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The Daily Grind: Do you Kickstart MMOs for the donation or the reward?
I hope it goes without saying in 2015 that Kickstarter really, really isn't an investment; it's a donation. There are no safeties, assurances, or returns on the sums you hand over to indie developers on crowdfunding platforms, even if they promise (without using that word) you a game or a t-shirt at some point. Even with Steam early access games, there's no guarantee you'll ever get the finished product. Some developers take your money, shrug, and move on to the next project, ignoring the comment fury from "backers." That doesn't stop most of us from gambling that the $20 we plunk down now will morph into a $50 game at some point down the road, though, does it? That's how I think of it, anyway, though I've seen some of you folks, particularly the big-spending backers, really become personally and financially invested in a game's development, such that you give way more than you need to to cover the cost of your copy. You're clearly in it for the dream, not the t-shirt or the art book. Let's do a headcount: Do you Kickstart MMOs for the sense of having contributed to an original work of art or for the shiny, tangible reward at the end of your pledge? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Stomping Land vanishes from Steam
Things aren't looking good for fans of The Stomping Land, a dino-themed sandbox that made the leap from a successful Kickstarter campaign to Steam earlier this year. Gamasutra reports that the game still has a Steam store page, but purchasing options have been disabled. Developer SuperCrit last issued a statement in August regarding the decision to upgrade the game engine from Unreal 3 to Unreal 4.
Make My MMO: August 3 - August 9, 2014
Well, Games of Glory didn't last long on our crowdfunding list. Soon after I added it last week, Lightbulb Crew sent out a PR blast saying that it was canceling its Kickstarter drive on account of additional funding that it managed to secure from its existing investors. We also say goodbye to Bone Gulch for now, as the indie wild west sandbox failed to reach its Kickstarter goal. The Stomping Land and Ever, Jane also made headlines this week. The former is moving engines from Unreal 3 to 4, while the latter surfaced with a new build that includes endgame sleuthing and gossip systems. Finally, Star Citizen continued to roll around in piles of money, and oh yeah, it also squashed those troublesome rubberbanding bugs, opened up Arena Commander to all of the game's backers, and added a new CTF mode. More MMO crowdfunding news is just past the break.
The Stomping Land is switching to Unreal Engine 4
Dino-delay or evolutionary upgrade? The situation might be both for The Stomping Land, which has been on the down low while its developer works to bring it to a new game engine after the old engine lost studio support. "It has been quiet in The Stomping Land community but that is certainly not the case behind the scenes!" Developer Alex "Jig" Fundora told Kotaku. "The game is being moved to Unreal Engine 4 to take advantage of technical and creative opportunities, and while the game was so early in development, I didn't want to keep working for years with a game engine (UDK) that had officially lost support by Epic. The move has put a bit of more work on my plate, but the already discovered opportunities using UE4 are exciting, and I'm confident fans will be satisfied with the long-run decision." The dinosaur-themed survival sandbox went into early access this past May 30th.
Dino-survival: Hands-on with The Stomping Land's early access alpha
Yesterday, I examined up-and-coming dinosaur-survival MMO Beasts of Prey. Today, let's look at another game in the same niche genre: The Stomping Land. The Stomping Land isn't technically billing itself as an MMO, but it boasts a semi-permanent world. But my experience in it was nothing like the trailers shown back in May. The current game is totally different. In fact, it seems to have regressed. There's no customization, there are no berries, and no one I talked to knew how to name a tribe. It feels like a semi-permanent shooter, similar to other survival games except without a lot of the building. You either make a teepee or you don't. You make a bow or you don't. You have a dinosaur mount or... you don't. The biggest servers I saw had 24 people, meaning I was able to avoid other players very often, but the game was more fun when I encountered people -- at least people who didn't one-shot me and waltz away.
Beasts of Prey is a dinosaur-themed survival sandbox MMOFPS
If The Stomping Land and Durango aren't enough to sate your appetite for dinosaur-themed survival MMO gameplay, then here's a third game to add to that growing menu: Beasts of Prey. It's currently in early access alpha on Steam for $34.99, though developer Octagon Interactive hopes to launch beta in October. What does your money pay for right now, exactly? "Beasts of Prey has been funded privately and your purchase will help us to further develop the game and pay bills for designers/coders & infrastructure. Additionally and more importantly we need your feedback on what we have created so far so we can make the right adjustments to successfully change game-play & mechanics." The game boasts a single-server infrastructure, a detailed crafting and gathering system, a randomly generated world that adjusts its size based on the population, and dinosaurs that can wreck a camo-colored car much faster than a zombie ever could. [Thanks to Dengar for the tip!]
Make My MMO: May 4 - May 10, 2014
This week in MMO crowdfunding news we said hello to The Stomping Land and goodbye to Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen. The former is a PvP survival sandbox focused on taming dinosaurs, pitting the larger beasties against one another (because they're unkillable by puny player characters), and avoiding the typical gank squad behavior that's certain to manifest. The latter is of course Brad McQuaid's bid to recapture his EverQuest glory days. The latest bit of news, aside from various unsubstantiated internet rumors, involves McQuaid's decision to continue development with a volunteer dev team. Click past the cut for Massively's list of crowdfunded MMOs and their latest news updates.
The Stomping Land's dinosaur survival MMO is coming to Steam this month
The Stomping Land, a survival MMO with a generous heaping of dinosaurs, is set to arrive on Steam Early Access on May 23rd for backers and May 30th for everyone else. The cost will be $24.99 for non-backers. The MMO was successfully funded through Kickstarter last year and is being developed by Alex Fundora. The Stomping Land challenges players to survive as a human in harsh environments that include rather ravenous dinos. Hunger and thirst are issues that must be dealt with, and these are made all the more challenging by a lack of internal inventory (everything must be carried in hand or stored on the map). The game encourages players to form tribes for survival and allows them to capture, tame, and even ride dinosaurs. The Early Access version will launch with one island, and you can check out the trailer for the release after the break.
Crowdfund Bookie June 2013: $3.1 million in gravy
The Crowdfund Bookie crunches data from select successful Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns that ended during the week and produces pretty charts for you to look at. If June's numbers are to be believed, backers of game projects on Kickstarter and Indiegogo are more than happy to keep donating long after initial goals are met. For the month of June in crowdfunding, 23 video game projects raised a total of $5,594,469, thanks to the contributions of 97,954 people; 55.69 percent ($3,115,579) of that money was beyond the combined goals of those 23 projects. This helped games like Armikrog reach stretch goals for things such as a Wii U port. A case can be made that reaching stretch goals for additional content and platforms is important to funders, and may also explain the month's higher average pledge amount of $57.11. The average backer in June spent nearly enough on crowdfunding as if they'd bought a brand-new retail console game. In some cases, it guaranteed players bonus content or DRM-free versions of the games they helped fund, which isn't as common with regular retail purchases. This sets the foundation for an argument that crowdfunding a game's development could be of better value to the end consumer.
Crowdfund Bookie, June 2 - 8: Hex, The Stomping Land, Darkwood
The Crowdfund Bookie crunches data from select successful Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns that ended during the week and produces pretty charts for you to look at. This week in crowdfunding, the Kickstarter campaigns for Hex, The Stomping Land, Face of Mankind: Fall of the Dominion, Battle Tails, City Quest and Moon Rift as well as the Indiegogo campaign for Darkwood ended. Hex, a MMO trading card game for PC and Mac, earned the most money this week with a whopping $2,278,255, and also had the most backers of the group (17,765). The highest average pledge per person belonged to Huck Gee's Battle Tails, with each funder averaging a $234.59. Check out the results and our pretty charts after the break.
