When Press Releases Try Too Hard…

From an actual press release in my email this morning:

LOS ANGELES – ATTENTION all giant robot-loving, D&D-obsessed, podcast-pirating, LARP-afflicted, zombie-slaying, cartoon-watching, bacon-eating people of the world -leetUP today announced that viral luminary Grace Helbig will be joining the “AWESOMESAUCE.LIVE!” 2012 fall tour.  The massive tour de force which Complex Magazine coined “Kevin Pereira’s Coachella for nerds,” is set to descend and ravage pop culture fanatics in 10 cities this fall. The YouTube darling hits the road for nine shows, beginning September 20 in Seattle with stops in Portland, Austin, Dallas, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Madison and Chicago. (*Minneapolis excluded)

I suspect that being old and no longer culturally relevant is the cause, but that paragraph has probably the opposite of its intended effect on me.  Or not.  I did, after all, post about it.

Of course, I am naturally suspect of anybody who feels they can use “awesome sauce” in a sentence in a non-ironic fashion.  It isn’t at quite the level of, say, “interpretive dance,” which has been proven by science to be only utterable with the intent of getting a cheap laugh, but it is clearly beyond the serious threshold.

Plus, is podcast-pirating even a thing?

Anyway, if this interests you, you can read more about it here.

I find it mildly amusing that neither LA or Silicon Valley are on the list of destinations.  No tech or nerd culture obsessed individuals in those places I guess.

We Will Get Some More Defense Grid…

But not as much as I had hoped for, and probably not as soon as I had hoped either.

I posted a while back about Hidden Path Entertainment attempting to fund further installments to their exceptional tower defense game, Defense Grid: The Awakening by taking their plans to Kickstarter.  They had a detailed plan with four tiers of funding that would mean specific deliverables.

Even at the base level $15 pledge, you got a code for the original game on Steam, which goes for $20 when Steam isn’t doing one of their sales, plus any content eventually funded.  So if they made it to a million dollars and you kicked in $15, you would get all of it.

They also teamed up with AMD and Razer to offer up special deals and incentives.  The team running the Kickstarted project put out plenty of updates.   And they ran in-game contests where, if you achieved a certain goal on a specific level, you were entered.

It was quite an event.

Still, a million dollars seemed like a pretty ambitious goal, even for a game this good.  It just isn’t that well known.  Still, I was pretty sure that the first tier would be achieved easily.  The initial surge of pledges got it half way there pretty quickly.

$250,000 tier

That would get an expansion to the original game.  I would be all for that.

The second tier was a new engine for Defense Grid 2, which would include putting the old game on it to test it out.  Infrastructure is never very sexy though.  Try telling marketing that the major feature for a release is a new version of Visual C++ and see how excited they get.

But multiplayer was going to be part of the whole thing.  That… that I could go for.  And the second tier seemed possible given the initial momentum.

$500,000 tier

The third tier was offering up cross-platform compatibility and a level editor so end users could create their own content.  A level editor, hopefully tied in with the Steam Works user content system, would be cool.  But that seemed a long way away, being priced roughly the same as my house. (In Silicon Valley that means a run down place in a decent school district.)

$750,000 tier

And then there was the magic million dollar goal.  All of the above plus a completely new game, Defense Grid 2, the full sequel.

one million dollars!

As unlikely as it seemed, a man can dream can’t he.

And, as I said, the early momentum in the campaign was quite brisk.

Then it slowed to a trickle.  When the time left was under a week, I didn’t think they would even make their first tier goal.  This in a world where Penny Arcade can bring in double that by offering too… um… take some stuff off of their web page?  Really?

Then there was a last minute rush, accompanied by some outstanding video card offers that were no doubt subsidized by AMD, and the threshold was crossed at last.

The whole thing ended with $271,727 in funding.

That meant the production of the Containment expansion to the original game, which all backers will get once it is available.  An update says they are working on that even now.

But we will also all get Defense Grid 2.  A note was posted to the Kickstarter page towards the end of the event saying:

You’ll Get DG2

We’re working to cross the minimum and fund Defense Grid: Containment.  But please also understand that by joining the team as a backer, you’ll also get a copy of DG2 when we release it.  We’ll need to do extra work on our end to earn or raise the remaining funds in order to complete DG2, but when we do, you’ll still be a part of the team.  Crossing $250,000 gets you DG:Containment this December, and DG2 when it is complete.

That seemed to me to be a pretty generous offer since the commitment, as originally stated, was that only items that were funded would be available.  I am just happy that they still have a Defense Grid 2 in their plans.

I am not sure what will becomes of the other items… cross platform, multi-player, level editor, and such… but at least there is a new game to look forward to and some new levels to play in the mean time.

Now I have to figure out what to do with my Steam codes for the original game.  I already own it.  Hrmm.