User blog:GeoFruck/Only the beginning

Hello All,

Some of you may remember me from a few short months ago, and I'm sure there are many new TV fans milling around these days. I used to be very active with this wiki, and made some contributions, and got to know quite a few people around here. At some point I became so distressed with the state of mobile games in general that I decided that I would venture forth to make a game that I felt was a better representation of what I believe games, in general, should be made of.

I have finally gotten to the point where my seed of an idea at that time, has started growing up, ever so slightly, and has now reached the light of day. I managed to gather a group of volunteers made up of 4 programmers, 4 visual artists, 3 composers/sound designers, a very talented writer, a web developer, a PR rep., and myself. Colin, our author/story writer was no small part in the gathering of the rest of the team, and many have helped, some come and gone, but this seems to be the group that will help this happen.

We are making a city building simulator, not unlike TV in the core of the idea, but with a lot of differences. In fact, what is in TV will only be a small fraction of the game that we are making. I don't knock TV or TinyCo at all, in fact, I enjoyed playing this game for the longest of any of the mobile games that I tried. In the end, I just grew tired of it, and rather than stomp around and complain, I just decided to see if I could improve upon what TinyCo and many other mobile game devs have started. I applaud them all for venturing forth into the uncharted mobile world and carving out what trenches they could, and bringing games to a group of people that had not yet really "gotten into" games at all.

I believe, though, that they have also left a gap of fans in their wake that now wonder what will be next, and my game will at least be one of them. That is what brings me here today, along as the ever-gracious permission from Oioiaussie. I am here to ask people to help support me in bringing this game to the public. We have a FB page here, and if you would like to see what we are going to display in the coming month, please like our page and come back as often as you wish. We have also entered ourselves on the game DB trio, the most relevant one for us is at SlideDB here. For the DB sites (IndieDB and ModDB are the other two) simply visiting our page every once and a while will help, but you can also join the site and "watch" our page to be notified when we make updates.

The reason that we are doing this now is because we will be launching a crowd funding campaign in a month on Indiegogo.com and we are simply trying to get the word out about this game. The plain and simple truth of the matter is that, while making a game is fun, we can't get this out anytime soon while we are all working other jobs. I have created a company to make this game under, but we will need funding in order to pay salaries, get equipment, software, etc. All the things that businesses have to have to make anything. It would be nice to make this game on hopes a dreams, but the power company will still not accept that form of payment :P

In any case, I did not come here to ask for your money, only to become part of our budding community as it is emerging. That is, of course, if you care to. If you believe in our cause enough to donate when the time comes, that's entirely up to you, and I would not feel comfortable at all asking anyone to do that. I just want the chance to show you that this game will be different, and if successful, it could likely help shape the way that mobile games continue to be made during this time of rapid industry growth for mobile gaming.

We want to bring so much game, with the majority of it being optionally included by you, that you will enjoy it so much that you won't mind spending a few bucks now and again. And all of the optional portions will be one big awesome free game that you won't believe that nobody has done this yet. It can be done, and it will be done, but we can still use your support by liking and visiting our pages. From there, you can decide how involved you wish to become.

As always, any comments or questions will be welcome. I may be becoming an actual game developer (designer to be specific), but I'm still a fellow gamer. That will never change :D