In October 2013 Square Enix announced it was partnering with Indiegogo to create a new crowdfunding platform called Collective , to help developers turn their pitches into games. Today, Collective went live, revealing the first three games that users can vote on.
As a sucker for giant robots looking at the first batch of projects on Collective, I'm personally most interested in World War Machine , a “post-human role-playing game.” The details on it are pretty vague at this point, but the game's page describes it as an open-world, cooperative game, where you stomp around a humanless earth, finding items and customizing your “Machine.”
The look of these Machines is what really grabbed my attention, splitting the difference between the Gundam and MechWarrior schools of giant robot design. They're created by Aaron Beck, who also worked on District 9 and Elysium. Also on Tuque Game's small team are creative director Jeff Hattem, who previously worked on the Far Cry and Splinter Cell games, and Daniel H. Wilson, author of Robopocalypse .
Next is Kitfox Games' Moon Hunters , a procedurally generated, open-world, four-player cooperative game the developer says will play a little like a 2D Legend of Zelda, only with character progression, crafting, and a non-linear story.
Strangely, of the three projects, Ruffian's' Game of Glens is the only one on the project to receive more “no” votes than “yes” votes (currently at 63 to 37 percent). The team is made up of industry veterans that previously worked on Crackdown, Grand Theft Auto, and Mortal Kombat. In the game, you'll manage your Highland Clan and compete in the titular Game of Glens. It mixes resource management, physical structure building, and projectile based combat.
Submission to Collective are curated by Square Enix before they're posted to Collective. If the games get enough votes from the community after 28 days, Square Enix will help the developers prepare and pitch the game for crowdfunding through Indiegogo. If the games don't make it through the voting process, Square Enix will provide feedback on why.
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