Sci-Fi Author Timothy Zahn Is Creating a Video Game

An anonymous reader writes "Timothy Zahn, one of the most influential Star Wars Expanded Universe authors (creator of Grand Admiral Thrawn and Mara Jade), and writer of 40 novels and 90+ short stories, will be trying his hand as the Creative Director for a new video game, Timothy Zahn's Parallax. From the Kickstarter page: 'The game concept is heavily inspired by the original Master of Orion but, because Timothy Zahn is the co-creator, a major focus is going to be on making sure that each alien race is as fully-realized as possible, and that the interactions with the other aliens are realistic: talking to one alien race will be different than talking to another, and the choices you make in the game will have side effects and the computer players will remember them — and treat you differently because of them.' Other highlights: 'The game will include at least 5 of his non-Star Wars alien races (Modhri, Kalixiri, Zhirrzh, Qanska and Pom); Backers will be active participants in the game creation process; No Digital Rights Management foolishness.' The Kickstarter starts at 6pm MST today."

Comments

Priced out of Market

[tuppe666]

$30 for the game?

$10 only gets you a star name?

Seeing how they can still sell the game after, I think he could do better on (digital-only) pledges.

I have been priced off kickstarter (at least for games) which used to be more reasonable about my support, where I could afford to have little expectation, and the possibility of getting a lot for my money. Now I have stopped looking at all.

My money will go to Humble Bundle 9 https://www.humblebundle.com/ which currently includes FTL, Fez and Trine 2 and others(the weekly bundle is Duke Nuken 3D and Shadow Warrior with DLC which is better than the original games). In contrast Humble Bundle has hit $2million already with another 11 days to go.

Re:Priced out of Market

[abramjablonski]

[As the developer of the game]

Anti: $10 doesn't just get you a star name, it gets you an entire year of talking about the game, and having a vote and a voice in the final product. As for the $30 license (and the $500k Kickstarter comment as well), we're putting everything into it up front, so it's the game we want to make right from the beginning, and the customers/ backers get as much as we can give them (rather than hoping to get funded for stretch goals). There's going to be a lot of content, and it's going to be expensive to generate - aside from paying my living expenses, the rest is going to be spent developing the game. "No DRM foolishness" means everybody in your family can use it if they want (yes, all at the same time), so it's not exactly price-gouging.

Pro: I'd actually rather charge less, but I had to find a balance between reasonable reward levels and enough to meet the Kickstarter goal, and I made a judgment call. And yes, there are some projects on Kickstarter that don't need to be there, or are too high, because the creators don't actually need that much money to complete the project. Timothy Zahn knows my plan for the game, and he was also worried that we might be setting the Kickstarter target too high (but it's not just my name on the line, and there's no way I'm going to waste all the time and energy he is putting into this by turning out a sub-par game that will disappoint the backers, or risk running out of funds because I cut the budget too close).

In general, it's a valid comment/ concern, but it's not as cut and dry as it seems from the outside, when you're dealing with all the myriad variables and considerations.