[Minoslas]

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=112649

Hello everyone,

We’ll be launching our kickstarter in about 24 hours, or, in the worst case, about 30 hours.

If you’re not sure about what DCS WWII: Europe 1944 is, please read the official announcement or join the discussion here.

There are a few very important points we’d like to make:

1. The project is at a very early stage.
Normally, video game development goes something like this. You go through some initial planning and discussion. You agree on budget and schedule, then begin the development. After some months, or maybe even years, you arrive at a playable mock-up or maybe a pre-alpha version. You announce the project, show what you have to the fans, and move forward.
With DCS WWII, we’re doing something different. We are in the very early initial design stage. If things were done the normal way, we’d be about six months away from an official announcement.
Why then are we doing this? Because we are not working with a publisher. When we looked at our budget and our schedule, we realized we’d be cutting it very close and we’d really need a bit more money and a bit more time to really do things comfortably. So we decided to go the kickstarter route. It should give us the freedom to really perfect our game; and perhaps even allow us to make a larger product if we manage to hit our stretch goals.
And so, we’re back to the main point. The project is very, very early. Normally we would not show it to the public at this stage.
We could wait six months and go kickstarter then – but then we’d lose the stretch goal option. If we don’t start on, say, a flyable B-17 today, if we wait six months to begin, then we delay its release by six months as well.
So, we know how the community lives to scrutinize every pixel and every word. So please keep in mind that things are not just WIP. They’re so far away from final, they’re all the way back at the other end. They’re “initial”.
Kickstarter changes a lot of things on our end, so please accept it as a change on yours. We’re showing you the project six months before we normally would. Please keep that in mind in all future discussion.

2. Kickstarter can fail.
Here’s how it works.
We are asking for a relatively minor initial sum on kickstarter which is needed to put in a few extra features and really polish and perfect the product.
We obviously need a large number of people to back the project to even hit the initial sum.
If you back the project, but over the course of the kickstarter campaign we fail to reach the initial goal, then the campaign fails and all the money is returned to backers. We the developers receive nothing.
However if we do manage to excite enough fans to back the project in the next 30 days, and we hit our initial goal, then this opens the road to the real meat of the campaign: stretch goals. All money raised will go towards development. If we manage to hit additional stretch goals, we will add a lot more exciting stuff to the project, most importantly new aircraft and new gameplay maps.
However that will require a significant community effort. Larger stretch goals will require thousands and thousands of backers; it’d require the equivalent of everyone who ever bought DCS: P-51 to come in with the purchase price they paid in the next 30 days and back our kickstarter to hit some of the larger stretch goals.
Possible? We hope so. But we’ll need help.

3. We need your help!
What we really need for our project to succeed is exposure.
If you back our project, please tell your friends about it.
Even if you cannot back our project, but are excited about it, tell your friends.
DCS WWII: Europe 1944 requires a large concentrated community effort to become successful.
If you are a journalist, please get in touch.
If you are a member of a flight sim community, please mention our kickstarter on your forums. If your friends have questions, send them here, or send us to them.
We only speak English and Russian. If you are a member of an international flight sim community, help us spread the word in your language!
Please help us get there. We cannot do it on our own!

Thank you very much. We, everyone, myself personally, are unbelievably excited about tomorrow. See you then!