As their Kickstarter failed, Interdimensional Games revealed that they had a plan to help the crowdfunding project continue and today, it has published what that plan is online. Staying away from Paypal and Kickstarter, instead Consortium: The Tower will be going to the new crowdfunding platform Fig that aims to allow players to invest in the game as well as back it in a more traditional rewards crowdfunding method.
The campaign's request will also appear to be going down while retaining about the same amount of funding. Interdimensional Games is going to be asking for $300 000 US instead of the $450 000 Canadian they were requesting on Kickstarter. With current rates of exchange that is going down a bit, from a US equivalent of 330k US to 300k US but dealing with less costs down the line in some cases as well as not having to deal with as much in platform charges likely helps. Also worth counting in that is the Canadian Dollar's recent relative surge which has risen about 8 percent since its January lows. Regardless of the details the 300k ask on the surface appears better to many users as a more reachable goal on a visible level regardless of any amounts of similarity between them.
Also revealed is how they will deal with the promised super backers. Everyone who backed the kickstarter campaign at $20 or higher will be sent an email with a custom URL that will allow them to back at the same amount (including early bird pledges) and get the same rewards in addition to the Super-Backer reward of all future Consortium Universe games for free.
CEO Gregory MacMartin wrote some about being accepted on FIG, "The Tower is our dream project with almost a decade of planning and R&D behind it, including our first game CONSORTIUM. The folks at Fig have recognized this, and by transitioning our campaign onto their platform Fig Publishing will be able to invite investors to join in realizing our project and participating in its potential success in the market.”
As a new change, Fig explained that they are waiving all their fees on rewards based crowdfunding going forward, meaning that the cut that Fig takes (similar to kickstarter) will be coming only from the investment supporters.
The campaign will launch on March 22nd.
Quick Take
I was really interested in the Tower and had something started write up wise that got distracted from finishing up. I am really interested in seeing how the team can do this and think it might be a good fit for them because of the product and while the ask is similar it appears to be less. The people at iDGi seem to have some great ideas for gaming and pushing the medium forward and I hope we get to see it.
