Have you all been following the Consumer Electronic Tradeshow in Las Vegas? Some awesome things to see there - from curved TV's, to dual OS devices (Windows and Android - on the same device?!) to intelligent homes. 2014 is going to be an awesome year for Tech, I think.
In case anyone missed it, we celebrated New Year's this past Wednesday. You can look forward to incorrectly writing 2013 on all your correspondence for the next few weeks.
From Around The Web
Some companies, like Lego, can be really awesome. Thanks to Doctor Tyche for sharing this with us!
Arclight Comics is represented in this Fanterview by Edward Williams
Well, hello there! First off, I’d like to thank you for being a supporter of Missing Worlds Media (MWM) and our first project, City of Titans!
How did you first become interested in comics? I’m an 80’s baby, so I grew up in the 90s (best time to grow up, hands down!). My first exposure to comics (or superheroes rather) were the slew of animated television series back then: X-men, Batman, Spider-Man and so on. It was the X-men that really resonated with me though. Here were these people with great powers, but were feared and hated because they were different. That spoke volumes to me because I could relate to that. Plus I’ve never seen anything like it before in my life. That’s what really propelled me into becoming an artist, too. I colored and drew on everything after the premiere. From there on out I was hooked.
Any favorite characters in particular? My favorite characters happened to be blue: Beast, Archangel, and Nightcrawler. Where characters such as Jean Grey and Ororo could blend in with society they could not. As an African American that really hit home for me at that age (6). I knew I was different and I knew some people treated me as such. No matter what I did, no amount of “good” would cover that up for some people. Hank was brilliant, but all people saw was his mutation. Kurt was a great man of faith (I’m a preacher’s kid, so I took to that), but the church demonized him. It was so important to me as a young boy to see how they overcame those prejudices and struggles. Even though they looked like monsters, the inside was what mattered. Hearts of gold. Warren might be hit or miss there. ;-)
You were pretty excited for the X-Men movies, then! Any of those stand out as your favorite (or least favorite?) This might come as a shock, but I am not that big a fan of the X-films. Were some of them good? Yes. But as an avid reader and fan I did not like their transition from the source material to the big screen. After Wolverine Origins I pretty much threw in the towel with the X-films and have been in that vocal minority screaming, Give the rights back to Marvel! With the exception of Iron Man 2, Marvel has outdone themselves in film. Excelsior, as Stan would say.
Have any of the recent comic to movie translations really stood out to you then? The Avengers. That wasn’t a movie---that was an EVENT! That was a year’s worth of expectation that exploded that Friday opening night. That was the first time I cosplayed, too. I was Hawkeye and my best friend was Cap. We took pictures with kids and everything. That had to be the pinnacle of geekdom that year.
I’ve never done cosplay - is it intimidating the first time? It is at first. People are looking at you like you’re on fire or something, but then you kind of forget about what people have to think and get to the fun part of it. After a while we received compliments from people in the crowd. We also came across a few others that night. It was pretty epic.
I drive a SMART car, so people already stare at me like I’m on fire. Is this a different level of fire? Like - oh, hey - ‘Your shirt’s on fire’ or ‘ERMAGHERD-Your-House-Is-Burning-Down’ level of fire? LOL! It’s more of like a bonfire. It catches your eye and it draws attention, but nothing of that level. Does that make sense?!
It does, thank you for clarifying that.
What was the first MMO you played? Since then, any favorites or ones you keep finding yourself returning to? City of Heroes. I’ll never forget it. I read about it in Wizard magazine and immediately joined the pre-Beta forums. The community is what really kept me there. I’ve never experienced something like it in my life. I’ve only been able to come back to it----well, until they sunsetted the thing. I’ve tried Champions Online, DC Universe Online, and Marvel Universe Online. They just don’t compare. Marvel U Online is just----ugh, good Lord. Next question. Lol.
How did the shutdown of CoH hit you when you first heard it? I was shocked like most. It didn’t make sense to me. Here was a great game creating revenue for the company and all of a sudden the plug gets pulled. No explanation whatsoever. It felt like a scandal. We needed Olivia Pope on this one. LOL!
What was one of the things you found different in the CoH community than any other online MMO community?There was something truly remarkable and inspiring about it. Here was this nucleus of high-octane, creative energy that built a universe bigger than the game itself. Characters came to life. They weren’t avatars built for end-game raids. They took on personalities, emotions, and had stories. No other community has been able to replicate this. Champions might come as a close second, but City of Heroes had the best. Have you seen the Virtueverse? The amount of creativity there alone is a testament to the community, and that’s from a single server.
Do you think it’s something to do with the genre of MMO - superheroes - that lends itself to have such a robust and involved community? Yes. Superheroes are just special. They’re American mythology. They are the things we as children dream of being---and nothing stops us from believing we can be these people because as a child the imagination is infinite. But something happens to us as adults. We stop believing, stop imagining, and shut down. City of Heroes did something to fix that. For a brief moment in time, the children we once were could come out to play. The superheroes we imagined ourselves being became reality (as much as a 3D world would allow us to get). There were no limits, no rules----we were finally able to take to the skies and be that ideal we strived for as children. It was us reconnecting with our imaginations and childhood, and with a game that good, it let us get wild.
Come back next Friday for Part Two of our Fanterview with Arclight Comics where we talk about the how company was formed, the challenges of a start up comic book company, and City of Titans!
Steve "Minotaur" Dannell, forum mod and prospective QA person
I'm just amazed at the amount of money that has come in and the speed it arrived. Seeing a load of people I played CoH with, some of the old Paragon people and some people who I know never played the game among the list of donors is wonderful. Hoping for a long trip up the stretch goal mountain too as there are lots of exciting things to be found there.
Now the real work starts, we will have the tools we need and need to create a world that will excite and make sure people feel their money has been well spent. If we can create a framework for a wonderful community as CoH did, only then will I truly feel we have accomplished our goal.
Thank you so much for your support
----------
Jack "Olantern" Snyder, Staff Writer
I'm ... awed? Overjoyed? Astonished? Delighted? Well, I'm definitely at a loss for words!
Thank you, from the uttermost depths of my heart. Your outpouring of support over the past week has humbled me, inspired me, and thrilled me. I arrived home less than a week ago Tuesday night, exhausted from a disappointing week of work on my day job, to discover the Kickstarter alive and numbers rapidly climbing. It was like a breath of oxygen on a high mountaintop. With my fellow Staff writers, I watched the first several hours obsessively, like an excited family huddled around a tiny TV screen watching a premiere in the old days.
Exciting as that was, it was nowhere near as thrilling as seeing us reach our goal today. Much as writing for the project is a labor of love to me, it's wonderful to see someone else have faith in it, too. A prominent literary agent once said that within every writer is an artist, who writes for the pure joy of creation, and an entertainer, who writes to feel the adulation of being read and appreciated. It's a profoundly warming feeling to have my inner entertainer validated a little!
But reaching this milestone isn't really about me. It's about you, the City of Titans community. Your enthusiasm, loyalty, and faith made this moment possible. We will do everything we can in the coming weeks, months, and years to fulfill the trust you've placed in us.
Excelsior!
-Olantern
----------
Ryan 'KelpPlankton' Gioia, 3D Artist and Animator.
This is really crazy how fast everyone's come together to support us. I'd particularly like to extend a thanks to the former City of Heroes developers who've not only supported us via the Kickstarter, but also helped get the word out about City of Titans. A game like this is something I've always wanted to see get made, and the opportunity to be part of helping it come together is something I'd never pass up, so it's nice to see so many other people feel the same way! I'm just as excited to play the game as anyone else.
Now I just need to figure out how to blackmail the team into having water powers ready by launch...
----------
Christopher "Roadkill" Denny - Foley Artist/Audio Engineer
Wow! Wow wow wow wow wow WOW!!!! What's that again? 5...6 days and we reached our goal?!
What a community!!!
Hang on a second
*Wipes one manly tear from face*
You guys are the absolute best!!! You guys also deserve the very best, and that's what I aim to provide for you guys! At the beginning of the kickstarter I was scared "what if we don't reach our goal?" Well, ladies and gentlemen, you've done it! Now I know the next part isn't so fun for you guys - Waiting - Waiting for the game to arrive, waiting for your financial efforts to pay off, but it will SO be worth it! Thank you all, from the very bottom of my heart for everything!!!
It wasn't that long ago I was reading up on gaming news and came across an article describing the goals of the Phoenix Project and made the decision to join the team, now here we are - I'm rambling...Seriously, all, I'm in awe here, I can not thank you enough!
Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you!!!
This project is a labor of love, blood, sweat, and tears for all of us. We vowed to create a new home for a very special community and welcome all new members with open arms.
It will take time and a lot more effort to do this right...but thanks to you we can fulfill the parting words of Paragon studios and "fly free".
A little over a year ago, a community came together in a show of support for a studio and a game that had brought them together. They gathered by the thousands in an online plaza to show that, even with the game distributor’s lack of responsiveness to various pleas and attempts to bargain, they were not beaten, and they were not broken.
That community had many plans to ensure that they would not remain homeless indefinitely. If all else failed, there was Plan Z: make a new game to continue the spirit of the game that was lost. That plan produced a group known as the Phoenix Project.
Now, it is time to come together once again in the name of heroism and adventure. Plan Z spawned the Phoenix Project, and we've come along well. We are now a budding game studio called Missing Worlds Media. We have our plans and much of the groundwork laid out, and now we need you. But first, some information about why we feel we are worthy of your support.
MWM is registered as a business in Washington State, but the people working here are paying with their time, effort, and every spare dollar they have to get the project this far. Game designers, writers, coders, artists, support staff, skilled workers of all kinds have put in thousands of hours of work in service to the community they love, and to the hope that the new world we are creating will serve not just as well but even better, as improvement was always the example set by the game that initially set us in motion.
Our group includes a wide range of skilled personnel, in fields related to both actual game production and making sure we earn enough with that game to keep the lights on indefinitely. We have published novelists, coders with decades of experience, so many experienced pen-and-paper designers that almost every department has at least one or two, artists in a variety of specialties, copyeditors, historians, process specialists, marketers… all spending their otherwise free time working on this project, with so much dedication that I had to make a rule requiring everyone to take some downtime periodically so that people wouldn’t burn themselves out by working every waking moment.
The community that served as our base deserves a game that continues to grow and improve, and it deserves not to be treated as a niche- we are not just making this game for the people who played before, we are building it for all the people who dream about being heroes and villains.
There is a greater audience now, thanks to the movies, than there has ever been before, and we will reach them. We want our game to continue the tradition of being welcoming to “non-standard” MMO players, people who do not consider themselves gamers, who don’t have time to dedicate hours of scheduled time to a game, but who nonetheless feel the pull of adventure and the urge to don a cape and either save or menace a richly deserving metropolis.
We have the drive and the skills, now we need to be able to fully focus our efforts on creating that game. We have used volunteer contributions to cover our costs thus far, but that will not carry us to launch, and we are not willing to make deals with traditional venture capitalists for funding; making the game only for it to be in peril of ending the same way our predecessor did would show a distinct lack of respect for history.
Thus, we are relying heavily on this Kickstarter for two things- the basic funds to do what we need to do in the short term, and the credibility to be of interest to non-traditional sources of funding, investors who will support us in being a community-focused studio, rather than being all about the dollar signs.
If we can demonstrate that our community really does support us with more than just moral support, if we can show that this really is a viable market that the previous distributor disregarded, if we can show that a fan initiative can truly become a competitive MMO, we have won much more than we lost.
We will prove that a well-developed community is a force to be reckoned with, something that can outlast even the loss of the game that fostered it, and that there is value there beyond what the companies can control. That the community itself is a living entity that it does not pay to ignore.
We’re not looking for money to buy luxuries. Unless we have an insanely successful Kickstarter, we’re not even looking to start having payroll yet. We are looking for money to make sure our developers have the hardware and software to do their work as efficiently as possible, to pay for licenses so that we can legally release what we’re making, to pay for legal advice so that we avoid making a great game but losing it all to an avoidable legal pothole a year later, to cover server costs for our growing forums and eventual live testing; in general to pay for the things that people working for free simply cannot provide.
So, now you know what we intend to do with your support, monetary and otherwise. Even if you do nothing whatsoever with regard to this Kickstarter, thank you for your support so far. We could not have gotten anywhere near here without you. If you want to do something, remember- every contribution to the Kickstarter, no matter how small, proves the numbers in our community.
If you have the money for a larger contribution, we have done our best to come up with worthwhile and valuable rewards at every level. If you cannot contribute money, help us get out the word. Our PR ninja is working hard to reach everyone, but I know that the community extends further than we could ever hope to reach directly. Let people know who we are, what we are trying to do, and what we are asking. That alone is invaluable.
We will be having a Livestream event with one of our 2D artists, RocketCat, at 8pm Eastern on Friday night (October 4th) and many of our volunteers will be present for at least part of that event. Myself, I will be doing my best to be present for all of it. I hope to see many of you there.
We have done what was promised - there has been no giving up. All efforts to save our home were for naught. We are undaunted - we will build a new home, and better. Join us now, in striking a blow against insensitive corporate mentality, and for community. Help us build a new gameverse worthy of the loyalty and spirit of this community and all those who will come forth in the future and become part of it. Help us bring stories of heroism and villainy straight out of the four-color pages to the internet once more. Help us prove that a sufficiently determined community can truly save a world.
