GameSkinny’s sister site Guild Launch is a web hosting platform that makes social networking and site hosting easy, comparable to Facebook for growing your gaming guild and community. It is designed by gamers for gamers.
For the second year, Guild Launch is hosting the Dragon Slayer Awards, the only awards show that is decided by the gaming community for gaming community. These awards are voted on by you, the gaming public, not the usual round of industry experts or corporate sponsorships.
Voting is 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. Ever since the explosive success of the Ouya Kickstarter, crowdfunding has been accepted into the gaming community norm and has only been gaining speed ever since. While it has spawned a new era of internet panhandling and online scams, Kickstarter has also helped to broaden the gaming landscape into one of incredibly diversity and barrier-breaking creativity.
There are plenty of success stories since Kickstarter came into it’s own, 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: Pathfinder Online
Pathfinder Online is a fantasy sandbox MMO developed by Goblinworks based on the Pathfinder tabletop game and uses a unique process called “crowdforging” to determine what features are implemented in the game and in what order.
The game is an escape from the usual fantasy MMO tropes with a skill training system equivalent to EVE Online where skill training requires a time lapse that farming mobs or spamming abilities will not powerlevel you through. Incredibly customizable, the game gives you no set classes but lays it entirely up to you which skills you want to level (and, it promises that no matter what you choose to level in, you will be useful and have an important part to play in combat). It also puts it on the players to build the world so that you can build your own, house, town, even city.
The Kickstarter
With a superstar development team including Ed Greenwood the creator of Forgotten Realms, Paizo Publishing the original publisher of Pathfinder, and Frank Mentzer who designed some of the most memorable adventures in Dungeons & Dragons, the Kickstarter was almost from the start bound to be a success.
Opening November 27, 2012, the crowdfunding project hit its $1 million goal before the deadline, and it was merely a question of what stretch goals the community could back before the timer ticked down to 0. By the closing date on January 14, the project had made $1,091,194 with 8,732 backers, several who contributed $5,000 and up!
Filled with tons of bonus content and unique add-ons to stimulate backer support, it’s self-evident that Goblinworks put a lot of thought and effort into its Kickstarter and the quality of game and rewards they were going to offer in return. No wonder that Pathfinder Online was nominated for the most Notable Kickstarter of the Year.
