Sunrider
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Crowdfund Bookie, January 2014: 63 percent nosedive
The Crowdfund Bookie crunches data from select successful Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns that ended during the month and produces pretty charts for you to look at. Any momentum maintained in the video game crowdfunding space in December 2013 was dashed just one month later. Gaming projects for the month totaled only $845,876, a 63.71 percent decrease from December's $2,331,061. Just 20 projects were funded during a five-week January period, half the amount that were successful in December. The number of backers for projects also saw a 79.58 percent downturn, plummeting to 12,712 funders. Unlike previous months, there wasn't a marquee project to prop the crowdfunding arena's totals up, as the top earner was Taitale Studios' 4X strategy game Novus Aeterno, which hauled in $268,875. Another game stole our attention for the month: MMA Federation. Much like the infamously suspicious funding patterns of Gridiron Thunder, the MMA-focused mobile social game managed to earn $163,924 thanks to only 159 backers, an outlandish average of $1,030.97 per funder. As expected, the odd funding averages of MMA Federation significantly impacted the end results for January, as removing the game's data for the month drops the mean average pledge per backer amount from $66.54 to $54.33. Without MMA Federation's sales data, January's projects also added up to 281.3 percent of their funding goals. Both impacted data points show that January's projects still stayed consistent with the funding trends seen in our past Bookies; pledges average out to roughly $50 and backers tend to push projects well past their goal amounts. Head past the break to see the month's top five projects and a breakdown by genre.
Hyperspace Beacon: Unsung
I love the timeline videos. I actually wish there were going to be more of them than are scheduled. I don't believe any other game has illuminated its backstory in quite the same way Star Wars: The Old Republic has. But (you were expecting a "but" there, weren't you?) last week's video was slightly disappointing. I believe the story of the central figure, Exar Kun, was told very well. Granted, some things were skipped, but overall his story was complete, save for one thing: A very pivotal character was left out of the story entirely, thus my disappointment. This unsung hero (or rather, heroine) was Nomi Sunrider. Ironically, the Dark Horse comic that introduces Nomi -- Tales of the Jedi: The Saga of Nomi Sunrider -- has an opening crawl that reads: "Another Jedi Warrior, whose skill in the art of Battle Meditation will never be forgotten, is Nomi Sunrider." There is speculation that she was left out because of the legal issues that surround her last name, but no BioWare developer has confirmed this. But that's not what I'm going to present here today. Over the next couple of issues of the Hyperspace Beacon, I will provide a synopsis of Nomi Sunrider's story. And just so I get everything as correctly as I can, I dug up all the comic books Mrs. Sunrider appeared in. Continue after the break to read the first part of this exceptional woman's story.
