Running Man is now completely unlocked to all registered users
The winner of the Xmas competition
The Xmas competition is over and the winner has been drawn. The lucky winner of a 64 GB iPad with WiFi and 3G support is obliter8. Congratulations to him, and big ups goes out to everybody who completed Training Day 1 in Running Man. The iPad has just been ordered and is on it's way to obliter8.
Crowd funding - preorder and invest in Interstellar Marines
To newcomers it might not be too clear how things work, so we'll try to explain a bit about preorders and upgrades.
By upgrading your account to Frontline you are not only preordering the first game in the Interstellar Marines Trilogy - you are also investing directly in the development of the games. On top of that you will get exclusive pre-access to all upcoming releases as well as a shiny badge for your profile in the forum.
Spearhead is a limited account (only 75.000 available) which besides all the Frontliner benefits gives you all three games in the Trilogy at a very attractive price.
If you wish to support us more, you can buy Support Medals. Besides being an investment in the development of Interstellar Marines, you can "save up" for a Spearhead upgrade. 9 Support Medals can be converted to a Spearhead upgrade.
Your forum badge will also show how many Support Medals you have bought, AND your first Support Medal enables forum avatars.
The bottom-line is that your investment will result in real, tangible, forthcoming game titles.
Everything is still rolling forward - we just still need your help and appreciate all contributions - whether monetary or word of mouth.
Shop discount extended
We have decided to extend our 25% discount in our shop on Spearhead, Frontline and Support Medal upgrades to the end of the month.
Go to our Shop to upgrade your profile and support the development of Interstellar Marines.
From all of us to all of you
We gave Spearheads and Frontliners an exclusive present before christmas to juice up the christmas spirit. Allthough christmas is long gone we still feel that the rest of you should experience our small playground project made in Unity 3. Enjoy!
Download "Xmas 2010" Unity 3.1 Standalone (PC)
Download "Xmas 2010" Unity 3.1 Standalone (MAC)
Other news
- We made it to the Top 5 in the category "Players Choice - Upcoming Indie" at IndieDB and are very proud of our 4th place just behind Primal Carnage, Overgrowth and Natural Selection 2. We thank everybody who voted for us!!!
- A new weekly initiative "Ask the Developers" (or AtD for short) has emerged from the forum. It was spartan1997 who spawned the idea where the community can ask us questions, and Aevaris has picked it up and will make a poll each week on his own site based on suggested questions and send us the question which got the most votes. We look forward to receive new questions from you every week and will do our best to answer them. Read more about it here.
- We have rearranged the weekdays for Picture of the Week and Question of the Week now that Ask The Developers has arised. It will be as follows:
- Monday: Question of the Week
- Wednesday: Ask the Developers
- Friday: Picture of the Week
- We now have 57.847 registered users, 943 Spearheads and 95 Frontliners and the total sum of Support Medals is 1590.
For the Love of the Game,
The team at Zero Point Software
Click here to go to the original article
Hi I understand that the production costs for a "AAA" game are high and you need us to show active support for the love of the game. But what if you introduced a system were one can get support medals for introducing friends of them to the game. You will have a greater amount of registered members, potential investors and an overall more active community.
Any incentive and alternative way to support the game other than money would do. And it would be a stronger argument towards what you are trying to do or say that you are doing. Because the way support is given now is not that different from any other game out there, the only difference is that the investment is done during production rather than post production like when you buy any other game. Which is also questionable whether the project is slowly released and completed already behind closed doors.
Right now for me this is the case, that it could be for the love of money rather for the love of the game.
And not worth the investment till its done, since its completion might never happen or take indefinite time.
'AAA' games have preorders as well, some very very early on even. Remember Duke Nukem Forever? So it's not that different. As well, there are people working full time on this project, and currently their investors are limited, so their living income has to come from SOMEWHERE.
Also, they're not using the free version of Unity because graphics quality is severely impaired, and like it or not, graphics are a big way to attract people to your game. I've considered using Unity but for that exact reason the free version isn't all that appealing to me.
And it's not like they're doing anything. They have at least released some demo material, if not a 'demo' from the full game.
Long and short of it really, the things you're saying now have been said many times before (especially when they were having severe financial difficulties a little while ago), and much of the community backed them then and still backs them now.
Faith.
Man I'm really sorry but the more I check out about this game the more of a scam it seams.
You could be using the free version of the unity engine if you wanted, witch makes my statement before about your costs of production nullified.
Warning!
Warning!
Warning!
Other than money for virtual badges the only real support and involvement this team wants from the community is to stick around for as long as it takes for them to make a game that is as original and special as the best fps around... which for them is COD MW.
I hope I'm wrong.
I am harsh on this team because there doing something that could be great but they already failed and don't know it. Maybe they do though...
But the players that will invest definitely do not.
Anw the team now has a total of about 42 and a half thousand dollars from "support medals" I think that's enough to start doing it just for the love of it... release it for free and get it over with. either way I wont be playing...too boring already....
Anni, your first two comments were good, but the last 2 were uncalled for.
I can understand you are worried, I bought Spearhead myself half a year ago, so I'm worried they're not just gonna squander that money and never deliver, however:
It's not just the engine that costs money, think about a place to work and a team to pay, granted I am interested in how much they really need and whether they actually NEED that money, but they aren't exactly the only ones doing pre-order like stuff like this.
Overgrowth and NS2 also allow pre-purchasing to get the latest stuff, but these guys aren't as fancy in their PR(Overgrowth) or can rely on the popularity of a previous title(Natural Selection) and are just doing it slightly different.
Here people get multiple options on how much to spend, so they could provide some minor support now and when a release is looking more likely eventually upgrade later. Plus the stuff they've got is even playable for free in a different format.
It's doing it different, but in a way it's the same thing, I don't see why are you trying to flag them as untrusthworthy and scammers.
I'm worried too, but I'll just assume they aren't scammers and if there's no final product released, it's not because they didn't try or were doing a scam, but simply for reasons that even a bigger budget game can fail on.
Yeah your right I just wanted a respond that's why I kinda flipped there for a sec.
thnx.
Jeffman Get !!
Elementalist showing Duke Nukem example of pre-purchase isnt really the best, since its development could take another 100 years:D.
And besided all critics of their work i personally think they are doing really great job. And i am also thinking that they wont be using free version of Unity, not becouse of graphic but most becouse of splash mark, which is not acceptable for AAA game.