Hay There everyone. I am LuchRi, a member of the Writing Staff for City of Titans.
I saw this and honestly felt that I should clear a few things up quickly, specifically on the matter of money. 320K is not much at all. In fact when it comes to game development it is nothing. The cost of keeping the lights on alone is often more than this for major studios and paying even a few token employees would be far more than this. That is the beauty of the whole project though, we are not currently running things like most studios would.
First, there are no employee costs, At least not yet. Personally I would love to have a check with my name on it from MWM some day. But the fact is that as of now we are an all volunteer staff. Most of the people working on this game as of now are professionals in other fields who simply felt a passion for the game and wished to see a spiritual successor in some form or another. This is not to say that we lack for talent by any means. Anyone currently in the 'inner core' of development has skills on par with professionals in the field for writing, graphics design or other such. In fact many of these professionals would be making a decided 'downward' move if they stayed on full time with us rather than keeping the jobs they have after launch.
So while I refuse to even suggest we suffer for it, currently the employee cost on every level is 0
This is also being done online which has numerous benefits, including my own personal favorite. No Office. At this point we simply have no use for one and between geographical gaps for the Devs and the cost of keeping the lights on it is a huge saving when compared to how most traditional companies operate. Ignoring how nice it is to simply wake up, get on the computer right away and simply jam out lore until one has to run errands or go to a 'day job' we have basically zero cost for operating at this point because everything is done over the internet. Security is again handled by volunteers who know what they are doing and really an office would be a liability to us at this point.
So that is another area where the cost is 0
In the end what this KS pays for really boils down to a base fee to Unreal as part of our deal with them (covered in previous interviews with people higher up the ladder than I, so I will not go into detail here) and 'seats' for art programs so our artists can stop using free versions of rather poor programs that do not work well.
This is still a considerable cost, and reason you should throw some money at us if you have not already. The more we have the more we can do. But this 320K is not the end cost of the game. We have slashed the overhead to ribbons, and will probably be looking at sources of funding outside of this campaign as things progress. The KS was and is simply a way for us to get the Artist types their tools so they may do their job properly here and now, so that they can keep up with those of us doing Composition or the programmers who are able to work with Unreal unhindered.
I understand the worry, and to be honest I personally have my worries that we can do this at times. But speaking as someone on the inside I know that my fellow Devs and I are motivated, we are skilled, and we are driven to a singular goal. Matters of Ego have been settled and put aside. Matters of Money were never really the issue for any of us going into this. We simply want to make a game, and trust me when I say we are pouring everything we have into it, and we all think you will like the end result.
Read more at
http://www.mmorpg.com/newsroom.cfm/loadNews/28730#KiaB10FYQsDrMrje.99
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Topic: The Phoenix Project - City of Titans Kickstarter (target already met) (Read 1460 times)