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Indie sandbox MMO The Chosen is the 'game-child' of EVE Online and Fallout 3
Sci-fi pseudo-MMO The Chosen -- not to be confused with Snail Games' Chinese historical MMO of the same name -- is hoping sandbox fans will back its new Indiegogo campaign. Studio Fair Games Productions today announced the game's crowdfunding plans, promising an EVE Online-style space exploration game that will "most likely be classified as MMORPG" and features FPS and TPS rather than point-and-click gameplay. "If EVE Online and Fallout 3 were to have a game-child," says the press release, "that would be The Chosen." The developer's website notes planned game systems such as a player-driven economy, a persistent universe, dynamic missions, and both interior and exterior ship design (yes, you can walk around inside your ships). Fair Games hopes to collect at least a million dollars by April 25th, but under Indiegogo's "flexible funding" rule, all funds pledged will go to the studio even if the game fails to completely fund, and the studio includes tiers above and below that mark. We've included the campaign trailer just after the cut. [Source: Fair Games Productions press release]
Tulpa mixes Limbo, Alice, occultism for two-character platforming
Tulpa is an eerie, symbolic puzzle-platformer that draws inspiration from Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, American McGee's Alice and Limbo, with roots in occultism and theosophy. In layman's terms, it's a creepy game about secrets and sanity. It features two playable characters: Ophelia, who can interact with the physical world, and Oliver, who uses telekinesis to move objects. Tulpa comes from two student developers and a musician in Larisa, Greece, working under the studio name Encryptique. The word "tulpa" translates to "conjured thing" or "thoughtform," magical things created by thought alone. "Oliver is Ophelia's tulpa," Encryptique writes. "He was created by her own mind in need for support. That cause has an effect. Ophelia needs Oliver to be close, otherwise she begins to lose her sanity, ensuing an inevitable death." Encryptique is looking to raise $4,500 on Indiegogo to finish Tulpa for PC, Mac and Linux. Specifically, the team needs two Unity Pro licenses, money for sound effects and a new laptop for the musician. Encryptique expects polishing Tulpa to take several months, though it will invite backers to beta test the game before launch. Tulpa is also on Steam Greenlight. [Images: Encryptique]
If you've got the SADs, this sunlight-tracking wearable could help cure it
There are wearables to track your exercise activity, food consumption and sleep habits. There are even wearables that want to be smartphones-lite. But never before has there been a portable tracker for daily sunlight exposure. That's a niche GoodLux is looking to fill with its SunSprite, a solar-powered, Bluetooth 4.0 wireless device with a Harvard Medical pedigree that's launching today on Indiegogo. And it's gone everywhere with me this past week in Barcelona as I've raced in and out of conference halls to cover Mobile World Congress.
Indiegogo raises $40 million in second round of venture funding
San Francisco-based crowdfunding platform Indiegogo announced that it has raised $40 million in a second round of venture financing, following up on a $15 million Series A funding round in 2012. Indiegogo said in a statement that it plans to springboard off its Series B financing to focus on "making key hires, expanding globally and improving the user experience with a focus on mobile, personalization and trust." While the bulk of gaming-related crowdfunding projects turn to rival platform Kickstarter for support, a number of high-profile indies have found success with Indiegogo. Lab Zero Games earned almost $1 million when it debuted an Indiegogo campaign to fund the creation of DLC characters for Skullgirls last year, and the newly-launched Square Enix Collective will use the platform to fund new projects from developers Ruffian Games, Kitfox Games and Tuque Games.
Crackdown 2 developer Ruffian Games reveals upcoming Game of Glens
Crackdown 2 developer Ruffian Games announced that it is partnering with Square Enix to develop the upcoming Scotsman-themed minigame compilation Game of Glens for PC platforms. Ruffian will fund the project through the Square Enix Collective, a crowdfunding initiative the publisher launched in October to encourage the development and curation of community-submitted game ideas. Square Enix will handle distribution duties for finished games, while its partner Indiegogo will coordinate funding. Ruffian is one of the first three studios to join Square Enix's new pilot program. The other studios in Square Enix's crowdfunding stable are Shattered Planet developer Kitfox Games and World War Machine creator Tuque Games.
Switched On: The next steps for digital wellness, part one
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology. Some of today's leading wearable devices are, at their core, little more than souped-up pedometers. Their once-dim monochrome LCD screens have migrated from atoms to bits that connect to the internet, allowing them to display information in a more engaging way and track it over time. They have been a big win for output, but with essentially the same input. Indiegogo in particular has been a fertile launchpad for alternative wearables for the fitness enthusiast. One has been the Push band, which measures things such as force, power and velocity for activities like weightlifting. And the impact of that might be measured by the Skulpt Aim, which tracks muscle health. Another alternative to run monitors in development is the Atlas, which includes a digital footprint of 30 different exercises for more intelligent exercise analysis.
The Daily Grind: Do you hold crowdfunded MMOs to a lower standard?
Crowdfunding MMOs seems to be all the rage these days, with young folk tossing money about like it ain't no thing. I don't get this generation with all of its jams and swatch watches and Walkmens. Back in my day, crowdfunding took place in the form of a barn raising. Anyway, I've been wondering if an atmosphere of mutual investment and indie scrappiness has caused us to hold such MMOs to a lower standard than we would otherwise. Maybe you're just so happy that this particular title is being made that you don't mind that it's missing key features, such as avatar heads or hit boxes or localization to any known country on Earth. Are you willing to forgive blemishes and a less-than-complete games because it comes partially from your own pocketbook? And do you actually own a pocketbook? Do you even know what a pocketbook is? Kids these days, am I right? 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!
xPC wants to be your next tablet, desktop and crowdfunding gamble
We've followed ICE Computer's modular PC design all the way from first concept to prototype to demo unit, and after several years, it's now almost ready for prime time. The company has recently taken to Indiegogo, where it's set a $300,000 crowdfunding goal that'll finally put xPC into production. The idea is xPC will be several devices in one, housing all its main components within a smartphone-sized case: x86 Intel Atom quad-core CPU (Bay Trail), 4GB RAM, 64GB SSD, WiFi, Bluetooth and webcam. Now, to make use of what's inside, you marry it with peripherals such as the xPad 10.1-inch tablet dock (much like ASUS' Padfone range), or the xAdapter dock, which turns the xPC into a mini desktop. The company talks of other accessories like the xTop (an xAdapter with external storage) and xKeyboard to compliment the xPad, but these aren't mentioned in any of the pledge descriptions, leading us to believe they'll be made later. ICE Computer's pitching the xPC as a long-term investment. Thanks to "open connector architecture," third parties are encouraged to make other docks and peripherals that'll work with this and future generations of xPC. You see, the plan is to merely refresh the base hardware -- the outfit also expects to achieve a fully functional smartphone/xPC "within the next year." For now, though, an xPC with full-fat Windows 8 installed, xAdapter and July shipping estimate is going for the early bird price of $369. It's not too enticing a figure when you're essentially betting on an underdeveloped ecosystem, but at least you'll have something to show for it, unlike a similar concept that's never risen past big promises and pretty renders.
Airtame wireless dongle mirrors your computer onto any HDMI display
Here's yet another option for wirelessly mirroring your computer screen to another display, but don't worry: This one is rather impressive. Airtame, the creation of a group of Danish folks, is an HDMI dongle that links your PC -- be it running Windows, OS X or Linux -- to whatever display it's plugged into over WiFi. Installation is a breeze: All you need on the PC side is just the software, and from there you can choose which dongles to beam your screen to. Yes, dongles, because you really can beam one PC to multiple screens, thus beating Miracast. We also played a game on one of the laptops, and the response time on the remote display was surprisingly good. Airtame's Indiegogo campaign has long reached its $160,000 goal, but you can still pre-order this $89 dongle in the remaining nine days left. Do also check out our video from the CES show floor after the break.
A first look at the app for Canary's web-connected home security system
You may remember Canary, an all-seeing, all-knowing, net-connected home security system that obliterated its funding target to raise almost $2 million. Now, if we were the folks behind it, we'd be celebrating in Vegas, but instead they're here at CES showing off their progress. While the team have brought final hardware along, it doesn't look any different from the original proposition. Canary's CEO Adam Sager tells us, however, that many of the internal components have been swapped out for better versions as development has ramped up, and Ethernet has been added (in addition to WiFi) due to backer demand. What we were really interested in, though, was taking a look at the companion app Canary has been crafting. Sager demoed the iOS version, which takes many design cues from Apple's latest mobile OS, on an iPod Touch. He showed us how the app handles alerts, including that HD video recordings and all other sensor metadata associated with that event, as well as the various ways you can immediately react. We also saw how live video feeds would be presented, the feed-like alert history, and how you can set up both user and trigger profiles. Considering this isn't "fully functional," as Sager put it, we would call it mighty slick for something deemed unfinished. Development is being steered, in part, by an ongoing internal beta, and backers who signed up for the open beta are due to recieve their hardware within the next month. Everything is on track, too, for the launch proper in May. Head past the break for a brief video walkthrough of the app, courtesy of Sager.
Fighting is Magic creator Mane6 to crowdfund new game in 2014
Mane6, the group behind a My Little Pony-based fighting game titled MLP: Fighting is Magic, is back on their feet (hooves?) and will soon begin work on their totally-legal, not-going-to-get-shut-down-by-Hasbro-this-time project. A recent post on the group's blog revealed that the team plans to launch a Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign at some point in early 2014, after which, "game development will explode." The new game will use the Z-Engine, which was first used for indie fighter Skullgirls, along with some proprietary editors for hitboxes and scripting. While the characters may not end up being ponies, the cast for the game will be designed by Lauren Faust, creator of the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic television show that Fighting is Magic was based on. You can see a tease of one of the game's ungulate fighters above.
Crowdfund Bookie, December 2013: Squeaking by
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. As the weeks go by, the video game crowdfunding space appears to be under a shift of sorts. December 2013 saw the second-lowest total amount of dollars raised by gaming projects ($2,331,061) in the last seven months, since we began tracking such data. Unlike September 2013's $2,211,975 raised, backers in December managed to fund 40 projects, the second-highest number of successful projects in, again, the past seven months. December 2013 is the first month in which crowdfunded projects failed to raise $1 million over the top of their combined project goals, toppling the combined goal amount by $568,518. While it still seems like a lot of extra money, that averages out to $14,213 in extra dollars for each of the 40 crowdfunders last month. The trends we've tracked to this point indicated that crowdfunding was especially a boon for creators to reach stretch goals to bring games to additional platforms. Therefore, December's numbers go against the grain, showing that money spread out a bit more evenly across more projects. Whether that has anything to do with the holiday season is unclear. Head past the break to see the month's breakdown by genre as well as a list of December's top five-earning games.
Insert Coin: 2013's top 10 crowdfunding projects
An underwater drone that you can control with your tablet or smartphone from up to 300 feet away. Reckon that's worth a pledge of around $200? Plenty of you did, because Ziphius is now a very real thing, thanks to its passionate everyman backers. Galvanized by some very successful projects last year, 2013 saw plenty of crowdfunding projects angling for your dollar. We also crowned three Insert Coin: New Challengers winners at our Expand San Francisco and Expand New York events, hopefully doing our bit to cheer on the next Eric Migicovsky. Aside from said competitors, this year saw 29 Insert Coin subjects manage to hit their goals, with some utterly smashing them. Indiegogo's CEO Slava Rubin tells us that compared to 2012, there was "more than a 1,000 percent increase in funds raised" in its technology category. "We've seen everyone from big brands to small startups embracing crowdfunding as an alternative to traditional finance. We can't wait to see what exciting new products 2014 will bring," he said. With the likes of Oculus Rift and the Pebble smartwatch still making news more than a year since their crowdfunding debuts, how will the class of 2013 fare? Here's a closer look of some of the projects that you just had to make a reality.
Reset powered with IndieGoGo funding
Reset won't have to do just that to its IndieGoGo campaign, having amassed €71,398 of a €65,000 goal with only hours to spare last night. The game is scheduled to launch by the 2014 holiday season and all contributors will receive a second copy of the single-player game as a gift. Developed by Finnish studio Theory Interactive, Reset is a first-person puzzler, where players work with a time-traveling version of themself (themselves?) to cooperatively solve conundrums. The game will also support Oculus Rift when it launches. The decision to make TWIKI sounds the entire time while playing is up to you.
Time-traveling mech puzzler Reset will support Oculus Rift
Reset, the sci-fi, noir mech game from indie developer Theory Interactive, is getting even more impressive – it will support Oculus Rift. Theory Interactive shared a few screenshots of the game in bug-eyed virtual reality, along with a new trailer that doesn't appear to be in immersive 3D, but we can't be sure because we don't have a pair of those special blue-and-red glasses on hand. Reset is an exploration and open-world puzzle game set in a desolate future, on a fictional volcanic island in the Galápagos. Players travel through time as a mech to solve physical riddles with themselves and uncover the island's secrets. Reset currently in the midst of an Indiegogo campaign, with five days left to raise €34,000 and hit the goal of €65,000. We've been excited about Reset since its debut, in-game trailer hit the web in 2012, and the final game is due out on PC at the end of 2014. Click the second VR screenshot below for a better idea of Reset's Oculus Rift world.
Atheer Labs wants to make its augmented reality glasses a reality on Indiegogo
Atheer Labs isn't the only company chasing Tony Stark, but it is the very latest to offer a set of smart glasses to developers -- enabling them to build out 3D touchless gesture controlled apps. Like its competitor, Meta, Atheer wants to do away with restrictive conventional computing and replace it with augmented reality. The idea is to, eventually, combine your real and digital worlds seamlessly through the power of smart glasses and wearable computers. Unlike Meta, however, Atheer's using Android underpinnings, and will let users run regular Android applications on their faces while they wait for the 3D apps to arrive. As have many others, Atheer's chosen Indiegogo as the means to connect with code monkeys and get them building applications for its platform. And, with the launch of the funding campaign comes the revelation of both a dev kit and the company's first set of consumer specs, dubbed Atheer One. Folks willing to spend $850 for a developer kit now will get their hardware in March 2014. Early adopters wanting the One headset need only pay $350, but won't receive it until the end of next year. What you see above (dev kit on the right, Atheer One on the left) is close to what will make its way into backers' hands, but the hardware's not yet final.
Yes, this is dog: No More Woof aims to translate canine thoughts into human speech
Head over to Indiegogo today and you'll find a particularly wacky (and risky) project bidding for your investment. It's a device that goes by the name of No More Woof, which admittedly sounds like it does horrible things to dogs' vocal cords, but which actually promises something very different. It's a canine-sized headset that consists of EEG recorders connected to a small Raspberry Pi computer and a loudspeaker, supposedly allowing "ionic current flows" in a dog's brain to be translated into human speech. A $65 model is said to distinguish between three different thoughts, including tiredness and curiosity, while more expensive options will have more sensors and more powerful software. The only hold-up (and it's a big one) is that this project is being offered for crowdfunding while still at the concept stage, and all investment will be kept even if the funding target isn't met. According to a disclaimer on the Indiegogo page: "Yes, we HAVE achieved some results, but we are very far from a mass-producable product. That said, we believe that within a few years the technologies we are working with will revolutionize our relation to pets and animals." Indeed, there's no evidence that ST, the Scandinavian research lab behind No More Woof and last year's equally strange iRock rocking chair, has managed to come up with anything like a working prototype -- or at least there's no sign of one in the long-but-vacant video embedded below. Nevertheless, if dog barks are eventually mistranslated by this sort of "novelty science" (a word ST actually uses to describe its own research), who'll be any the wiser?
KUBI telepresence robot arm for tablets now shipping, starting from $399
It was almost a year ago when we checked out Revolve Robotics' KUBI, a motorized tablet cradle that lets you remotely pan and tilt your device -- via an iOS app (Android version coming soon) or web portal -- during video calls. After missing its summer launch window, this US-made telepresence robot is finally shipping to its Indiegogo backers starting this week. Those who want in now can also order one through the company's website, albeit at much higher price points: the KUBI Hacker Edition for developers costs $399, whereas the prettier but otherwise identical KUBI Classic (pictured above) is asking for a steep $499 -- almost twice as much as the original intended price due to a change in tooling, for the sake of speeding up production. If you're really desperate for a Bluetooth LE robot arm for your tablet, order soon -- delivery is expected within three to four weeks. For now, you can get a glimpse of the first few KUBIs off the production line in the short clip after the break.
Crowdfund Bookie: $23 million raised in six months
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. The past six months have proven fruitful for crowdfunded games. In total, 186 different Indiegogo and Kickstarter video game projects earned $23,914,666 from the months of June through November. Those numbers are courtesy of 500,467 backers in the six-month period, who raised $13,173,182 beyond the combined goals of the projects to reach stretch goals that will bring games to additional platforms and grant players more content. On average, crowdfunding projects raised $128,573 in the last six months, but as we examined in our last quarterly report, these mean averages can be quite misleading. By comparison, the median, or middle number in the data set for the amount of money raised by each of the 186 projects, is $25,188. Given that only six of the projects raised at least one million dollars, and just seven more raised at least $500,000 during that time frame, we can conclude that the average amount of money raised by crowdfunding projects in the last six months is positively skewed. Similarly, the median number of backers per project was 542 (a sharp contrast to a mean average of 2,691). Future project creators should take note, then: Your average Kickstarter or Indiegogo gaming project earns closer to $25,188, not $128,573. Additionally, the data shows that strategy games like Hex and Warmachine: Tactics led the genre to the top of the list, as they earned the most money of the group ($6,901,527). Conversely, the adventure genre had the most successful projects, as 46 adventurous or narrative-driven games were funded in the last six months, such as Obduction and Armikrog. Action games had the highest number of backers (145,316), thanks especially to the highest-earning game of the group, Keiji Inafune's Mighty No. 9, which hauled in $3,845,170 thanks to 67,226 people. Head past the break to see the top-earning games and breakdown by genre for the six-month period.
Daily iPhone App: FunderCloud brings the best of Indiegogo and Kickstarter to your iPhone
We have apps to browse news, music and videos, and now there is one to peruse crowdfunded projects. FunderCloud debuted in the App Store last month and allows you to thumb through projects from both Kickstarter and Indiegogo. The app has an iOS 7-inspired design that pulls in and displays listings from the two most popular crowdfunding websites. The app will list a firehouse of all the most popular projects, but you can filter this list by category, new projects and projects that are ending soon. There's also a search option to find projects by keyword and a favorites list that you can use to track projects you like. When viewing a listing, FunderCloud appears to pull the content from the source website and displays it in the app. On Kickstarter projects, you'll see the link to download the Kickstarter app. Because FunderCloud is only an aggregator, there are no persistent login options within the app. You can back a project from within the app, but it is handled by the KickStarter or Indiegogo website. As a result, FunderCloud doesn't serve as a management tool that tracks your funded projects. It's merely a browser. You can download FunderCloud from the iOS App Store for US$1.99. It's worth a download, especially if you enjoy thumbing through crowdfunding projects in your free time. And, it's a double shot allowing you access to both Kickstarter and Indiegogo at the same time, which is more convenient than browsing each site separately.
