Ever, Jane is a new type of MMO: there are no dungeons, swords, guns or spells. Instead, it is set in the polite society of Regency England. Your goals are to advance your status by attending balls, making matches, and vicious gossiping.
Even though I’m not a fan of Austen’s work (I appreciate it — it’s just not for me), I’ve often wondered how one would build a computer game with a non-combat conflict resolution mechanic. Tabletop RPGs have a whole indie niche dedicated to this (and there’s always freeforms), but this would be my first encounter with a computer game that attempted this.
The Ever, Jane Kickstarter page is really transparent. They’re open to the fact that they’re looking at a 2-year development timeframe, and provide the most open breakdown of their budget:
We are assuming a 15% overhead from the funds we collect to cover PR expenses. In addition, server costs should run approximately $600/mos. for 500 concurrent users (CCU) beginning in May 2014.
The remaining has been broken into four iterations of approximately 6 mos. each at $21K for payroll to support the existing staff.
There’s also a great risk assessment. You can tell that the project lead has experience as a project manager beyond the scope of the usual Kickstarter applicant. You can also download a working prototype on the page, so I suggest you check it out and fund this truly innovative and ambitious project.
[Via: Kickstarter]