probably no worse than the alternatives. But without a full network layer rewrite it's wildly unsuitable for a full on MMO, or will present staggering ongoing server costs. Although truthfully that's not as hard as it sounds, so could well have been thought through.
I'd be astounded if this product ever ships at even a small fraction of CoH's level/quality. But I'm fully behind those willing to try, so good luck!
Interesting. Thanks for the clarification.
As one of your investors I look forward to seeing what you come up with.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I do wish these guys well... but I have my reservations. Personally I would have gone with the Cryengine as it is the "BOSE" as compared to the Unreal engine which would be Toshiba.
Good luck. I might drop a Cnote just to help out, but ... I wont be holding my breath.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
Cry Engine was the initial plan, but that... well it is complicated. Nate and co have been knocking it out of the park with the Unreal Engine though. Plus on a personal note I still have nightmares about Game Design 201 and the Crytech Engine so... yeah, I'm kinda glad in that regard hehe
one thing i love about super hero games, they needed LOADS AND LOADS of customization! Thousands of cloths and costumes of male, female, and unisex, tons of tools that allow us to customize our powers, their appearance, their animations, and if possible... make our own animations, and make our own powers...
one thing that lacks on most mmo's is character background, not really the shoddy "type your own background on your character profile", i'm talking about how bruce banner became the hulk, how we ordinary civilians became superheroes and slowly unlock the abilities that are granted to us by accident or by trigger moments. I want a massive story behind the character that we make, how we got our powers, how we joined a major superhero league, and how we start moving up in the super hero personal life. Basically i'm asking for a strong storyline and lore surrounding the world, almost how strong WoW lore was, something that us lore and storyline lovers will enjoy and get hooked into this.
Crazkanuk
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