Brandon Boyer, IGF Chairman and former editor of Offworld here at BB, is launching its successor: Venus Patrol. Within hours of establishing a Kickstarter project to make it possible, he's already raised $47k, leaving the $50k target within easy reach — if you miss Offworld, go there right now and help put it over the edge.
I ran a blog about videogames called Offworld for Boing Boing from winter 2008 through autumn 2009, and doing so changed my life forever. It wasn't the first time I'd written about videogames 'professionally', but it was the first time that doing so started to make me feel like part of a bigger and entirely amazing community. A community of artists, musicians, designers, coders, nearly all of whom had taken the terrifying risk of jumping out of the rat race and trying to live life on their own terms: by creating things they know only they can create and trying to find an appreciative audience who might support them.
The pledge swag is amazing: $1 gets you an exclusive wallpaper from Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi and Minecraft skins by Emmy award-winner Pendleton Ward; $25 gets you three indie games released exclusively for the project; $75 gets you Moon Grotto 7", a vinyl EP featuring "hidden" music & remixes from SWORD & SWORCERY EP composed by Scientific American; $200 gets a set of prints of 8-bit era artwork by Double Fine's Scott C.; and more.
Plans extend beyond writing, too: "Venus Patrol is just the first volley in a much longer game: the roots, foundation, and interstellar pirate radio station on top of which a number of other in-progress projects that branch out of the web will be built," says Boyer.
Prospects are looking good for the new site, with early coverage at ShackNews, Joystiq and Kotaku.
