Couple of notes regarding crowd funding.
First, a HUGE thank you!!! to everyone who has been posting in the "Halls of Titan" threads on the official forums and here. That thread was specifically designed to put some feelers out to get an idea of whether starting any kind of crowd funding effort would be worthwhile, and seeing the hundreds of replies and over 18,000 views and counting, I definitely think it would be!
I haven't set up any kind of crowd funding project yet, though I've played around with some of the tools. It's not that I don't want to get it kicked off ASAP, but I don't want to sabotage any crowd funding effort by jumping in too soon. All of these crowd funding sites require that you have put in some pretty detailed time and effort into your project plan, something that in two days I haven't had a lot of time to write out. I'm working on that now. Also, I genuinely feel like we need to test the waters at NCsoft to try to get some sense of how willing they are to work with us before we go and start getting people to shell out their hard earned cash.
I've seen several references to "Kickstarter" or "kickstarting". Just as a technical note, we probably won't actually be using Kickstarter™, the specific web site. After reading their rules and project guidelines, I don't think that they are really conducive to the kind of fundraising we need to do. They're more about funding new, original projects, with a heavy focus on the creativity aspect of it. Acquiring existing property, starting up a new company, that kind of thing isn't really their cup of tea. As an alternative, I'm considering going with Indiegogo, which allows a broader range of crowd fundraising efforts.
Also, I might submit multiple projects to be funded. The big one, if we go this route, will undoubtedly be the drive to raise the capital to buy or license the City of Heroes IP, code base, and distribution rights from NCsoft. That's going to require a very large number. However, I might put some smaller projects out there, things like commissioning artwork or videos to use to pitch what we're doing to companies, making media ad buys, that kind of thing. I'll post any of those types of projects as a Call to Action.
If you don't have money,
please don't feel left out! For one thing, we don't just need money, we need expertise. Translators, artists, business wonks, lawyers, tech geeks (and being one, I use that term with affection),... you probably have some skill or knowledge that we're going to need at some point. Keep watching this forum for ways in which you can pitch in. We also need front line soldiers, people who are willing to do stuff like
writing letters to NCsoft, things where numbers really count.
