indiegogo
Latest
Hacker cracks indie's PayPal account, orders PS4s with crowdfunded cash
With three days left in the Secrets of Rætikon Indiegogo campaign, developer Broken Rules discovered its PayPal account had been hacked and someone had spent $2,500, in part to order three PS4 consoles, studio co-founder Martin Pichlmair told Joystiq. Broken Rules contacted PayPal and put a stop to the spending, and PayPal assured the studio that all of its money would be returned. Pichlmair said he believed the account's password was cracked. Broken Rules since regained full control over its own account, making it safe for backers to continue donating. "This feels like someone breaking into your house and we were super-stressed out for a whole day," Pichlmair says. "We're on the last stretch of our crowdfunding campaign and this incident is really taxing .... Gladly there wasn't too much money on our PayPal account at that point." Secrets of Rætikon has a $40,000 campaign on Indiegogo and has raised $10,900 with three days to go – but it's a Flexible Funding project, meaning Broken Rules gets to keep whatever money it makes, regardless of reaching its goal. Secrets of Rætikon was a stylish exploration and puzzle game that we dug at GDC Europe this year. All that Broken Rules had to identify the hacker was a "dodgy Gmail address," so there wasn't much chance of catching anyone, Pichlrmair said. As for the return of its stolen money, he said he'd believe it when he saw it. Pichlmair planned to update backers no matter how the hack shook out. "We try to be honest even if it is to our detriment," he said. "That's us."
Solve wibbly wobbly timey wimey puzzles in mech game Reset
Reset, the time-traveling mech game from Theory Interactive, has officially launched a campaign on Indiegogo, seeking €65,000 by December 23. Theory Interactive teased the campaign in October with the project's first gameplay trailer. Before that, all we knew about Reset was that it offered a unique take on single-player experiences: It's a co-op game that you play with yourself, traveling through time to solve puzzles cooperatively with other iterations or your giant robot. Also, we knew that it was pretty. Theory Interactive is based in Finland, and to comply with Finnish law, everyone who donates to the development of Reset must choose a reward (horrible, we know). Reset is due out for PC around December 2014, with Mac, Linux, SteamOS and next-gen consoles a possibility down the line.
Lightercase lights your smokes, protects your iPhone
We have a policy of not writing about crowdfunded projects until they're either at or within touching distance of their goal, and the unique Lightercase (US$38 pre-order) certainly fits that criteria. It's currently about $1,200 away from a $25,000 goal with three weeks to go, and it looks like the project will definitely be launched. What makes the Lightercase unique? A built-in no-flame cigarette lighter. Lightercase is the brainchild of Jason Buzi, the founder and CEO of Smartcase. He came up with the idea while out with friends one night -- friends who had their smartphones at their fingertips all night, but who kept asking for a light. The result was a heatproof case with a built-in electronic lighter, a battery big enough to light 500 cigarettes (or recharge another device) and even an LED flashlight. Who could use such a device? Well, smokers, of course. But I could see how this could be useful for campers as well if it can provide a way to start campfires (see video below where I try lighting regular paper). There's a little heating coil that is embedded under a spring-loaded door. Slide that little door down with a thumb, and the coil heats up immediately. Touch a cigarette or other flammable material to it while it's glowing, and it lights up. Think of the Lightercase as being the modern equivalent of the car cigarette lighter that's been supplanted by all of those "power outlets" in your car. That spring-loaded door keeps the Lightercase from deciding to light up your pocket or backpack, a helpful safety feature. The lighter is also supposed to shut off within four seconds, although the pre-production version I have ended up turning off after 10 seconds. It's only putting out five watts of heat energy, enough to light that cigarette, but not enough for the case to get hot. To charge the Lightercase there's a standard USB to mini-USB cable; the company says it needs to be plugged in for about three to five hours to totally charge up. Other than the flashlight and lighter, the Lightercase is a pretty mundane iPhone case. Currently the company plans to have a model for the iPhone 5/5s available in December or January, one for the iPhone 4 and 4s in February and other models for other smartphones starting in the February timeframe as well. If the company exceeds the $25,000 funding request, they intend to open the design up to the iPhone 5c as well. Colors include basic black, black with blue metal accents, white with white metal accents and white with the ever-popular pink metal accents. As we received a pre-production model for review, we won't be giving it away (and note that the production models will look different as well). But if you're a smoker or gadget freak, you'll want to pre-order a Lightercase on Indiegogo.
Shift the city's architecture in cyberpunk stealth platformer Interference
French artist Anthony Beyer launched an Indiegogo project for Interference, a stealthy puzzle-platformer for PC, Mac and Linux. The game has players joining a cyberterrorist organization called The Interferers, an underground group that are opposed to a totalitarian government. The group grants players access to a device known as The Glitcher, which allows players to slide pieces of the city Arachnopolis around to create paths and avoid enemies. Interference relies heavily on stealth mechanics similar to that of Klei's Mark of the Ninja, though Beyer said he wants to create his own game "with a fully-realized and immersive universe that isn't disjointed by levels." Players will unlock districts of the city similar to the Metroid and Castlevania series, but can freely traverse the open parts of Arachnopolis at will. Beyer is seeking €25,000 ($33,475) by December 11 to fund the game's development, and plans to deliver it by June 2014. He also made a pre-alpha demo available to download for both PC and Mac owners, found on the game's website. [Thanks, Andrew!]
Crowdfund Bookie, October 2013: Two is greater than 58
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. The month of October saw 172,360 people pledge $7,361,713 towards 42 successful Kickstarter and Indiegogo video game projects. To put that in perspective, that's 4,833 more project backers than the past three months combined. As discussed in our September quarterly report, some high-earning games serve as extreme samples in a month's data set. October was no different, as Keiji Inafune's Mighty No. 9 lured in $3,845,170 thanks to 67,226 backers. What's more, both Shantae: Half-Genie Hero and Hyper Light Drifter combined to account for 42,708 backers, which means these three projects had enough backers to match the number of funders in August and September combined, a two-month period that saw 58 successful projects. All three games fit into the action genre this month as well, which accounts for that category's high numbers. Without those three projects, the other four action games would have combined for only $113,876. October also saw some of the first Canada-based developers take advantage of Kickstarter's expansion to the country, which began in September. Eight projects came from Canadian developers, three of which were among the top six earning games for the month: RimWorld, The Long Dark and River City Ransom: Underground. The eight games accounted for 11.16 percent of the overall picture for the month ($821,411), so it'll be interesting to watch for the impact Kickstarter's expansion has on our crowdfunding trends. The funding platform will open up to Australia and New Zealand-based creators on November 13, as well. Head past the break for the month's breakdown by genre as well as the list of October's top five earners.
Crowdfund Bookie: Story generator RimWorld earns $257K
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 projects for RimWorld, Cosmic Star Heroine, Pulsar: Lost Colony, HuniePop, Universum: War Front, Rebuild: Gangs of Deadsville, Spark Rising and Monster Stacker as well as the Indiegogo campaigns for Sword of the Stars: Ground Pounders and Beyond Eyes came to a close. RimWorld, a top-down, tactical game with an AI "story generator" earned the most money ($257,152) and had the highest number of funders of the week, with 9,498 people funding the project. Flex-funded, sci-fi strategy game Sword of the Stars: Ground Pounders had the highest average pledge per person rate of the group ($75.84). Check out the week's results and our pretty charts after the break.
Life is Feudal begins Indiegogo campaign
Promising to deliver "realistic medieval" MMO, game developers from Russia are seeking crowdfunding to push hardcore sandbox Life is Feudal over the finish line. Bitbox has been working on Life is Feudal for over three years but recently decided that an Indiegogo campaign was needed to further finance the title to the tune of €200,000. "We have reached a point where additional external funding is required for us to complete the development and release our game, and we spent many nights and days weighing our options," the devs wrote on the campaign page. The project page has a good summary of this ambitious title's selling points, including a 441-square-kilometer seamless world, full terraforming, a rich crafting system, a no-target combat system, and the ability to track and hunt wild animals. We recently saw a trailer for Life is Feudal showing some of its potential. The game will be free-to-play with an alpha starting soon after the fundraising campaign if the money is raised. [Thanks to Alessio for the tip!]
Crowdfund Bookie: Knite is a $43k hand-crafted adventure
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 projects for Knite and the Ghost Lights, Cornerstone: The Song of Tyrim and Comic ConQuest as well as the Indiegogo project for 0 AD: Empires Ascendant concluded. Mobot Studios' "hand-crafted" side-scrolling adventure Knite and the Ghost Lights raised the most amount of money this week ($43,768) and had the highest number of backers (1,774). Comic ConQuest, an RPG set in the "halls of a comic con gone wrong," had the highest average pledge per backer for the week ($43.59). This week also saw an entry from a successful, flexible-funded Indiegogo project in 0 AD: Empires Ascendant. The platform's flexible funding option ultimately negates the use of a campaign goal, as all pledges are guaranteed to transfer to the project creator. In this case, while 0 AD developer Wildfire Games did not meet its $160,000 goal, it will retain the $33,251 it did achieve. Aside from noting the percentage of its goal the project met, we're treating flexible funding campaigns like 0 AD as if they didn't have a goal when crunching our delicious crowdfunding numbers going forward, keeping in line with the spirit of those campaigns. Check out the week's results and our beautiful charts after the break.
Soar as a free, vectorized bird in Secrets of Rætikon right now
Secrets of Rætikon is out now in alpha for PC and Mac (Linux incoming), with keys set free by contributing to the game's Indiegogo campaign, which seeks $40,000 over the next 30 days. Secrets of Rætikon comes from Broken Rules, the developers behind And Yet it Moves and Chasing Aurora. Secrets of Rætikon puts players in control of a bird that must rebuild ancient machines whose parts are scattered across the surrounding forests, caves and mountainsides. Besides finding secrets and picking up parts, players can interact with other animals and plants, fighting and helping various creatures. We got to try out an early version at GDC Europe and were absolutely blown away by the game's ethereal beauty and surprising challenges. Broken Rules chose Indiegogo over Kickstarter because the competition is less fierce and Kickstarter doesn't yet support companies from its home in Austria, studio co-founder Martin Pichlmair says. "Yet even more important is the fact that we deem it more honest to launch a flexible funding campaign than going the traditional Kickstarter-style fixed funding route," he says. "Flexible funding means: Funders get the game and we get their money no matter if the campaign goal is reached or not. We are simply selling alpha access to the game via a more popular platform than our own website."
Crowdfund Bookie: 'The Long Dark' path to $248K
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. It was a busy week in crowdfunding, as the Kickstarter projects for The Long Dark, Contagion, Steam Squad, King Randall's Party, The Ballads of Reemus 2, Slip, Emerald, SC2VN, Destiny Fails Us and Worlds Quest as well as the Indiegogo projects for Lords of Zulima and TurfBattles concluded. The Long Dark, a first-person survival simulator coming from triple-A veterans Hinterland Studio earned the most money this week, hauling in $256,217 CAD ($248,899). The game also had the highest number of backers of the group, with 6,966 people funding the project. King Randall's Party, a "side-scrolling fortress defense game," had the highest per-person pledge amount of the week ($184.23). Head past the break to check out the week's results along with some pretty charts.
Beyond Eyes paints a colorful picture of a blind girl
Beyond Eyes, a game about guiding a young blind girl through her environment, is currently seeking €10,000 (approximately $13,513) on Indiegogo. If the game is funded, developer Sherida Halatoe anticipates a summer 2014 release on PC, Mac and Linux. Beyond Eyes began as a graduation project while Halatoe attended Utrecht School of Arts, but Halatoe says in her pitch video that she "couldn't let it go." The story centers on Rae, a girl who lost her sight in a fireworks accident, and has since become a recluse. Rae doesn't interact much with the outside world, preferring to stay in her quiet garden with a stray cat she names Nani. When Nani disappears, Rae goes searching. Since Rae is blind, the world appears white and empty. When Rae senses an object through her remaining senses, colors will bloom through the object, painting it in like a watercolor picture. Players will take on the role of caretaker and guide for Rae as opposed to playing as her, and Halatoe warns that "A player who forces [Rae] into dangerous situations finds himself with a scared, distrustful girl who will refuse to do his bidding until he regains her trust." Funding Beyond Eyes at the €3,000 level will net you another game, as Halatoe writes that she will create a "short game" that can feature up to two characters and two environments.
Square Enix 'Collective' partners with Indiegogo, opens older Eidos IP
Square Enix is partnering with Indiegogo for a indie development curation program it's calling Square Enix Collective. The platform allows creators to post their ideas to Square Enix's community, garnering votes over the course of 28 days. Project pitches are evaluated by Square Enix, and providing the community approves the idea, can then be taken to Indiegogo to potentially raise funds for development. Square Enix stays in touch through each game's development process, assisting in distribution once the game is ready. The publisher says that while submitting a pitch costs nothing for creators, they "will need to accept some terms and conditions" when placing their ideas in front of Square Enix's community. Square Enix also added that creators "could have the chance to work with some of the older Eidos IP from our back-catalogue," indicating that its own properties are on the table for prospective designers to toy with. Square Enix will have more information on the program's requirements and submission guidelines at November's GDC Next even in Los Angeles. Now don't go submitting a new Timesplitters game all at once, everyone.
TellSpec identifies food ingredients and calories using science, magic
Some of us can't eat gluten, while others need to stay away from certain fats. Mealtime can be incredibly stressful for people with dietary restrictions -- especially when dining out -- since manufacturers aren't always required to report all ingredients, specifically when dealing with trace amounts. With frequent inaccuracies, counting calories is a whole 'nother ball game. A pocketable device called TellSpec may be an affordable solution for breaking down the ingredients in our meals consistently, and wherever we eat. The device is essentially a miniature spectrometer -- a device that can analyze materials (ingredients, in this case) by measuring properties of light. The gadget sends a list of ingredients and nutrition info to a companion smartphone app, making it easy to evaluate food quickly and efficiently. If you live to eat, you might not want TellSpec complicating the experience, but if you eat to live, this gadget seems like a fit. It's set to ship next August, with pre-orders at Indiegogo available for $150 beginning today.
Crowdfund Bookie September 2013: The best of times, the worst of times
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. The month of September embodied the best and, arguably, the worst crowdfunding has to offer video games. On the positive side of things, September saw the birth of Project Phoenix, the month's highest-funded game ($1,014,600). The RPG-meets-RTS features an all-star crew, including Lead Composer Nobuo Uematsu, Art Director Kiyoshi Arai and Director/Producer Hiroaki Yura, each with ties to the Final Fantasy series as well as Diablo 3 and Valkyria Chronicles. September will also be remembered as the month that Ouya's Free the Games Fund left its mark on crowdfunding. One game in the program, Gridiron Thunder, was accused of unfairly bolstering its own campaign by self-funding it past the $100,000 mark in order to earn rewards offered by Ouya. The hardware company's program fell under great scrutiny before being overhauled, at which point developer MogoTXT removed Gridiron Thunder from Free the Games Fund eligibility. As an example of the discrepancy in funding, Evelend Games' action platformer Indiegogo project AdventurOS had over ten times as many funders as Gridiron Thunder (1,899 versus 183), yet the Ouya football game earned over eight times as much money as AdventurOS ($171,009 versus $21,323). Additionally, removing Gridiron Thunder from the action genre for the month takes the category's average pledge per backer rate down from $44.19 to $34.31. As seen in our latest quarterly report, it only takes a few projects like Gridiron Thunder to shape the community's perception of entire crowdfunding platforms like Indiegogo and Kickstarter. While September saw the same number of successful projects (29), the $2,211,975 raised by 40,701 funders were down by $764,575 and 23,218 people from the previous month, and were the lowest amounts seen in the last four months. It's unclear whether potential community distrust thanks to controversial projects like Gridiron Thunder or the release of big retail games, such as the recent launch of Grand Theft Auto 5 will have a bigger impact on crowdfunding in the coming months. Head past the break to see the month's breakdown by genre as well as a list of September's top five projects.
EverDock Kickstarter universal dock blasts by funding goal, looks great
With rare exceptions, I prefer not to write about Kickstarter and Indiegogo projects until there's a good possibility that the project will be funded. In the case of a new, truly universal dock created by Utah-based FŪZdesigns called the EverDock, the project is not only well past its funding goal of US$50,000 with 20 days to go, but the design looks so good I may end up backing it. The idea is that too many times, smartphone owners purchase a dock only to have their needs change in a couple of years. For many iPhone and iPad owners, the advent of the Lightning cable made old docks obsolete, and there are people who switch from micro-USB-based Android phones to those Lightning-connected iPhones and vice-versa. With each switch of device or charging technology, users usually end up buying a new dock. EverDock is designed to allow easy, tool-free swapping of the electrical / data end of the charging and sync cable. For example, it will support a 30-pin dock connector device, and can then be set up for a new iPhone with a Lightning connector in a matter of minutes. Need to charge both an iPhone in a Mophie Juice Pack Helium battery case (micro-USB) and a new iPad mini (Lightning)? No problem -- they've designed a dual dock that will hold both. If you have a case on your device, that shouldn't be a problem either; the EverDock is designed to accept most cases. At this time, backers can pre-order one of the aluminum EverDocks in silver, space gray or gold for a pledge of just $49. The EverDock Duo (two-device) model is just a bit more at $69. If FŪZdesigns reaches a $200,000 stretch goal, they'll let purchasers select the color of the silicone inserts that cover the top of the dock.
Stay hydrated with the BluFit smart water bottle and app
Yes, you read that headline correctly. A startup is taking pre-orders for the BluFit water bottle (US$59) and you'll never need to guess how many ounces or liters of water you've sucked down during the day. This latest innovation in the world of connected fitness tools is currently grabbing pledges on Indiegogo, and early supporters can nab one of the bottles for $49. Now why would you buy a $50 or $60 water bottle? Well, that app takes a lot of different data into account -- weight, age, temperature and humidity -- to determine how much you should be drinking. You can set and monitor personal goals, and adjust your sipping based on how active you are during a day. In the meantime, you'll get colorful alerts from the bottle's sleeve, which has LED lights built into it. The bottle has a Bluetooth LE chip inside of it that takes info from the built-in water flow sensor and syncs it with the app, and there's a rechargeable battery to keep your bottle glowing and beaming for up to six days. Check out the pitch video below, and then decide if your current Nalgene bottle is smart enough for you.
Crowdfund Bookie, September 15 - 21: Awesomenauts, Chromancer
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 projects for Awesomenauts: Starstorm, Chromancer, Fandrafter, Piano Wizard, Stronghold 2D, Icebound and Lucid: The Awakening as well as the Indiegogo projects for AdventurOS and Choice: Texas ended. Ronimo Games' project to fund an Awesomenauts expansion generated the most interest this week, earning $345,835 from 7,496 backers. The project with the highest average pledge per person was asynchronous fantasy football app Fandrafter, which saw a mean average of $547.09 from its 56 funders. Pitched as Words with Friends-meets-fantasy football with no season commitments, the Fandrafter project's average was boosted by three backers that pledged at least $8,000. Check out the week's results, as well as our fancy graphs, after the break.
Gecko Bluetooth tags act as motion and location triggers for your mobile (video)
What you see above isn't a fancy pick -- it's a gesture control peripheral called Gecko designed to do a lot more than strum a guitar. According to its creators, each action the coin-sized gadget makes can correspond to a phone function, so long as the two are connected via Bluetooth. You could, for instance, configure your device loaded with the accompanying iOS or Android app to make an emergency call whenever you shake Gecko once. However, they claim that it also has many potential offbeat uses, such as notifying you when someone moves your bag or helping you find lost pets, kids or, worse, keys. Of course, that'll only work if you tag your items with it, but anyone with a hyperactive five-year-old wouldn't mind improvising a necklace out of it. Don't expect to find one at a local mall, though -- Gecko's merely an Indiegogo project at the moment, hoping to raise $50,000 to start mass production.
ParaShoot wearable cam heads to Indiegogo after Kickstarter suspension
You may remember the ParaShoot wearable camera we covered a few weeks ago, which had shattered its crowdfunding target with a month and change to spare. If you decided to sink some cash into the project, then you may also be aware it was suspended on Kickstarter a couple of days ago. Matt Sandy from the ParaShoot team has been in touch to share what little info he has -- it's claimed the suspension was out of the blue, and no communication has come from the funding site since. With "manufacturing plans" sorted, however, there's no time to twiddle thumbs, so ParaShoot's hit Indiegogo instead. Seeking $117,358 -- the amount the Kickstarter campaign was frozen at -- version 2.1 proposes a slightly different flat-fronted design (see above and try to ignore the ugly watermark), more choices of skin and a new time-lapse photo feature. Pledge levels are the same, although there's now a "Distributor Pack" option if you want ten of the things. We've reached out to Kickstarter to see if it's willing to tell us the other side of the story, and we'll let you know if we hear back.
PayPal adjusting policies to be more crowdfunding-friendly
PayPal recently announced plans to "overhaul" its policies to become more crowdfunding-friendly. This comes after a number of startups had their funds frozen by PayPal after successful crowdfunding initiatives. Examples of such issues include the momentary pause in the release of Yatagarasu Attack on Cataclysm's funds earned during its Indiegogo campaign, as well as that of Lab Zero Games when it crowdfunded DLC characters for Skullgirls in April. PayPal VP Risk Management Tomer Barel wrote in an update on PayPal's site that while there are no policy changes to announce today, "in the meantime, we will ensure that each crowdfunding campaign is reviewed by a senior member of my team before any action is taken."
