Plane Sailing: Project Eternity Is Funded, & Then Some
What's a Project Eternity? Don't ask me, I've been away for a week. Apparently it's terribly exciting though. So exciting that developers Obsidian have managed to talk the general public into giving them some $1.4 million to make their brand new fantasy RPG, handily exceeded the $1.1 million they were after and achieving it within a mere three days. Obsidian are very happy about this (it happened "quicker than anyone expected" say they), and are now talking about stretch goals. These include 1) promising to reduce the bug count to a mere 17,891 in the event they reach $11m 2) turning it into Alpha Protocol 2 if they reach $22m 3) no, no I'm just affectionately joshing, don't get angry.
Already on the cards is a new playable race and attendant character creation options, plus a new companion, with more of that sort of thing plus Mac and Linux support promised if the cash mountain continues to grow. $2.4m will mean it will be released without DRM, which I guess means I can grumpily write PROJECT ETERNITY TO INCLUDE DRM now but come back and change this post later if the stretch goal is reached. IMPORTANT UPDATE: they're actually only thinking about what to do about DRM, it's not actually tied to stretch goals or confirmed or anything yet.
There's all sorts of other in-game stuff scattered across the stretch goals, such as player housing at $2.0m and a new faction at $2.2m. I would imagine those funding goals will be cheerfully met without issue, if the current rate of exhilarated money-throwing continues, but it does seem a mite sad to be partitioning the game's design so much even before it's in active development. And, indeed, to be affixing pricetags to features, which sounds a bit like a conceptual microtransaction thing. "Add $200,000 for gnolls". Still, brave new world and all that.
More stretch goals are promised, and you can see a man from Obisidian being very happy about the game's take-up here.
Earnest bit: I'm very excited that this game is happening, and very keen to see what Obsidian can achieve unfettered by the demands of publishers, licenses and sequels.
