Tech Crunch 50!

[Will]

Thanks for being patient with us guys, as we had to go covert ops mode for a little while. Today we've got some huge news, and we hope the wait has been worth it. We're a finalist at Tech Crunch50! Damon will be presenting at 3:00pm PST, and you can watch it live - including never before seen game demo footage, at http://www.techcrunch50.com/2008/conference/

For those who haven't heard of Tech Crunch, it's a gathering of the most promising startups around the world and "launch them in front of our industry’s most influential VCs, corporations, fellow entrepreneurs and press."

We've gotten tons of interest through this event, and even some new core team members who have made a great positive impact already. But for now watch the presentation and the demo, and by all means give us feedback on everything you hear and see.

[SnipingAngel]

Sweet mabey we will get more people lol
But its good to have the forums back up

[amz181]

WHOOOOO! 25 mins left, good luck

[fanatik]

Hope things go well for you guys. Good luck!

[Will]

The event is running behind, we're after footnote and causecast.

[hanstin]

amz181 is a noob

[a chewy rock]

The demo looked great but I wish they would've let him show some more.

[amz181]

amz181 is a noob

Stop bullying me! lolz, you sneaky sun of a lemur

Can i just say congratulations! Your new buisness model is actually a stroke of genius, and im not just saying that.

Its was brilliant. This way you can get it to market quicker, and be able to finetune it much more. In essence its just a series of betas.

Seriously, its a really great idea. I am utterly convinced that this MMO will change how we percept multiplayer games.

Well done

[jimmy6154]

Out standing Job guys. The demo looked awesome! and you got great props from the judges.. WTG!!!

[amz181]

That donnie guy seemed really excited about it. And he should be too.

Im still confused a little thought... Is this game F2P now?

[Will]

Sorry about the tech problems! =) TC wasn't really set up to show off a game like this. It looked great last night at the tech test!

Yes, it will be free to play. Either at first, or continuously. The general idea is that we build the game from the ground up. We start with the ground level and build from there, asking the community what they want and how they like it. It will NOT be User generated content, it will be user suggested content.

[jimmy6154]

it was great, you did fine.. don't sweat it.

[Rauko]

My own PBBGrpg is at a point in its development when the entire past year of gameplay will soon be readjusted and re-released as a whole package, instead of bits at a time, somewhat like what you are suggesting.
So I have one piece of advice and another item of concern:

I trust that you know this, and what you just said, Will, reinforces that trust. There will come a time when you have to decide what to make, which suggestions to accept and do, maybe with modification, and a time when you have to reject others.
What will guide this process is your vision for the final product. Please don't get bogged down details and try to fine-tune and tweek everything before that product is in a fairly finished state. You won't be able to please everyone. Try to please yourself as a player and fulfill the vision for the game. That must stay priority or will end up, as the judge said, being nothing to everyone.

That leads to the item of concern: While the idea of releasing smaller bits of content at a time is great, they still need to be fairly bug free or you will lose the interest of all but the most devoted KW fans.

If you want a long and very player interactive open beta, thats great. But don't release final game a little bit at a time and think everyone will stick around. Just make sure you're flying this under the right flag (an open beta) so you don't turn off players that you could capture later when its a final product.

That was a pretty serious post so I don't want to forget to simply say congratulations on coming this far, goodluck in the finals and great work with everything you've done. Its a lot of hard work and I know your hearts are really in it, which can be very hard at times, but will hopefully prove to be very rewarding in the end.

[DarkVelvet]

I'm a sooo Pissed i was unable to view this today!!!!!

Are you going to be able put up a recording of this soon?? tell me you guys recorded this!

[Lord Aries]

I'm a sooo Pissed i was unable to view this today!!!!!

Are you going to be able put up a recording of this soon?? tell me you guys recorded this!

http://www.techcrunch50.com/2008/conference/presenter.php?presenter=93

[amz181]

Reddo> theyre not stupid, they wont take every idea some1 gives to them.

as will said, the content is suggested by users, not genrated by them.

And when will we see a full video, it was cut brutally short.

please, pretty please.

[jimmy6154]

And when will we see a full video, it was cut brutally short.

please, pretty please.


that would be awesome if that were posted!!!

[a chewy rock]

I was mad at the guy that said something along the lines of, "I think they get it, keep it short, around 30 seconds." I can't believe they cut the demo short like that.

[jimmy6154]

I was mad at the guy that said something along the lines of, "I think they get it, keep it short, around 30 seconds." I can't believe they cut the demo short like that.


yes, I heard that to and was hoping that Damon would just ignore him.

[Rauko]

Reddo> theyre not stupid, they wont take every idea some1 gives to them.

as will said, the content is suggested by users, not genrated by them.

And when will we see a full video, it was cut brutally short.

please, pretty please.

Since Reddo hasn't posted I'm going to assume you meant my post. Which makes me think you didn't read it real hard :P

Cause I said that I trust they aren't going to do exactly what you said, my point was that they can't even get bogged down by GOOD ideas that just don't fit within the vision and range of the what they want.

[Rhiannon]

You guys did fine. You had that damn tech issue and got through it all. Be proud of yourselves. That's good news about more hype. I really like the idea of building up the mmo through evolving phases. Including suggestions from the community and being straight forward, seeing all sides of the spectrum. :) Nice work.

[jimmy6154]

I agree Rhiannon, and you did it all without goddy pictures of celebrities and boring video's. You were real straight forward and it was great imo.

[Darthorious]

Darn it I can't believe I missed it by 1 day gahhhh....

Then got excited to see the link to watch and it was just the panel talking nooooo...

Worse yet I could have recorded the stream had I realized lol...

So was there any game play/animations shown or was it just a quick run down of what the goal was?

[jimmy6154]

go look on kwfanatic.com (http://www.kwfanatic.com), we got the recorded view of the whole thing.

[Avacon]

Yup exellent job guys love the level layout and srry that the main gammer comp failed on ya but its a blessing in dusgize becuase now with them knowing it can run on a laptop you can open the market to not just tower gamers which with collages is alot of ppl. so exellent job and also will you get a copy of the new footage of the level layout? reason asking is it was very brief shoot of the lvl and was wondering if you were able to show more.

if so thx in advance.... www.kwfanatic.com (http://www.kwfanatic.com)

[Darthorious]

Oh wow that was a pretty cool demo I especially liked the snow n ice. It's not too often you see games with a snow area. Last MMO I recall playing with a snow areas was FFXI and they were my favorite areas.

Figures it's windows vista, I still get tons of calls to "fix computers" and when I see vista on the machines I have to shut them down, restart and then they work fine for a while untill vista hick-ups again.

I think the one guy that was kind of talking down about the idea as a whole was just caught up in a paradigm issue, although had some good points, doesn't realize the full extent of what this idea could produce.

OK now I'm getting excited for this game to come out lol...

[Yoyoyo]

Ahh the site is finally up! Ive been trying for a while. Anyway congratulations guys! Glad to see lots of progress!

[reddo]

Reddo> theyre not stupid, they wont take every idea some1 gives to them.
Since Reddo hasn't posted I'm going to assume you meant my post.
I still feel horrible now.
I can't find any recording of the demo on the techcrunch50 site. Maybe one of you kind gents/lasses could link one?

[jimmy6154]

err double post sorry

[jimmy6154]

I can't find any recording of the demo on the techcrunch50 site. Maybe one of you kind gents/lasses could link one?

guys head over to www.kwfanatic.com (http://www.kwfanatic.com) we have the video on our main page, just scroll down and you can't miss it.

[Damon]

cool thanks guys. Yeah there are some of them that don't have them up either they are probably just busy. Thanks KW Fanatic!

[reddo]

Jimmy saves the day! Thanks mate.

10 minutes later..

I see crysis. Way up in the top left corner.

[Mister Matt]

Sean Parker is a tool

[DarkVelvet]

That was my thought exactly....errrr well more like "What a condesending Ass"

[jimmy6154]

one this that irritated me was the judge that spoke in pauses...

He was the one who spoke before and after the demo... clearly taking the majority amount of time. "to a movie...to a song..."bah

[amz181]

sean parker was the ginger one yeah?

you can tell he had no childhood

[Rauko]

There is a company/game that has done what you are talking about already. It has been fairly successful commercially, but mostly successful from a community and development point of view.

The game is Mount & Blade by TaleWorlds and it is a wonderful example of independent gaming development. They just released the final version after a couple years of making it. I came in just over a year ago at version .6 something. The final release is in the forums, so ignore the download on the site, go to the forums and hit the link near the top.

Anyway, they released it in playable versions that were the entire game, but without many features and areas. The map just about doubled and they added cities and forts between .6 and .7 and they add castle and city sieging in .8 and so on. Community was very involved and they made the game to be mod friendly.

Might be a good idea to check it out and see how they did things, maybe even contact Armagan the main dev and see if he has any advice.

PS: if you want to do mounted combat - THIS game is how its done, simply superb

[amz181]

There is a company/game that has done what you are talking about already. It has been fairly successful commercially, but mostly successful from a community and development point of view.

The game is Mount & Blade by TaleWorlds and it is a wonderful example of independent gaming development. They just released the final version after a couple years of making it. I came in just over a year ago at version .6 something. The final release is in the forums, so ignore the download on the site, go to the forums and hit the link near the top.

Anyway, they released it in playable versions that were the entire game, but without many features and areas. The map just about doubled and they added cities and forts between .6 and .7 and they add castle and city sieging in .8 and so on. Community was very involved and they made the game to be mod friendly.

Might be a good idea to check it out and see how they did things, maybe even contact Armagan the main dev and see if he has any advice.

PS: if you want to do mounted combat - THIS game is how its done, simply superb

ZOMG! do you play it? I play it too lolz.

The game is amazing, im about to buy it retail instead of the serial code so ive only got the trial of 1.0

But seriously guys, this game is amazing, its mounted controls are just too insane, and the parry/shield system is brilliant.

I would love it if kaos war had a similar control setup with this, instead of crappy point and click

[a chewy rock]

Once again Mount & Blade is brought up. It's such a good game. You guys really should check it out if you haven't.

[Mister Matt]

I found out about it through Avacon about a month ago. I was stunned with how good it was. The mounted combat in it is definitely amazing. If KW plans on having mounted combat, definitely take a look at how those guys did it, Damon and devs.

[amz181]

MOUNT & BLADE FTW!!!!!

(i really have no idea what ftw means)

[jimmy6154]

MOUNT & BLADE FTW!!!!!

(i really have no idea what ftw means)

So true, it is a great game and all the mods that you can get from it as awesome as well.

[amz181]

So true, it is a great game and all the mods that you can get from it as awesome as well.

i got the graphical enhancement one which i have on always

and i also have 300 on sometimes for fun

[jimmy6154]

yup, both those are fantastic.

[a chewy rock]

MOUNT & BLADE FTW!!!!!

(i really have no idea what ftw means)

FTW = For The Win like For The Horde or something like that.

[amz181]

FTW = For The Win like For The Horde or something like that.

ahh! The cookie crumbles! :D thx

[Rauko]

But my main reason for bringing it up was the parallel of how M&B was developed and how KW is being proposed. I never made the connection until I was reading the final release post of M&B and remembered all the releases over all this time.

They would basically release a full, playable game every several months that added a lot of new stuff with each version.
If you had played the old .5 or .6 version and then played the new final version, its like an entirely new game (content wise that is)

Also, an interesting idea they used was allowing you to purchase the game ahead of time.
I bought it way back in .6 and I think it cost me $14. The understanding was, with each version that came closer to the final, that cost would go up until it finally reached the final version and the final cost.
So for those who were faithful early on they could buy a serial code that worked with each new version as well as the final, but for cheaper. This gave them funds from players WHILE they were still developing the final product. Simply brilliant in my opinion.

I know you are saying KW will be free, but perhaps offer some kind of upper membership that can be purchased one time. Like a special "Supporter" (in LotRO a similar thing would be the Founders, who pre-ordered for open beta) that can get a couple in-game items or access to certain NPCs with better repair prices or something. You can offer it for less to start and increase it as the product and community grows.

[Tanner]

I just wanted to say good job at tech crunch 50 keep up the good work.

[Ziegler]

FTW = For The Win like For The Horde or something like that.
that's the meaning for the internet kiddies.

Bikers: Forever Two Wheels

Beligerant Bikers(this would be me): F**K The World

.....these came about before most of you were a twinkle in your daddies eye. 8)

[a chewy rock]

I think it's safe to assume that the majority of us here are gamers, or internet kiddes as you said it, and not bikers.

[hanstin]

I think it's safe to assume that the majority of us here are gamers, or internet kiddes as you said it, and not bikers.

Wel.. i am a biker sort of.... so thats 2

[jimmy6154]

I owned a Harley once, does that count?

[a chewy rock]

You guys are just supposed to agree. This is why we can't have nice things.

[Bladesofglory]

Erm... I am learning how to ride a bike does that count? ::) And by the way did you guys win the proposal?

[Avacon]

sorry don't use bikes yet.. but the game ordeal yes i do have alot of background with them

[danielto]

Good luck!!!

[amz181]

Good luck!!!

its happened already :p

welcome.