By Cara Ellison on March 12th, 2013 at 3:00 pm.
Moon alert! Electronic Arts co-founder Joe Ybarra’s Joe Got Game announced yesterday they want $700,000 to Kickstart Shackleton Crater, a lunar colonization strategy game. Oh okay then a “lunar colonization strategy game based on today’s science and tomorrow’s dream”. On tomorrow’s dream. Yeah!
Using Real Sciences (the trailer has used NASA footage) and “plausible science fiction”, Shackleton Crater is designed for tablet computers (Android, iOS, Windows 8) and PCs (Windows, Mac), and up to 4 players can fight over who is actually the Ernest Shackleton of the crater.
As much as this cheesily worded Kickstarter text might make me wince a few times, Joe Ybarra is a lovely lovely man (his smile makes me want to go out and get Werther’s Originals from the shop) with 30 years of experience making games. He has decided to make a moonbase-building turn-based strategy game (apparently with quite a bit of replay value) to inspire the next generation of wee sciency scamps to use their Brain Powers to bugger off to the moon. I approve: not only did games like Age of Empires (so eloquently written about by Brendan) increase my little brother’s and I’s interest in and knowledge of history, but Dungeon Keeper also inspired me to become the Crysis 3-bothering dominatrix of my time. So. Think about that. And have a look at Joe’s lovely face:
RPS’s favourite quotation from the Kickstarter is “We want to inspire gamers, thinkers and dreamers who want the moon as badly as we do.” Do you want the moon? How badly? I WANT MOON. MOON WANT.
12/03/2013 at 15:03 Hoaxfish says:
You want the Moon on a stick.
12/03/2013 at 15:09 RaveTurned says:
To colonise the moon, you’ll need: a flask of weak lemon drink…
12/03/2013 at 15:42 jonfitt says:
I am the moon. I AM HIM!
12/03/2013 at 15:07 DrZhark says:
EA co-founder asking for my money? You won’t get my money, no way. Greedy EA bastards
12/03/2013 at 15:12 rustybroomhandle says:
EA was a great company back then. I owe a lot to Deluxe Paint.
12/03/2013 at 15:27 Captain Joyless says:
It’s Ybarra asking for money, not EA. Ybarra hasn’t been at EA in years.
12/03/2013 at 16:25 Surlywombat says:
Both EA and Activision had very noble intentions when they started. The history is actually really interesting.. but that was then.
12/03/2013 at 22:33 MadTinkerer says:
Yeah, this is not Modern EA at all. This is Original Goodguy EA Founder Who Left Before All The Shit Went Down.
12/03/2013 at 15:08 nimzy says:
Any connection to the recent Space Jam, or was this in the works earlier?
12/03/2013 at 15:09 c-Row says:
We like the moon
coz it is close to us.
We like the MOOOOOON!
But not as much as a spoon
coz that’s more use for eating soup
and a fork isn’t very useful for that
unless it has got many vegetables
and then you might be better off with a chopstick.
Unlike the moon
It is up in the sky
It’s up there very high
but not as high as maybe dirigibles or zeppelins
or lightbulbs
and maybe clouds
and puffins also I think maybe they go quite high too
maybe not as high as the moon.
Coz the moon is very high.
We like tha moon
Tha moon is very useful everyone.
Everybody like the moon.
Because it light up the sky as night and it lovely and it make the tide go
and we like it
but not as much as cheese.
We really like cheese
we like zeppelins
We really like them
and we like kelp
and we like moose
and we like deer
and we like marmots
and we like all the fluffy animals.
We really like tha moon.
12/03/2013 at 15:26 Ich Will says:
Spong monkeys
12/03/2013 at 16:13 JFS says:
I love that song!
13/03/2013 at 03:14 b0rsuk says:
Amen to that !
15/03/2013 at 12:41 Homercleese says:
Haha, I can’t believe there’s four other people, let alone one, who have heard/seen that masterpiece.
12/03/2013 at 15:11 Safilpope says:
They had me up until I heard mention of EA, then I lost all interest
12/03/2013 at 15:17 Tyrmot says:
forgot the /s?
12/03/2013 at 15:25 amateurviking says:
You know he hasn’t worked for EA for a long time.
And that EA weren’t always the monolithic corporate monolith they are now.
And and and…ach never mind.
12/03/2013 at 16:53 Prime says:
The important thing, amateurviking, is that you tried. But sadly, jerking-knees are far quicker than a man typing Reason into a computer.
I feel your pain.
12/03/2013 at 17:58 Safilpope says:
Well if that is the case (I didn’t know that), I may keep an eye on this then.
However, I’ll probably wait until the final product is out before I consider throwing money at it
12/03/2013 at 15:14 rustybroomhandle says:
Oh you want the moon? I’ll show you a moon…
12/03/2013 at 15:55 c-Row says:
That’s not a moon…
12/03/2013 at 17:50 Faxmachinen says:
They say MOONFACE is based on real events. Yeah right! Just like the square root of minus one is based on real numbers.
12/03/2013 at 15:17 Ubik2000 says:
Damn! For a second I thought this was a Moonbase Commander remake. I would have been all over that. Although I’m not sure how they’d improve it.
12/03/2013 at 15:49 c-Row says:
DLC and In-App-Purchases, silly.
12/03/2013 at 15:24 dE says:
I’m sorry, the moon is a little bit of a misunderstanding. I’ll stop holding out my white shiny ass out of the window in the morning (I’m sorry. I just like the breeze). Also please stop fantasizing about building stuff on there, it’s not THAT big.
12/03/2013 at 15:24 Maritz says:
Bah, multiplayer. Next!
12/03/2013 at 15:47 Snidesworth says:
That was my reaction too, but a little investigation shows that single player is also an option. Hopefully it’ll be a robust enough mode in itself.
12/03/2013 at 15:57 Maritz says:
Yeah, spotted the “1 to 4 players” bit after I’d posted, so I may have slightly overreacted. Having said that, this doesn’t fill me with hope – “this game is meant to be a multiplayer experience “.
12/03/2013 at 21:02 AngoraFish says:
Lost my pledge right there.
12/03/2013 at 21:24 Don Reba says:
I asked Joe whether you will have to be connected to play, and he graciously replied. The moon data is several terabytes in size, so it will be a better setup for you to be get the moon in chunks from the game server.
12/03/2013 at 22:18 rhynie says:
Wait, so you get to play with actual Moon data? I’m sold.
12/03/2013 at 15:25 pupsikaso says:
Are you kidding? Why is he asking for money to make this?
12/03/2013 at 15:29 RobinOttens says:
Moonbases and turn based strategy you say? Sounds interesting and right up my alley. I really should be more conservative in backing kickstarter projects though, I honestly don’t have the money to spare.
Ah well, my eye shall be kept on this, and it shall wait until this game finishes development first (assuming they’ll succeed in their funding of course).
12/03/2013 at 15:38 Sardonic says:
Johnmadden, johnmadden, aeiu
12/03/2013 at 15:57 c-Row says:
Ok, but seriously now – $700,000?! I really doubt it will even get anywhere near that amount.
12/03/2013 at 17:26 Brise Bonbons says:
Unfortunately I think you’re right. Hopefully I’ll be proven wrong, but it just doesn’t seem like the sort of project that will muster that sort of interest on Kickstarter…
13/03/2013 at 03:21 b0rsuk says:
Yes, and that’s probably for the better. It looks like a nice *little* game, until you realize the goal is $700 000. And it doesn’t really stop there ! Stretch goals span up to $3 000 000 ! He’s out of sync with reality.
I don’t know what we’re supposed to do – throw money at this project because this time we get a *proffesional* from an award-winning company ? As opposed to Kickstarter’s enthusiastic unwashed hordes ? Is this developer really as good and proven as InXile/Obsidian combo, or Double Fine ?
13/03/2013 at 09:10 Kamos says:
I actually feel kinda sorry for him. His idea is not bad, but he has severely overestimated how much money he can get for it, especially after he used the word EA in his pitch. I mean, come on! It is like the man isn’t aware of the shit storm that Sim City is generating right now. You’d think he would at least try to explain “hey, I’m from old EA, the one that wasn’t anti-consumer”…
12/03/2013 at 16:00 Jockie says:
I feel ‘Joe Got Games’ may be the worst name for a gaming studio yet, kudos.
12/03/2013 at 16:20 Hoaxfish says:
His previous company was Baby got Back, and I cannot lie.
12/03/2013 at 16:36 Brise Bonbons says:
While the KS presentation is a bit… odd, in places, the game itself seems damn cool. It’s refreshing to see an SF strategy game that isn’t obsessed with missiles and lasers and aliens, first of all, and the way the game is split into 4 phases seems quite clever.
I’m not really backing anything on Kickstarter these days, but if this game gets made I’ll almost certainly buy it day 1.
12/03/2013 at 17:39 chabuhi says:
Is this sort of a spiritual reboot of Sierra’s Outpost from 20 years ago? If so, I am fully on board!
Or is it more like Astronaut: Moon, Mars and Beyond?
14/03/2013 at 02:55 Fallorn says:
I clicked on the simply because it reminded me of Outpost. I would absolutely love a version of that game that wasn’t legitimately broken.
15/03/2013 at 13:52 IndigoHawk says:
Sierra tried so hard to fix that game. Do you remember when they sent out new CDs (and maybe manuals?) with a major patch but still failed? An ambitious, broken game.
12/03/2013 at 17:58 Jimbo says:
If Joe Ybarra changes his name to Mr. Spoon I’ll think about it.
12/03/2013 at 18:16 Don Reba says:
Couldn’t he just search behind his couch pillows for that amount?
As for the game… As much as I like the idea of a realistic moon colonization simulator, the plan sounds kind of shaky. There are four different mechanics — get any of them wrong, and the game will be ruined. And it also relies on a central server to serve moon data.
I hear the message about the guy not being in EA, but there is such an EA level of cluelessness in that campaign: claiming credit for Interplay’s games, the mere fact of mentioning the publisher in the wake of the SimCity ordeal, and announcing stretch goals beyond what any other Kickstarter campaign has ever managed to collect before any indication that the project would even get funded.
I still pledged, though.
12/03/2013 at 18:57 Baddiekins says:
Why do the words Electronic Arts come before the name of the man creating this game when they have nothing to do with it? The starting of this article makes it sound like he still works at EA. That completely destroyed any credibility Joe Ybarra had with anyone born after the 80′s who didn’t have the sense to read his wikipedia page like I did.
12/03/2013 at 19:03 Brun says:
Or you could use a little common sense to reason that:
1) EA would never let one of their own – even the co-founder – make their own pet project while still working for the company.
2) EA wouldn’t be using Kickstarter.
3) This game doesn’t really fit in with other things that EA are doing.
Leading you to conclude that the guy doesn’t work for EA anymore.
12/03/2013 at 20:06 derella says:
Pfft! There is no common sense on the internet, as evidenced by several posts in this comment thread.
13/03/2013 at 08:44 Lord Custard Smingleigh says:
I have an overactive cynicism node, because I suspect there is a team of EA people in suits so sharp you could use them to cut cocaine on a mirror desperately trying to work out how to attach their remora-like mouthparts to the Kickstarter money hose.
12/03/2013 at 23:22 Biscuitry says:
The cross-shaped buildings in the article screenshot evoke memories of Outpost.
13/03/2013 at 03:58 Turkey says:
That’s what I thought it was until I read the headline.
13/03/2013 at 11:22 MeestaNob says:
This sounds interesting, and I’m half tempted to back it, however the stretch goals are FUCKING LUDICROUS.
I can barely name 5 computer games so far that have made $1+ million on Kickstarter, yet they have marked out stretch goals to $1.5M, $2.5M and $4M??? They’re out of their mind.
13/03/2013 at 12:50 Don Reba says:
And what about the contents of those stretch goals?
• For 1.5M they will give every backer another copy of the game, which costs them close to nothing, because scarcely anyone would have bought a second copy after getting one for free.
• For 3M they will open their Moon surface model, which costs them nothing.
• For 4M they will open their source code, which, once again, incurs no cost.
Also:
13/03/2013 at 17:07 chabuhi says:
Wow – hubris much?