The creators behind the Shadowrun Returns and Shadowrun: Hong Kong series have enjoyed their greatest success on Kickstarter to date, with the campaign for BATTLETECH coming to a close.
It raised a lot of money. A hell of a lot.
The original target was only a meagre US$250,000, but that was well and truly smashed within the first hour. Harebrained Schemes (HBS) then went on to raise a staggering $3,984,457 (PayPal donations included), one of the best results for game projects on Kickstarter this year.
It means BATTLETECH, a turn-based single-player game from the creator of the MechWarrior and BattleTech worlds, has raised more money on Kickstarter than the Oculus Rift, Soylent, Rooster Teeth’s Lazer Team movie, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Planetary Annihilation, and nearly as much as HBS’s Shadowrun Returns and Shadowrun: Hong Kong projects combined.
Of course, the developers have always left the door open for people to pledge funds after the Kickstarter campaign through a “Second Chance Backer” page. The project isn’t due out until 2017, mind you, although if you want to be cheeky you can pledge US$2 to send HBS some bagels.
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25 responses to “BATTLETECH Finishes Kickstarter Campaign With Just Under $4 Million”
YES.
YESSSSSSS
Awesome, we just interviewed Mitch Gitelman from Harebrained Schemes (awesome dude btw) at our FB page, having spoken to him previously for Shadowrun, here’s the link, we talked about Battletech and what kind of game it would be etc etc:
http://stfuandlisten.podbean.com/e/stfu-and-listen-aeschylus-interviews-mitch-gitelman-for-the-new-battletech-kickstarter/
Clan Jade falcon LIVES AGAIN!
Thankfully it seems like this game will be relatively Clan free.
Damn. I was always wishing for a Battle of Tukayyid scenario. I always found it fascinating how Comstar challenged the Clans and halted them. The initial phase where the first sightings of the mad cat/timberwolf was also great and the rumors that spread across the Innersphere.
I didn’t really care much for the Clan feuding between Wolf and Jade Falcon after that.
Oooh… Um… Actually, the game is set before the clan invasion, so there won’t be any clans, clan ‘mechs, clan weaponry, and anything omni-tech-like won’t be made for another 25-30 years or something. The game is set between the third and fourth succession war, so most of the star league era tech is either lost or extremely rare, and they’ve only just invented ‘mechs like the Raven.
Well guess have to fall in with House Steiner then. Guess no Warhammer’s then because of the licensing issues. At least Battlemasters and Griffins are still good to go. 🙂
Clan Wolf all the way. Since there are no clans yet, House Davion!
I backed it mostly for the sweet jacket >
https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.harebrained-schemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/FlightJacket_Black_Large.jpg
I must be missing something…
I think maybe the author added the PayPal totals to the Kickstarter money incorrectly.
Article has converted from USD to AUD.
^ Exactly this.
:'( people were sick of things in USD so 🙁
I saw this on kickstarter the other day, so keen!
Maybe one day GOG will have the old mechwarrior games too, one day….. =)
I almost backed this.. but then I stopped myself. I do hope it becomes an amazing game and at that point I will buy a copy. See.. I was stung by Harebrained when they released a mess of a game in Shadowrun.. yeh.. it ran.. but it was a shell of the game I expected it to be, leaving it instead for others to fill in the holes.. not long after the release, they released something else that was a money-grab.. then again some time later a new campaign.. etc
Now they are doing another game based on a very well-known franchise.. and I just don’t want the disappointment. The other thing that got me a little concerned is the involvement with Piranha Games (Actually Infinite Game Publishing’s main development house and basically the same company considering that members of both companies exist mutually).. a company notorious for half-baked games.. MW:Online was a shame it didn’t go anywhere “special”.. more pay to win than most AAA games.. it was also a disappointment. They also actually tried an online tactical strategy game themselves.. and mismanaged that one too. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MechWarrior_Tactics). PGI/IGP isn’t the same as the developer, I get that.. but they are small, indie publisher with a crap track record.
Now, according to Harebrained, their involvement is minimal.. simply “allowing them to use their assets”. Those licensed assets are worth a pretty penny.. and it would be naive to think that there are zero strings attached to that agreement. Even if there is simply a clause about what they can and can not use them for.. you can be sure Piranha Games are going to have some part to play along the way. They fought hard for those rights.. really hard.. and they got them.. they’re not just going to throw them out to anyone making a MW game for free.
In any case, I do hope it comes good.. but I’m going to ignore the game till its released…
And.. why do I care? Because I love MW/Battletech.
PGI and IGP split some time ago now. PGI while not the worlds best devs, have made considerable strides with MWO since. As for the accusation of Pay2Win, MWO has nothing of the sort. You can pay for Early Access to mechs, which may or may not be good, but they always come out for Cbills later. The only totally exclusive content is Hero Mechs, but outside of the Misery most of them are worse than other variants.
Why should Harebrained spend a huge amount redoing stuff Piranha has already done well? They are already licensing BT from Microsoft who bought FASA and all its properties, do you think that’s also going to be a problem? Piranha won’t interfere, neither will the rights owners of any middle manager and MS’s ownership means there won’t be stuff like BT on non MS consoles.
And I’m not sure what you don’t like about the Shadowrun games. They are budget titles with great campaigns and a great level making toolkit and a fan base making lots of good levels.
Bladerunner felt cheap and played like something an “unfunded” developer would have created in their spare time. That’s why I personally didn’t feel it met my expectations. I enjoyed the story, what little of it there was, but it didn’t meet the expectations I had from the proposed KS. I always was aware that it would be more about the toolkit, however, the proposal also detailed having a single player campaign.
Games development has different levels of “quality”, for want of a better term, with $1.8m they were only able to produce what others have produced with far less, in my opinion based on purely my personal experience of watching the industry grow.
In any case, I have to wait and see what they will come up with before throwing money at them this time.
Piranha had nothing to do with the horrible mess of MWT.
At the time, Piranha WERE IGP. In 2014, they severed their ties with each other and are now two completely separate companies. Yes, Piranha was always a separate company in legal terms and they did come together to create MWO.. and at that point they became indistinguishable from each other. MWT had 3 developers etc etc
I know the history. My point was that when I saw the association, it caused me to pause and not back the project.
Backed this. Can’t wait to stomp around in a giant robot.
Hang-on… How is this the first time I’m hearing about this!!
After some quick reading, I’ll say I’m pretty hyped. That being said I was a Legendary Founder for Mechwarrior Online, which unfortunately I didn’t really get into that much because in my opinion the picture wasn’t painted the way it was promised to be but the game is still evolving so there’s still hope yet.. So yeah I’m a little hesitant about putting money down for another Battletech game until closer to its release.
Who am I kidding, its Battletech afterall…. *Insert take my money meme*
MWO is fair aids but, between balance issues and slow development time; my legendary founder status rarely gets used.
Doesnt help that to this day GB’s touman mech is still not in the game… nor any GB mech for that matter.
Thus new BT game is by Jordan Weisman, so I backed it. Plus, new Mike Stackpole novel, and heavily Catalyst involvement, and a cool open ended mercy campaign, so it was the most awesome thing ever for me and I had to back it