Q5. Does that mean that Infinity will not enter in beta in 2011 ?
Unfortunately no, Infinity will not enter the beta stage in 2011, and it is unsure whether development will be advanced enough for 2012. In the short term we need to focus on the company's growth so that we can eventually work full time and open offices. After that, we are hoping to boost productivity a lot, so this is some kind of trade-off with some uncertainties.
A lot of people have contacted us to suggest that we do a Kickstarter. Over the last 6 months we've studied this possibility very seriously and, given the amount of positive feedback on the forums, it has been decided that we'll launch a Kisktarter some time this year. We were amazed and humbled to see so many people are considering pledging hundreds or thousands of dollars and it gives us a lot of hope that it's going to be successful!
The exact timing hasn't been determined yet. We don't want to rush it as we believe we will probably only have one chance to do it and we really need to do it right. While Chris Robert's Star Citizen was a tremendous success, Elite Dangerous barely made it and some other space game Kickstarters have failed contrary to our expectations ( I'm thinking of Nexus 2 in particular which I personally thought had a lot of potential ). Doing it right includes finalizing the game design documents, the budgets (low, medium, high, etc), the stretch goals, producing a polished video, and lastly generating enough content to keep releasing new stuff for at least 30 days. This is going to take some additional time but we will keep everyone abreast of our progress. Realistically, you shouldn't expect the campaign to launch before mid 2013.
Without going into too many details here's a brief overview of our Kickstarter campaign thus far (subject to change):
The project is named Infinity: Battlescape (code name: IBS) and will be the logical successor to the ICP (Infinity combat prototype) released in 2007.
It will be a standalone game, probably sold at a lower price point (to be determined later) via digital distribution
It will take place in the Infinity universe and be focused on multiplayer combat
It will feature the seamless planetary engine, the full extent of this will likely be determined by the amount of money we raise from the Kickstarter
It will most likely take place in a single seamless solar system and a "map" will simply be a conflict with its own unique set of circumstances taking place at some location within this solar system
A lot of its development will be reused for Infinity such as the content (art) and some client code
We feel that it's particularly important that our community understands this last point. Many people have expressed their lack of interest in a Kickstarter for a game that isn't Infinity - which is totally understandable. However we don't really consider IBS to be independent of Infinity; it is more like a first step to the whole MMO that will be marketed independently even though it shares a lot of content and code. Unlike the ICP in 2007, work on IBS will be almost entirely reused for Infinity while allowing us to gain experience as a dev-team and company. Additional benefits will include gaining a reputation for something other than being vaporware and of course generating revenue to help finance our next project (ideally the full Infinity). Therefore we believe pledging for IBS should be seen as a form of investment into making Infinity a reality sooner.
As many of you have no doubt heard we had plans to release an interactive tech demo at the end of 2012. After listening to feedback from the community we decided to delay it for strategic reasons. Since we think we're only going to have one shot at doing this Kickstarter we felt that releasing the demo at the same time as the Kickstarter would help us maximize its chances for success. Otherwise we would be in danger of over-hyping the game too soon and not having enough interest for when we really need it.
Our prior lack of updates were largely driven by long periods of time working on low level engine plumbing that often didn't result in new sparkly visuals. Since we're in the process of wrapping up most of that work we expect the frequency of our updates to increase a over the coming months - 2013 should be an exciting year for all of us!
Making the case for Battlescape
Needless to say the response to the 2012 retrospective has been overwhelming. There have been many passionate arguments made in support of and against building Infinity: Battlescape (I:B). We would like to take this opportunity to shed some more light on our rationale for choosing to pursue I:B in the near future instead of going directly for Infinity.
Cold Hard Facts
First off we would like to say that nobody wants Infinity to be made more than us. We’ve been working toward that goal for a very long time. That being said we would have to have one of the most successful campaigns in the history of Kickstarter for us to be able to build a minimally viable Infinity. Depending on the full extent of the features we chose to implement internal estimates have this number at around $5 million with a 2-3 year development cycle. How did we arrive at that conclusion? Well, here’s how.
For starters let’s do a comparison with everybody’s favorite game to compare against Infinity – Eve Online. Eve was started in 2000 after CCP raised $2.6 million from Kaupthing Bank and various private equity investors. It should also be noted that they were collecting revenue from the sales of games they had released previous to that but let’s run with the $2.6 million figure. Adjusting for inflation $2.6 million in year 2000 dollars is ~$3.4 million in 2012 dollars. That means to build Infinity we’d need around $1.6 million more than CCP needed to build Eve Online (again, not counting the additional revenue they already had).
We need the extra $1.6 million for a few reasons. Firstly the cost of building quality assets is higher now than it was then. These days you not only need a mesh with a texture but you also need normal maps, displacement maps, and instead of applying a handful of textures you now apply a bunch of materials each composed of multiple textures. Secondly, and most importantly, we currently have no office space nor infrastructure of any kind. The game is also a bit more ambitious than Eve was at that time.
Mitigating Risk
When we launch our Kickstarter campaign there will be a Kickstarter mandated section of our campaign page called “Risks and challenges”. Here we will obviously list the things that could possibly prevent us from being successful. Without a doubt the single largest liability we have is that we are all currently scattered around the world without any sort of infrastructure. Not only do we need to find suitable office space and figure out workarounds to frustratingly dated immigration law in both the EU and the US, but we also need to hire. To build Infinity we will have to hire a lot. Specifically we’ll need to build an engine team, gameplay team, server team, web team, IT, HR/Accounting/Admin, and finally when the game ships we’ll need customer support. Many established companies implode during periods of rapid growth due to the difficulties of scaling a company. We will face additional challenges because we will have little to no pre-established policies and procedures and our brand new workforce would have no experience working together. The cold hard, brutally honest truth is that we believe accepting your donations in the face of such a challenge would be incredibly irresponsible.
Enter Infinity: Battlescape
After coming to grips with these sobering realities we came up with the idea for a compromise that would, if successful, allow us to work toward releasing the full Infinity in a way that’s as responsible and likely to succeed as we can make it. We’re calling this compromise Infinity: Battlescape. The idea is that we release a smaller, arena style game that will allow us to lay the groundwork for our workforce, our physical infrastructure, the code, and lastly the assets for the full Infinity. Think of it as building the foundation for a house.
Some people have reacted strongly against the idea of playing an “arena” style space shooter. Rest assured that, while the primary focus of Battlescape will in fact be space combat, it will not be an arena shooter in the traditional sense. First of all our arena will encompass an entire solar system. Without getting into too many details the idea is to have a semi-persistent conflict that takes place across this solar system that will involve tactics and strategy. Another major focus of Battlescape, as well as the full Infinity, is the ability to participate in massive, star wars style fleet battles. This is a large technical challenge for us to overcome along with all of the other technical challenges we face in creating a game as big as an entire solar system. For example in a traditional FPS if you have 100ms of latency, as is frequently the case, and your character jerks around you will usually be off of where you were supposed to be by a few meters. When you are in a ship travelling 1000km/s and you lag for 100ms you will suddenly be 100km away from where you thought you were supposed to be. Building I:B will allow us to address many of the administrative and technical liabilities we currently have at a much smaller, more manageable scale.
Summary
In closing I would like to say that we are just as frustrated and just as disappointed as all of you are that our Kickstarter won’t be for the MMO Infinity. However we are optimistic that, with your support, Infinity: Battlescape will be a great game and will provide us with the foundation we need to properly pursue a project as large and ambitious as Infinity. We also believe that getting a game that takes place in the Infinity universe into your hands sooner rather than later is an added bonus.
We will release more information regarding the various gameplay details for I:B as we get closer to the launch of the Kickstarter later this year. As always we will be listening to your feedback on the forums and we greatly appreciate your support!
-Keith Newton
Proud member of Frustrated Association of International Losers Failing Against the Gifted and Superior (F.A.I.L.F.A.G.S)
I doubt that they can get money even for that I would love to see this game in its full glory one day, but sadly not enough people know or care about it, and they don't have any "known faces" that they will need in order to get any larger sum on KS.
I hope that I'm wrong, and they can pull this off because imo in some aspects Infinity is better than SC or ED.
Your insults will do nothing to blunt the agonies of your demise.
Sounds and looks not bad.
But i doubt it will get funded. And if it does, i have my doubts, that many people will play it for long, to make the 100 player multiplayer fun enough.
Enthoo Evolv ATX TG // Asus Prime x370 // Ryzen 1700 // Gainward GTX 1080 // 16GB DDR4-3200
Well I hope it does get funded and popular. Meaning the MMO version of it will come sooner I don't care for this prototype much, I want the full scale MMO they are planning for many years already
Proud member of Frustrated Association of International Losers Failing Against the Gifted and Superior (F.A.I.L.F.A.G.S)
it does look nice, especially that video showing the space battle around the capital ship, where he flies in between the structures. is there a game anyway in these videos though?.
it does look nice, especially that video showing the space battle around the capital ship, where he flies in between the structures. is there a game anyway in these videos though?.
Nah this game has been a loooooooooooooooooooooong time in development. It was originally planned to be an MMO. But it was just him doing everything (and a small community helping him out with designing models and such).
This is just for a small game set in the same universe but only focus on the space battles.
Though first Alpha should be around end 2016 and beta half 2017!! (according to perks)..
So don't expect to see any proper gameplay footage for some time.
Proud member of Frustrated Association of International Losers Failing Against the Gifted and Superior (F.A.I.L.F.A.G.S)
it does look nice, especially that video showing the space battle around the capital ship, where he flies in between the structures. is there a game anyway in these videos though?.
Nah this game has been a loooooooooooooooooooooong time in development. It was originally planned to be an MMO. But it was just him doing everything (and a small community helping him out with designing models and such).
This is just for a small game set in the same universe but only focus on the space battles.
Though first Alpha should be around end 2016 and beta half 2017!! (according to perks)..
So don't expect to see any proper gameplay footage for some time.
oh oh, only 11 days to go..
They need more advertisement going to get the amount needed...
Such a shame that they entered the KS game so late, so many people are just too weary now
Proud member of Frustrated Association of International Losers Failing Against the Gifted and Superior (F.A.I.L.F.A.G.S)
4 days to go and missing 24k still... Really hope they'll make it
Some planet archetypes they thought of:
-An icy planet with giant crystals
-A volcanic or dusty planet with massive volcanoes erupting rocks that could hit your ship and smoke reducing its visibility
-An ocean planet with a few islands
-A comet with its tail and micro meteorites that could damage your ship
-Solar flares that would require you to hide on the night side of a nearby planet close to the star at regular intervals
-Massive storms and lightning that could hit your ship in a gas giant
-A radioactive moon which would require ships to keep their shields on at all times
-A desertic planet with lots of dunes, sand and.. angry worms.. ( I’m a fan of Frank Herbert’s Dune universe, if that wasn’t obvious )
-Some organic-floating lifeforms like balloons floating in a thick atmosphere ( that would explode on contact, like mines )
-Tornadoes
-and much more.. ( if you have ideas that don't require new art assets, feel free to leave a comment ! )
Proud member of Frustrated Association of International Losers Failing Against the Gifted and Superior (F.A.I.L.F.A.G.S)
Derek Smart is trying to weasel his way into the project.
From Infinity Battlescape kickstarter comments.
"Derek Smart about 6 hours ago
I tend not to post in these things. But now I feel that I must, since he just created a new Twitter account (I have blocked several of his) to inject this crap in my feed. He was again blocked.
Any of you even remotely paying attention to that Tommy person should already know the motivation behind it. We've been dealing with that sort of thing since July. And they do it everywhere. And these are the sort of people you do NOT want in your community.
The fact that the funding surge continues, is testament to the fact that the backers of this project aren't idiots.
That said, my follow-up pledge is this:
If the project fails to fund here - and if he asks and we reach an agreement - I will fund it 100% by giving Keith's team total funding of $300K to complete it. Why? Because I trust them, implicitly, to deliver. The project isn't new to me, as I have been following it since the very beginning.
That's way less than what I spent to fund the third-party team that helped work on Line Of Defense Tactics, my multi-platform game and which is now releasing on Xbox One week of Dec 11th. And that is just a fraction of what that game cost to develop across all platforms.
That it all. As you were."
God help the game if that guy gets involved. It'll be stripped and abandoned before the year ends.
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I don't care for this prototype much, I want the full scale MMO they are planning for many years already 
