Guild Launch is a web hosting platform designed by gamers for gamers, focused on making social networking and site hosting for gaming guilds and communities as easy as logging on to Facebook.
This year Guild Launch hosts the Dragon Slayer Awards, the only awards show for gaming communities, decided by the gaming community. These awards are voted on by you, the gaming public, and not the usual round of industry experts or through corporate sponsorships.
Voting us open until September 2, allowing DragonCon attendees to vote from the convention floor.
Most Notable Kickstarter
Among the nine Dragon Slayer categories, you have Most Notable Kickstarter of the Year. With crowdfunding indelibly linked to game development these days, the gaming landscape has broadened to accept a whole new level of diversity and creativity that never made the final cut for triple-A titles but works just fine for the consumer.
There are plenty of success stories floating around the internet, but only a few have managed to meet those goals. Fewer still have managed to exceed them, and hold onto the burgeoning fan support that pushed them above the Kickstarter limits and beyond.
Nominee: Dreamfall Chapters
Funcom’s The Longest Journey and its sequel Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, released in 1991 and 2006 respectively, are hallmarks for the success of powerful storytelling in video games. One sequel was not enough to stem the fan fervor.
Now, independent studio Red Thread Games, founded by original series creator Ragnar Tørnquist (who also created The Secret World and Anarchy Online universes), is picking up where Funcom left off, seeking out the rest of Zoë Castillo’s story.
A 3-D adventure game for Mac, Linux, and PC, Dreamfall Chapters is the conclusion of a story that has taken nearly two decades in the telling. Sci-fi Stark and magical Arcadia are brought back to life in vibrant, deeply detailed teaser trailers, sketching out the balance between the parallel worlds, and the people that can pass between them, and Zoë, the girl who can Dream her way in both at the same time.
The Kickstarter
There is no denying that the core team behind Dreamfall and the presence of Ragnar Tørnquist is in and of itself plenty of reason for fans to jump on the Kickstarter bandwagon for this project. Coupled with a comparatively modest funding goal of $850k, fans were falling over each other to pledge money towards the project, with some pledges going as high as $10k each.
It was obvious almost from the start that the project would be successfully funded, the only question being how much more were fans willing to give. At the close of the funding period on March 10, the Kickstarter project had made $1,538,425 from 21,858 backers reaching nearly all the available stretch goals, expanding the world, the scope of game distribution, and the languages available.
I am always behind on the latest Kickstarter project, and if you’re anything like me, there’s still time. Slated for release in November 2014, Red Thread Games is still offering backers the chance to chip in by Paypal through their website.
With fan enthusiasm still on the rise, and with a legacy of absolutely fantastic storytelling behind them, Dreamfall Chapters has definitely earned their nomination as the most Notable Kickstarter of the Year.
