The weekend is finally upon us, and with it comes the close of the Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen and the relaunch of the official Pantheon site. A last minute breakthrough not withstanding, it looks as if the Kickstarter will fall short of its initial goal. The VRI team now transitions from their initial introduction to the market on to what will hopefully be a sharper, more focused push towards funding. Here are five reasons you should be excited about seeing what the weekend holds.
#1 - Tangible Funding Impact
Until the $800,000 figure is reached, the Kickstarter funds are entirely hypothetical. The team sees that $400k+ has been promised, as do investors and publishers, but they cannot really do anything with that. Starting this weekend, our direct contributions to the team (and the subscriptions that are already existing) start to flow directly to the team. As revenue is generated, the opportunity for the team to expand their production is increased. Ideas become tangible game elements.
#2 - Focused Developer Interaction
Selfishly, I loved having the developer interaction over at Project Pantheon, and hope that continues. However, a lot of time was also being spent over the last few weeks trying to promote the Kickstarter in various forums and formats. While that focus has shifted dramatically in the last week and a half towards this site, it really becomes official this weekend. Part of the VRI promise is that the subscription model in the forums will lead to a greater level of developer interaction. Here, and at our community sites, we will all be able to contribute ideas, listen to developer proposals, understand their thought process more thoroughly, and get to know a team that we will hopefully follow closely for the next several years. We are getting a peek behind the curtain very early here, which is very exciting (and at times terrifying and horrifying and wonderful and insightful). If you love watching a game being developed, there may be few places as fun as this starting on Saturday.
#3 - More Than Just Forums
No one needs a new Facebook account. But this team is putting together a site with social media aspects that will augment the forum model in a way that boosts relationship building and community interaction without killing off fan sites. This won't be the general Pantheon forum. It looks like discussion here will be focused and pointed, so as to allow the developers to pinpoint the exact info they are interested in seeing and keeping more speculative and news related discussion to the larger, more inclusive communities out there. But while we are here, we have a pretty wide opportunity to participate in Q&A's, help one another source various info across the net, reflect on classic MMORPG memories, and share photos that connect the community beyond just a basic forum. I've already filled up a lot of my profile pages doing exactly that. Communities are the reason the MMO portion of the RPG makes it worth putting up with all of the headaches that the genre has induced over the last 15 years, and hopefully this will be another bright spot.
#4 - New Additions
With the addition of actual revenue and a more robust site to direct users to, the VRI team can begin (and already has) adding additional members of the team in various capacities. This doesn't need to be an enormous team, but there are certainly some needs that need to be addressed right now. The sooner they can look up good talent and compensate them accordingly, the sooner those great ideas become tangible assets and the sooner we enter Terminus. Additional staff also means that the team won't be pressed to work the same lengthy hours to generate content to keep interest maintained; or that they could maintain a similar pace and crank out even more content for consumption.
#5 - Officially Official
I am as big a proponent of the community sites as anyone out there. I've spent the last 10+ years investing a lot of time in those sites as I follow the genre. But the legitimacy of a product never quite feels exactly right until the company creating it has established a meaningful web presence where new users can congregate. A site like this needs to be the first result on Google, and where players visit to learn about the project. Then, when they are hooked, they can begin to filter in and find a home at places like Project Pantheon or Pantheon 101 as the community continues to draw them in. But it is much harder to grow a community site without some sort of web presence to point to and say "See! It's real!" I hope you guys are all excited for the relaunch, and I'm looking forward to hearing more of your thoughts very soon!
