"Whiskey Planet is a brutally realistic, gritty and heavily-stylized post-apocolyptic survival sim game." They had be at the first line. Being a big gaming fan, I was intrigued. So I needed to talk to Christopher Postill about his crowdfunding endeavor. Chris seems to be the modern-day Renaissnace Man with a few major creative interests.

What was the inspiration behind the gaming project you are currently running on RocketHub?  Why is it important to you?

The project has been a loooong time in the making. It was originally conceived as a collaborative graphic novel; a story inspired by Tom Waits' music, The Day The Earth Stood Still, The Road, Mad Max and whiskey of course... all this dirty, gritty, unapologetic rough-around-the-edges stuff. I loved the post-apocalyptic stories that were more about people reacting to the loss of modern day society rather than people getting eaten by zombies. However, the comic didn't happen for a number of reasons (there were 5 separate authors to say the least). 

I still loved the idea but it got moved to the backburner for a while. When Josh (the lead programmer) and I (game design) worked together at a game development company a few years ago, I showed him some of the material I had developed. He thought it could be a cool online game, but again, our schedules were much too hectic at the time. We both went our separate ways for a while, but kept emailing each other saying "Hey man, we really should make that game some day!". When I found RocketHub, it seemed like a really good way to make it happen, and here we are.

The game is like a mix between playing RISK with 50 people, having an alter-ego to keep alive (in real time) in a 'post-collapse-of-society' world, and a really cool gritty comic book narrative to create/explore with your friends. We've got 5 factions that all play differently; sort of like Magic: The Gathering if the goal of the game wasn't only to destroy your opponents, but also to keep yourself alive in a harsh world. Honestly, it is almost half a game and half a social experiment... to see how players will handle the world we build for them. I'm curious about how much co-operation will happen. That's why we're so passionate about it, there is a lot of "Why hasn't anyone built this yet!?", "Can our game get away with being that harsh?" and "Imagine that in real life?! That'd be insane!" as we test.

I'm a big Tom Waits and Risk fan - so I see where you're coming from, in an awesomely weird way. How has your experience been as a crowdfunding pioneer in the world of indie-gaming and self-publishing - how are your supporters responding?

I love crowdfunding. It is really hard, but when people get behind your game they seem legitimately invested in it and that's brilliant. Indie game development seems to be a pretty established industry now, but there are still a lot of questions about how to do it right. With Whiskey Planet, we've kept pretty quiet about development. We just slowly sent off the funding campaign to people we thought would be legitimately interested in it. Word seems to have made its way around and now we've been seeing a lot of feedback from both supporters and haters alike. There are a number of forums discussing how the game will play, what is and isn't cool about it, etc. We've been doing our best to stay on top of these conversations and take everyone's thoughts into mind. Moral of the story is, with crowd-funding you need to make something interesting, you need to be honest/transparent about how you make it, and you need to count on the crowd to help you make a good game with not only money, but supportive feedback and damn harsh criticism too.

We see crowdfunding as a major new path for indie game developers. Any advice for Creatives looking to crowdfund a similar project?

Too much to fit into a few paragraphs... First and foremost, be innovative, especially with gaming projects. There are massive studios with massive budgets out there and the best way to stand out is to try some new things with your game. For us its the permanent death, the mix of real-time survival and social strategy, and the cool AI that creates a fixed economy of wildlife/food supplies. We approached the game as though we were challenging players to fight not only against each other, but against the game itself to stay alive. Instead of treating it as a problem, we embraced the idea that certain 'towns' in our game might become almost uninhabitable for a period of time if players get too greedy and destroy all the wildlife there. We think that is cool! Not everyone will I'm sure, but those who like a game that challenges what they are used to playing, will almost certainly dig it. So, in short, take the standard procedures from whatever genre game you are making and flip them on their heads, if anything you'll make something interesting. 

Games are particularly fun because you can offer really cool incentives. We're designing landmarks in the game that are named after our funders. Those who really back the project get a whole town named after them. These are huge parts of the narratives that will come out of the game and its fun to honor the people who support us like that. When "Dakota's Tavern" (named after one of our current funders) is the last stand of The Horde Punks in such and such a town, we hope he can get a good smirk out of seeing that happen.

The last thing I'll say is promote like a human. I learned really quickly that blasting out copy and pasted emails isn't the way to go about promoting online. Especially with crowdfunding, you are looking for people to become part of your project, to take a genuine interest in your game and support it. Find bloggers, actually read their blog, then write them an email like you were meeting them at the pub. If they feature your project, they will write a much better article about the game as well as YOU yourself; and their readers will be all the more into it.

I could ramble on, if you actually want to chat about your project, or Whiskey Planet, etc. shoot me an email at chrispostill@gmail.com!

Great advice and honesty. Reach out to Chris if you have any questions or visit his project page to jump in.

-Vlad