Furcadia had amazing funding success, so they’re throwing a party for you today.
by Patch O'Furr
Wikipedia says that Furcadia holds “The Guinness World Records title for the longest continuously running social MMORPG.” (That’s all the research you get, because I have to post this with mere minutes of preparation! Whee!)
Furcadia’s founder Dr. Cat (AKA Felorin) tells me:
“We hit our $250K funding goal to finish up our 32 bit client, and we’re throwing a HUGE celebration of it this Saturday (April 4)! The team will be live-streaming all day as well as doing stuff in-game, and we’ll be showing off some of the 32 bit editors and artwork we’ve been making, and more.”
More about this news is on their journal.
Their funding appeal achieved it’s highest level, offering stuff like “a full 32-bit client for Windows, new layout & user interface, Redo ALL of the default patch art in full 32-bit,” – new places to explore and more:
$250,000 – Super Super Awesome Bonus Level
Getting this level of funding would be like a dream come true for us at DEP, Catnip and the whole community. We will all celebrate our accomplishments together!
I said to Dr. Cat: “2400 backers means $100 average, that sounds like a healthy amount each… I’m guessing it’s unexpected and awesome to hit the highest level. Why now? How is it budgeted? Any local connection for this story?”
He said:
“Our core team lives and works in Alamo, California. (I actually commute to San Francisco for a day job at another game company currently.) That’s Emerald Flame, our Executive Producer & Head Designer and Community Director (along with a lot of other hats), Game Designer Gar, and company founder, President, Programmer, Game Designer Dr. Cat. We manage a team of folks all over the country & the world, all of whom we met originally in Furcadia (that’s where I found Emerald & Gar too!) We have a team member in Southern California too, Ninja – as well as people in Canada, Germany, and England.
Our core team is still paid from Furcadia’s revenues, the Kickstarter & followup fundraiser money has gone entirely to pay a mixed group of a little fulltime staff with a lot of part-timers, commissioned pieces of art, and some volunteers to stretch the money as far as possible. We built Furcadia initially with two people and $50,000 back in the mid 90s, where most MMORPGs took at least a couple million to make, even then. We have a lot of experience getting the most out of a small budget – most game companies would take millions of dollars to do the amount of development work we are squeezing out of $250K. If we didn’t have a lot of people highly passionate about this game & willing to work at a modest rate (and also hugely talented), we couldn’t do what we do.”