MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
Brian Fargo’s lateset Kickstarter Torment: Tides of Numenera has shattered crowdfunding records by amassing $1million in just over six hours.
To be developed by InXile Entertainment, the studio had asked for $900,000 to fund the new RPG, but more than 21,000 backers have now smashed that target pledging $1.1m at the time of writing, with 30 days left to go.
The landmark means that the project has reached the $1 million mark quicker than any other campaign in the site’s history.
The project has beaten previous record setter Android console Ouya as the fastest campaign to hit $1million, with Ouya taking eight hours and 22 minutes to do so.
The campaign for the tiny console went on to raise $8.5 million from more than 63,000 backers.
"Our heads are still spinning at the incredible response we have had from today’s support of our Kickstarter campaign," read a statement on the developer’s Kickstarter page.
"We had plans to roll out our stretch goals and to write our Kickstarter updates but never in our wildest dreams did we think we would fund this quickly."
Tormentt: Tides of Numenera is being designed as a single-player isometric and story-driven RPG, and will be developed used the Unity game engine. Current planned platforms for the title include PC, Mac and Linux.
The launch of the new crowdfunding campaign follows the success of the developer’s previous Kickstarter project Wasteland 2, which raised almost $3 million from more than 60,000 backers.
Despite being crowdfunded in March last year however, and with the developer beginning a new Kickstarter campaign, Wasteland 2 has still yet to see release, although it is currently slated to launch toward the end of the year.
A description on the website claims that the developer has taken to crowdfunding before Wasteland 2’s release to improve the cost-effectiveness of development.
“We’ve discovered that the best way to create a deep and rich RPG is to begin the pre-production process long before the production team have finished their current project,” reads the Torment Kickstarter description.
“If we waited to begin the design work for a large scale RPG until after the programming team has completed their work, our budget would increase by 50 per cent or more. This would result in the hiring and firing process that happens all too often in our industry. We want to break that model and keep our great team together. This is why it makes sense for us to begin work on Torment now rather than later.”
