Just a quick note to let you know (if you haven’t already heard the cheering in the streets) that Steve Jackson Games (SJG) finished its OGRE Kickstarter project with $923,680 raised in backer funding. Yes, that’s right — almost (pinky to corner of mouth) one million dollars raised for a game that sold well over 30 years ago for $5 and came in a small plastic baggie.
One major milestone that was reached was the $700,000 mark which is where SJG promised to do a Car Wars Kickstarter campaign. I’ll be writing up a Retro Review hopefully in the next few weeks on Car Wars, but the bad news is that we won’t likely see the Car Wars Kickstarter for some time and the actual game isn’t expected to be delivered (if it’s successfully funded – yeah, right!) until late 2013. Of course, this gives all of us who backed OGRE plenty of time to start saving our pennies, selling plasma, and/or visiting Vegas to raise the proper funds that this next SJG Kickstarter will surely devour.
SJG definitely has a handle on how to deal with stretch rewards, and every time we (backers) thought we’d reached the maximum money that could be raised… along would come another stretch award that enticed a large number to either increase their funding or another large number to finally make the commitment.
2012 and 2013 are going to be interesting times for SJG fans, and I imagine that the success of this Kickstarter campaign is going to have other gaming companies looking at reviving some of their old titles. (I would love to see SJG’s Illuminati redone, but one big non-SJG game on my wish list would be Traveller.)
What about you? Any classic games you’d like to see given the Kickstarter treatment? And don’t say Metamorphosis Alpha — that one’s already been successfully funded!
Congratulations to Steve Jackson Games!
