http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/levelzerogames/net-gain-corporate-espionage
I debated long and hard about posting about this here, since this board doesn't seem to discuss Kickstarter very much and it's mostly focused on war gaming.
That said, I think this project might appeal to some people and it's already funded. I've talked to the developer a bit and he seems like a pretty cool and realistic guy, so I've been shilling a little harder than normal to get his project noticed. Back now and you can write yourself or your ideas into the game in multiple ways, and every dollar helps him reach another chunk of cool gameplay.
So, Net Gain. It's a mostly text and menu-based sim, where you play a corporate operative in the near future. The world is run by megacorps in the best tradition of Shadowrun, and they constantly vie for control over successful companies, new technologies, personnel or anything that will give them a competitive edge. (The developer said he likes to think of his game sometimes as "Shadowrun as seen from the top floor, instead of the street.")
This is where you come in. Part mercenary, part company man, your job is to research targets, establish their assets and vulnerabilities, formulate plots to capture or destroy them, recruit teams of operatives and guide them while they execute the plots.
While the game is still an early prototype and will mostly be text and menu based (think Uplink by Introversion Software), there will be a lot of content and interesting mechanical gameplay.
For example, the missions you can create against targets of opportunity are based on a ton of factors, like what kind of company it is, what kind of asset you're after, what weaknesses you revealed during your intel gathering and ideas contributed by your operatives. You get a collection of potential missions to run and string together several plots to ultimately take control of (or eliminate) the object of interest. You assign operatives to complete these tasks.
Operatives are characters all their own, with stats, skills, equipment, specializations, personalities and loyalties, to each other, their "Circles" or organizations they identify with....and to you. On missions they may be faced with random events where you need to make decisions that could have drastic consequences. Your decision to snoop around some previously unknown data sources during a hack might gain you new intel, but it also might get you caught. An operative romancing their mark might fall in love, giving you greater access to the mark but also compromising your operative's loyalty. Things may go seriously wrong and you may have to decide how your operatives try to escape.
There's way too much stuff to talk about to its fullest, the creator has detailed a lot of his mechanics in the Kickstater updates.
So another few grand gets the project to "The War Room", where once you're successful enough you'll create a command center to hire or promote "manager" operatives, additional staff to process your intel better/faster, training facilities...all to make your operations more successful.
It's got 10ish days to go.
I debated long and hard about posting about this here, since this board doesn't seem to discuss Kickstarter very much and it's mostly focused on war gaming.
That said, I think this project might appeal to some people and it's already funded. I've talked to the developer a bit and he seems like a pretty cool and realistic guy, so I've been shilling a little harder than normal to get his project noticed. Back now and you can write yourself or your ideas into the game in multiple ways, and every dollar helps him reach another chunk of cool gameplay.
So, Net Gain. It's a mostly text and menu-based sim, where you play a corporate operative in the near future. The world is run by megacorps in the best tradition of Shadowrun, and they constantly vie for control over successful companies, new technologies, personnel or anything that will give them a competitive edge. (The developer said he likes to think of his game sometimes as "Shadowrun as seen from the top floor, instead of the street.")
This is where you come in. Part mercenary, part company man, your job is to research targets, establish their assets and vulnerabilities, formulate plots to capture or destroy them, recruit teams of operatives and guide them while they execute the plots.
While the game is still an early prototype and will mostly be text and menu based (think Uplink by Introversion Software), there will be a lot of content and interesting mechanical gameplay.
For example, the missions you can create against targets of opportunity are based on a ton of factors, like what kind of company it is, what kind of asset you're after, what weaknesses you revealed during your intel gathering and ideas contributed by your operatives. You get a collection of potential missions to run and string together several plots to ultimately take control of (or eliminate) the object of interest. You assign operatives to complete these tasks.
Operatives are characters all their own, with stats, skills, equipment, specializations, personalities and loyalties, to each other, their "Circles" or organizations they identify with....and to you. On missions they may be faced with random events where you need to make decisions that could have drastic consequences. Your decision to snoop around some previously unknown data sources during a hack might gain you new intel, but it also might get you caught. An operative romancing their mark might fall in love, giving you greater access to the mark but also compromising your operative's loyalty. Things may go seriously wrong and you may have to decide how your operatives try to escape.
There's way too much stuff to talk about to its fullest, the creator has detailed a lot of his mechanics in the Kickstater updates.
So another few grand gets the project to "The War Room", where once you're successful enough you'll create a command center to hire or promote "manager" operatives, additional staff to process your intel better/faster, training facilities...all to make your operations more successful.
It's got 10ish days to go.
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I can appreciate it as a cool idea but I can't imagine getting into it.
