The IndieGoGo project is finally open for funding

A teacher at the notoriously underfunded Miskatonic University Daycare Centre sends her charges off to sleep with a story from the Necronomicon (it was the only book she could find in the library that had pictures…) Through her not-quite-carefully-edited-enough account, we follow the dread Tiny Cthulhu on his travels through mind-blasting vortexes of madness and adorableness on his way to rain inevitable and cuddly doom on a blissfully unsuspecting humanity…. Sleep well, kids…

Are you personally offended by the astonishing lack of 3D Platforming titles for PC/Mac/Linux? Do you further feel that there’s simply not enough Eldritch Abomination in your life?

Well, in that incredibly unlikely case, you’ll probably be overjoyed to hear that THEORY32 has just launched an Indiegogo fundraiser for Tiny Cthulhu - its an upcoming game of adorable Lovecraftian mega-horror.

Donation perks include having your house made into a stomp-able model and placed in Cthulhu’s path during the ‘Modern Earth’-set finale, having a picture of your face appear in the ‘Lost and Hidden Shrine to Those Horrors That It Is Better To Die Than To Glimpse… Even For A Second…’ easter egg, and providing screams and/or last words for the destruction of a building.

Tiny Cthulhu - ‘Primal Chaos’ Testmap Footage

A web comic brought to life in a video game

Programmers, manufacturers and developers who want to realize their creative vision without signing onerous contracts or relinquishing rights to their intellectual property now have an alternative to venture capitalists. Crowdfunding—the collection of funds directly from a target audience—has taken off. Small donations are adding up to hundreds of millions of dollars, many of them channeled through a service called Kickstarter.

Launched in 2008, Kickstarter is one of the leading crowdfunding services. According to an interview in online publication Talking Points Memo with Yancey Strickler, one of Kickstarter’s founders, the company is currently on track to award more money in 2012 than the entire fiscal year 2012 budget for the National Endowment for the Arts.

Of course, Kickstarter isn’t the only option. Besides other general crowdfunding sites such as Indiegogo, there are also focused alternatives, such as Feed the Muse for musicians, 8-Bit Funding for indie games and Sponsume for United Kingdom creators.

Kickstarter works this way: Artists create a project in one of 13 categories—from music and photography to publishing and technology—with a minimum funding goal and a funding duration of at least 30 days. Backers select a pledge amount—from $1 to $10,000—and if the goal is met before the deadline, Kickstarter takes a 5 percent cut and, through Amazon Payments (which also charges a percentage of the transaction), processes all pledges and awards it to the designer (which is taxable as income).

If the goal is not met, then no pledges are collected and the artist gets nothing.

But just because you’ve met your goal, it doesn’t mean you stop collecting pledges. Fundraising continues until the deadline date, even if the goal is met beforehand, resulting in some wildly successful projects. An early example was Diaspora, in which four New York University students asked for $10,000 to create open-source social media software. Their project resonated with those looking for an alternative to Facebook, and the students ultimately raised $200,000 via Kickstarter.

Read more HERE

CraftStudio is an upcoming collaborative gaming making tool for Linux, featuring Minecraft style blocky graphics.

The tool aims to bridge gap between developers and gamers by simplifying content creation. Gamers with no particular experience on game development will be able to easily

- create, paint and animate 3D models (characters, objects) out of blocks
- craft infinite maps (think Minecraft’s creative mode), painting your own blocks to create whatever universe you want
- give life to their worlds using a visual scripting system

Everything is done in real-time, you can collaborate with friends or strangers over the Internet. You can also set up your own server or join an existing project.

Check out the videos. CraftStudio is already looking impressive at Alpha stage:







Some More Features

- Built-in revision system, you can go back in time and restore old versions of your assets. (already implemented)
- Collaborative rich-text document editing à la Google Docs for laying out your game’s story or gameplay mechanics (already implemented)
- Project access policies & moderation features so you can choose whether your project is private or anyone can join and help. No text files editing, it’s all part of the main client. (partly implemented)
- It will run on Windows / MacOS X / Linux when finished (currently a Windows pre-alpha build available)
- A store to find and publish models, maps, behaviors or entire games.
- Create any type of game you want: RPG, RTS, Platformer, FPS etc.

CraftStudio is currently on Indiegogo looking for funds. With a target of $16K, they have already raised $7K.

About 38 days are left in funding campaign. For $10 you will get a CraftStudio premium account and for $20 you will get a premium account plus a copy of their first game (dungeon crawler) made from CraftStudio. There are all sorts of other rewards too. Check out their Indiegogo page.