Crowd funding officially jumps the start
On this day, the concept of crowd-funded gaming has finally reached farce status, with a ridiculous proposition from Black Isle Studios. First off, the studio wants your money to become a studio, at which point it will ask for more to actually make a game. Yes, it needs a Kickstarter to Kickstart a Kickstarter.
We call this new business move, The KKK!
“Our goal at this stage is threefold.” says Black Isle, “Prove to management that you want Black Isle Studios resurrected — and all the history and tradition of excellence that goes with it; continue to staff up and complete our PV13 game design; and develop a tech demo / proof of concept for our design that will open the doors to additional funding.”
Basically, Black Isle Studios isn’t even a thing yet. It has no game, and the money you give it will be for no tangible product. The first round of funding will simply be to fully revive and staff the company. Only then will it move onto actually making a videogame — which it will require more money for.
At the end of this chicanery, Black Isle does have a game planned — Project V13, a post-apocalyptic strategy RPG. It’ll be a game about founding a colony, gathering resources, and repelling enemy forces. V13 is the name of the Fallout MMO Interplay was working on, but it seems to have been drastically reworked following the loss of the IP to Bethesda.
Right now, the game doesn’t even have a “proof of concept” build, and Black Isle is focused on gathering enough developers to actually develop it.
Still, there are “rewards” for anybody handing over cash. For $10, you get access to the studio’s message board, a forum badge, and a certificate. If you hand over $20, you can get to a private message board, with a better forum badge, and a better certificate. The top twenty funders, however, will get a real treat — an even better forum badge and an even better certificate, as well as a name on a “Hero Board.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
[Thanks, CaimDark!]
