Massive Black Kicks Off Zombie Playground Kickstarter

Written by: QuintLyn (Twitter @QuintLyn - Google+) | May 24, 2012 6:00 am

5 Comments

I admit it. GAMEBREAKER has become zombie obsessed.

Just when you think the whole zombie thing is done and over with, Gary’s introduced to DayZ, a bunch of us start playing The Secret World and I stumble across a Kickstarter project by Massive Black for their new game Zombie Playground.

Now the first thing the developers want backers to know about Zombie Playground is that despite this game featuring children, it’s a game for adults. A big part of the game is to combine the feel of classic zombie movies with the nostalgia of being a kid.

For those of you thinking the name Massive Black is familiar, you’d be correct. The company is known for creating art assets for several games including Dragon Age: Origins, Skyrim, Bioshock 2 and Infamous. They have also worked on films like the Transformers series.

The team has also brought in specialists to help them with the project including musicians Aesop Rock and Shawn Lee as well as Runic Games Erich Schaefer who will be giving them guidance on the project.

At this point, the game looks like it has potential to be pretty awesome. The concept is fun and the names behind it are pretty solid. I’ll be keeping an eye on this to see how it pans out.

Massive Black Kicks Off Zombie Playground Kickstarter

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2 comments

http://twitter.com/jtlowe83 Jason Lowe

The girl character with the hat reminds me of the main character of “The zombie hunters” who is also female with a similar hat.

http://www.thezombiehunters.com/index.php?strip_id=305
http://twitter.com/Andehshun Andrew Busz

Hello “Zombies Ate My Neighbors”?
http://twitter.com/coreyctom Corey

haha Q, I’m guessing this break was recorded before our little twitter discussion last night. Despite what I was saying about the backer tiers, I will say I’m very interested in this and hope it succeeds in achieving “full” funding of 2mil for the full game. I’ll probably be throwing in on it soon.

Just as a brief addition to what I was getting at on twitter, with them having an in-game store with (ideally) tons of stuff to unlock, much like LoL’s store, that easily opens up possibilities for them to add small incentives to varied backer tiers, especially to offer more tiers under the $100 mark at smaller increments such as beta access, store credit at launch, xp/currency gain boost over X games or X time, one free character/costume/weapon/etc unlock. After backing a fair share of projects, it’s pretty easy to see that lots of people are willing to pledge say 5 or 10 dollars more to go from their original backing of $25 to $35 as opposed to only having the choice of $25 and $50 with the difference being the addition of a digital art book (granted, I love art books being an animator, but not everyone finds that incentive). Offering incentives like those allows them to create those smaller incremental tiers with lots of “rewards”, none of which detract from production funds (unlike other projects which add on printed books and art, physical boxes, keychains, shirts, and the kitchen sink).

On a last note, I’m surprised there isn’t already some other coverage on other sites like IGN what with this being Massive Black and all…
- http://quintlyn.com/ QuintLyn Bowers
  
  We did record this before our conversation. And to be honest, I’m trying to avoid drudging up what the backer rewards are every time. It feels stale to me when I do it and I’d rather just tell people about the game. That’s the important part – to me at least.
  
  As for your thoughts on the rewards. One of the things that can be done is for the creators of the project to change the rewards. So perhaps they’ll see they need something more to encourage people.
  
  I still believe, however, that after watching some projects spend more money on things like posters, t-shirts, etc. than they actually put into the project (all the money for that perk stuff is scraped off the top of what the devs make from backers) that people may start avoiding the hard copy stuff more.
  
  However, something like a champion – taking your example of LoL – would only cost in the sense that someone has to design it. So that might be good.
Hicks64

I had their “original zombie playground illustration” as my wallpaper for a year! I think I’ll be backing this one ;D