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Those of us worried about how Microsoft will handle Minecraft now that the bigger company has acquired the indie studio might be able to breathe a little easier when they hear this news. At the very least, Microsoft are not considering making a ‘Minecraft 2′ to attempt to milk the game’s popularity to death. They also are interested in consulting the community for what we want to see.
On an IGN podcast, Microsoft Studios’ Phil Spencer said “I don’t know if Minecraft 2, if that’s the thing that makes the most sense… We need to meet the needs and the desires of the community before we get permission to go off and do something else.”
He has also said that the direction the game will take will be in part dictated by the game’s strong community, but warns that it won’t mean everything they do will meet with a 100% approval rating from the community “because I don’t know if there is any topic where 100% of people agree”. But he assures us that their first job will always be to go out and meet the needs of the community first and think of ways to grow the game that will sit favorably with the players.
Microsoft bought Mojang for around $2.5 billion, and this meant that Notch and other founders were to leave the small company behind. In Notch’s case it was to keep his sanity as he had found himself becoming a symbol of something and had never intended to be that at all.
Planetary Annihilation, the successor of Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation, was a massive draw on Kickstarter, as you can see above…
But THEN, they released it on STEAM, for… wait for it… £40 ($60) on Early Access, After making $2,229,344 on Kickstarter. Hell, it was £20 for Kickstarter backers, so they actually paid for the game TWICE!
All this and two years down the line, PA is STILL not complete, its only just gotten its offline mode and the game is atrocious
“Today, we busted out a new Kickstarter for a new strategy game called Human Resources. Built on the same engine that you helped us create for Planetary Annihilation, Human Resources expands on the scale and destruction you’ve come to love in exciting and different ways. We realize that some of you might take this news as concerning, so we wanted to come out and say this: work on Planetary Annihilation will not stop if Human Resources funds; both games will have a team dedicated to these separate projects”
So, Human Resources was a second team?
Ok, lets quickly look at the now cancelled Kickstarter for it
Now, I admit, the game looks cool (actually, its looks like the Planetary Annihilation we wanted and mainly thats because it uses the game engine made for it)
But there are two reasons Human Resources failed. GREED and GREED
The loyal fans that would have backed this in a heartbeat didn’t, because of the unfinished game Planetary Annihilation.
The fans with more money than sense though, even most of them saw through the kickstarter rewards this time:
They start off fairly reasonably (ok, I backed it too)
Then it ramps up
Then it starts to get a little crazy…
$125 pledge to get a tshirt and soundtrack? Oh and team colours…
The mini figures and USB stick look fun, but that’s a LOT of money
Ok, this is getting silly now…
Umm… No!
Ok, this is getting stupid
I’ve heard a lot of Indie devs talking about the demise of Kickstarter, even on our own Indie Game Show on a Sunday. And Uber Entertainment prove why this is happening. They aren’t being realistic!
They made $2.2mil just from the KICKSTARTER for Planetary Annihilation. Thats MORE than enough to release a game of the quality PA should have been. But this is hurting the smaller developers more than anything, as backers are starting to lose faith in Kickstarter and what its actually for. Helping small companies bring us good new games and getting going. Its not just Uber Entertainment, 22Cans did the same with Godus last year and there are many others.
So while I am a little disappointed that another potentially good RTS has died, I am laying the blame squarely on the developers this time.
With the new Civilization game, Civilization: Beyond Earth due out this Friday the hype for the series is up. Pre-loading has already started on Steam so those who have already ordered the game can get into space play Civ-style from the moment it launches.
Until then, the previous game, Civilization V has been made free-to-play on Steam until Thursday, just in case you don’t already own it. Unfortunately it doesn’t include the expansions to the game, which add significant content to a good game and makes it great if you’ve a lot of time to kill playing it.
If that doesn’t put you off then it is worth a go while it’s free, trust me. I’m just looking forward to getting Beyond Earth and doing it all over again in space.
In the spate of recent Kickstarter cancellations we’ve a new one to join the name. Seems Uber Entertainment have decided to pull their RTS game Human Resource from the crowd-funding site due to there being the possibility of it not meeting its target in time.
Human Resources would have seen you playing huge gods and robots using humanity as resources in your battles to try and dominate the planet. Two silly factions, destructible cities made up of buildings that could be used as a weapon if you chose and hundreds of units involved in battles managed to net it $400k in pledges which sounds a lot but when you take into consideration that the goal was $1.4 million you can see why Uber considered the takedown at all.
In an update Uber’s John Comes wrote, “Every Kickstarter prediction model is showing that we will come up woefully short of our goal. Running a Kickstarter is a full time job for several people. As a small indie, we can’t continue spending time and money focusing on a project that won’t get funded. We simply don’t have the human resources.”
The game as pitched is over it seems, but Comes hopes to have the world it portrayed live on in some other way.
It’s a shame. Good RTS games are sorely lacking nowadays…
A new trailer for Total War: Attila has been made public that shows off the siege gameplay mode that was demonstrated on stage at EGX earlier this year.
As mentioned then, attackers are able to sap enemy morale by setting fire to the buildings inside the city and drain enemy forces by attacking in stages and using troops wisely by potentially attacking in a few different places at once. The defender does have the advantage of barricades that while breakable can be used to funnel attackers in ambushes and traps and provide boosts to those troops stationed on top.
