YPSH : I thought with all the interest in what the Home devs are doing with their new projects this week, I would follow-up with David Dow of madmunki to get an update on how things are going with neotopia. Thanks for taking a few minutes out of your busy schedule Dave. Dave : Hi Karen, and no problem on taking time out, getting our message across to everyone is the prime concern right now! YPSH : As I roam around Home, I hear a lot of the same questions being asked about neotopia. So for the record, let me ask you some of those questions. Can folks carry items over from Home to neotopia? Dave : No unfortunately not. There's the simple legal issue of the fact that we are not Sony, we have no rights or control over the content in Home, and then there is the technical issue; we are using a totally diferent game engine so the actual items would not work in the new engine we are using. Incidentally we could not have used the same game engine as Home, as again that is owned by Sony. I totally understand people resenting the loss of the virtual goods they love, but there is in the long run upside in that we are using Unreal Engine 4 which will allow objects befitting of a next generation platform with much more detail, realism, effects and so on. Also building the network structure from the ground up and having the example of Home to refer to means that we should be able to improve on inventory management, object verification and loading times, generally meaning a much smoother user experience than we would be able to were we actually able to bring across all the content from Home. YPSH : We hear it will be free but we are being asked to pledge on Kickstarter? Dave : Yup, I can see why this is confusing. neotopia will be free to play (and will NOT require a PlayStation Plus subscription btw), but in order to get the funds to create it we need people to pledge on Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a crowd funding platform, people pledge money and in return they get special perks and priveleges, if we do not meet the target everyone gets their money back (including those who paid with paypal). Incidentally we cannot keep the money if the target is not met, nor can we change any of the basic setup of the kickstarter (i.e. neither how long the kickstarter runs for or how much we are looking for). Those are all rules of Kickstarter to protect the people who pledge. IF we hit the target and consequently get to create neotopia, anyone with a PS4 will be able to play absolutely free. There is a pledge tier called 'Citizen' which gives you voting rights - people will be able to earn this in neotopia after it goes live, but those who backed the kickstarter at this level or above will have them immediately (indeed there will be votes cast on our forums only open to those with voting rights). YPSH : People are afraid neotopia will end suddenly like Home did. How long can we expect neotopia to last? Could it outlast the PS4? Dave : Well I'd like it to last forevever! And should we succeed at the kickstarter I would expect it to outlive the PS4. We are not Sony, and there are a couple of advantages to this; for one this is our entire business, not a small part of it and neotopia will be running on our servers - whenever Sony announce the PS5 will not matter to us. so long as people are still interested in neotopia it will continue. What's more, as we are not Sony we do not have to restrict it to being on PlayStation, we can branch it out wherever the community want to take it.... YPSH : Could neotopia possibly be on the PS3? Dave : Ah, except on PS3 that is. No we cannot put neotopia on PS3, simply as Unreal Engine 4 does not run on PS3, it can run on iPhone but there is not a PS3 version (which may sound crazy when put like that). I suppose in the long run it may be possible, but that would only be after it was all running well on PS4 and we could afford to get people to look into getting some stripped down version of Unreal 4 working on PS3 - so its not actually impossible, just really unlikely - but we need to focus on getting it on PS4.. YPSH : Home tried in-world moderators and then they disappeared. How will neotopia handle any complaints or abusive users? Dave : So our answer to moderation is to try avoid it. I posted a piece on our forums here ( Neotopian Civics - neotopia Community ) outlining our plans, essentially we will have a kudos system to try encourage good behaviour and a hard core ignore function which will make folks you are finding troublesome disapear. We will have a reporting system too, and if it comes to it and we find it is absolutely necessary we will have moderators but we really want to avoid it if possible - I speak to a lot of people in Home and I have heard many resentful stories about moderators, the idea of giving people special powers over others is something that fills me with horror! Theres more than enough of that in the 'real' world! YPSH : Will neotopia be region free? Dave : We'd love it to be, and if it can be we'll make it so, but the unfourtunate truth is: it's highly unlikely. Ultimately that boils down to my least favourite answer it's 'legal' - diferent countries have diferent laws, which means we will most likely be forced to go along with the way things work now. Actually to give you a totally current example; earlier this evening I did a Q&A about neotopia in Spunland EU and someone asked if we could have pictures for apartments where the players could set their own pictures; they had no idea that you could do that in NA Home but you cannot in the EU, simply due to laws. It's a real pain of a restriction. YPSH : I keep getting asked why there is no tech demo or video of neotopia yet? Dave : We are ultimately at the beginning of this; we have an agreement with Sony to publish it and we have signed a deal with Epic to use the Unreal Engine. We have a plan and a team with experience not just of Home (technically and commercially) but also in making games with Unreal and in complex networking. Using Unreal means we don't have to waste a lot of time trying to prove our tech - we can focus on what really matters to the the players, and being at such an early stage we can build this with the community, taking on their experience and knowledge. We will have more to show really soon - we're hoping to be able to show our benchmark avatar next week. Despite this we believe we can have a Beta up and running by next April - I'd love nothing more than for our servers to boot up as those of Home power down. YPSH: What are your plans should the Kickstarter not make its goals? Dave : Unfortunately if the Kickstarter doesn't hit it's goal, neotopia is really not likely to be - if I win the lottery or some distant rich relative I've never heard of steps in then I'll make it happen (that's a promise!), but the truth is we don't have the funds needed. For me there is also something really significant about crowd funding this - Home, and indeed any virtual world is all about its community, and if the community make it happen it really will belong to them. Companies owned by investors and such answer to shareholders and so on, the easiest ways of making profits are rarely ever in the best interest of those who use the services. We just have to make the kickstarter work - I know it's going slow, I couldn't deny that, but it's still totally possible. Someone posted a comment on the kickstarter page that the vast majority of people who use Home do not go to the forums, and that there are a lot of people in Home who still haven't heard that it's closing - I don't find that hard to believe - they also said they had heard about neotopia, not from a news, fansite or even forum post but from overhearing people chatting about it in Home - then they checked it out and made a pledge. We have not managed to get anything into Home yet about neotopia, but we're hoping to do so next week - we've made a couple of cool LMOs and t-shirts, so we'll let you know as soon as they are live. We have already seen that many in the community are mad keen to promote neotopia - for which we're not just grateful, I'm kind of overwhelmed by some of it tbh. YPSH : Finally, everyone was excited to hear JAM Games had joined the project. Any plans for more devs to join in? Dave : Oh yeah! We'll let you know as soon as we can, all I can say right now is we are talking to several developers. It's not just that we know the community want that to happen, it's also that we could really use the help - more from the angle of getting enough varied content to folks fast enough, rather than necessarily needing help to get it up and running. I love collaborating with people, that's always more fun and more ofetn than not where the most interesting ideas come from. YPSH : That's great news! I'm sure everyone will be happy to hear this! Thanks for filling us in and we all wish you much success with neotopia. Dave : Thanks for having us again Karen, we so appreciate your support and that of all the community - like I say some of it is really quite overwhelming. We can do this thing, we just need to spread the word as far as possible and get more people pledging! #EmbraceTomorrow folks! Make it happen! neotopia website : neotopia - Embrace Tomorrow neotopia Kickstarter campaign :
Great article, Karen! Thank you! Good to hear more devs are coming on board! The Hub concept art is O_O Awesome. Very reminiscent of Hudson Gate but updated and futuristic. It looks like it will be a very popular, fun and beautiful space. Thank you Madmunki for the new pic!! =^) Dave is right. It is going slow but it is still possible. Especially with the new in-world content coming to show people this is going to be an amazing new virtual world! If you want a place to go to after Home goes down, please pledge and help get neotopia off the ground because without it, we are all Homeless. Thank you!
Another good read and the more I hear about notopia the better I like it. I just wish they had more than 10% of the Kickstarter money pledged.
I fully support this effort and really want to see it succeed. That being said, I feel as though their kickstarter may have jumped the gun a bit, and that has me worried. I think had they waited another few weeks to let the news get around more, they might have more interest and support from within the community. Personally, I'm having a tough time parting with money I really don't have, not even having seen what the avatars or the world look like yet. I'm not going to support something that's ugly to look at, or cartoony like Avakin. The more they show us the better their chances at getting the funding they need. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to buy a lottery ticket in hopes I can just fund the whole damn thing myself and get it going already.
As usual Karen great article. I had to respond to the community. Frankly I am amazed at the lack of pledges for Neotopia. Where are the pledges from this site by the members? What is everyone waiting for? So far what I see is Madmunki has the best chance to create a better home. I'm not seeing the response that I thought there would be. I want to know why there isn't support for the Kickstarter from the members here. What I did see is that other devs are going for a phone app. Really? Really? That's not good enough for me, sorry to the awesome devs on home that are going that way but I want something better than what we had on home. I have a request from Madmunki....please create a video of how Neotopia will look. I know that when people see it the pledges will come flooding in. Remember everyone: Look to the future with Neotopia.
neotopia items will be avaialble for free starting tomorrow at The Hub in North America. EU to be announced.
Home ultimately feels point less now. Now the news that they're using Unreal Engine on this, they had my curiosity, now they have my attention. I've played games that used this engine and it can do amazing things in multiplayer. The water effects in Home always irked me a bit, for instance stuff just flat out sinking, but this might not happen in this new engine. I was wondering wen I might get a PS4, so seems I'll be saving for at least a used one.
