The last few weeks have been incredibly hectic for us – whilst Kimmo and Markku have been working on getting a playable demo of the Sequel ready for you to try, James has been piecing together all of the bits and pieces of business and administration work that needed to be done to get us to where we are right now!

So, where are we right now, and when will we be launching the Kickstarter campaign? The answer is: as soon as the the final piece of the puzzle falls into place. If all goes according to plan, we hope to start fundraising next Friday (31st January), but any delays in the Kickstarter approval process (or their verification of our business/banking information) could knock us back a few days (we’ll keep you updated). This is a very exciting (albeit stressful) time for us and we’re really keen to show off some of the hard work we’ve put in over the last year or more, and we hope it’ll encourage you to help us make this game a reality.

But now, to the details. We’ve been asked numerous times what our funding goal will be, what we’ll be spending the money on, and what perks will be available to those who choose to back us… and whilst these things are still subject to last-minute tweaking, here’s a quick run-down of what we have planned so far.

Budget

When deciding upon a suitable budget, we really wanted to ensure that it was achievable whilst also not making the mistake of selling ourselves short – having a large project to deliver and not enough resource to deliver it. The budget needs to cover software licenses, server hosting costs, business administration/payment costs (such as the fee Kickstarter takes from the final amount) and money to cover the perks/rewards that we’re offering. Furthermore, we have included a limited amount of money to ‘pay the bills’, to allow Markku & James to work on the game full time for a couple of months post-Kickstarter. Our aim is to ensure that we can deliver the Sequel to you, in a completed form, by the end of the year – but that wouldn’t be possible if all we had was our spare time.

With all of this in mind, we’ve settled on an initial budget of around £25,000, which is divided up as follows:

We wanted to avoid making the mistake that many other projects have made in the past, in allowing Kickstarter reward fulfilment to become the majority of the funding goal. We believe that keeping this to a maximum of 35% of the final cost is a reasonable figure, whilst enabling our supporters to obtain meaningful and desirable “loot” (see below).

We have some great ideas for stretch goals, which we’ll reveal during the course of the campaign – needless to say, we’re really excited about them, and we’re certain they’ll get you excited, too!

Rewards

As mentioned above, we wanted to ensure that our rewards were something meaningful to our supporters – something that you’d actually want to contribute towards and have as a memento. With this in mind, we’re offering the following rewards, mixed and matched to about 20 different funding tiers that will, hopefully, suit every wallet and inclination! Some of the rewards we’re offering are:

Copies of the finished game (of course).

A digital book outlining the development process with WIP screenshots, design ideas, and more.

Alpha & Beta Access, including access to the developer forum to discuss with other testers and us, directly.

T-Shirts, posters, postcards and physical, boxed copies of the game.

Your name in the game’s credits.

You as one of the game’s default AI (complete with your own driver colours).

You, reproduced as one of the in-game spectators (choose your name, clothing colours, skin colour, height, etc.)

An opportunity to design a car, track or object with us to be included in the final game.

A Limited Edition box with all the bells and whistles.

A very limited opportunity (only two available) to become an Executive Producer of the game (which includes all the loot we can offer and access before the alpha).

access before the alpha). And more…

We’ve organised/arranged really good deals for the production of the physical perks, without sacrificing quality (the T-Shirts are really comfy and are similar to, but not exactly like, the ones you’ll see in the Kickstarter Introduction video). We hope that the rewards we’re offering will be interesting not only to existing community members, but also to others who might happen upon the campaign whilst it’s running.

Finally…

All that’s left to say is “thank you” for your support up to this point and for any and all support you give us in the future (whether financial or otherwise). We are grateful to have such a fantastic community to work and interact with and we are confident we can live up to your expectations!

Please do like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Google+ – these social media accounts, along with your referrals to other communities, friends and family members, will be vital in the coming days as we try to reach our funding goal to give GeneRally a solid, relevant presence for another decade (at least). Remember, we only receive the money from Kickstarter if we reach the funding total – so this is something we really need your help with!

– James, Markku & Kimmo