Maia’s Rush For The Finishing Line – Kickstarter And Social Capital

14 January 2013

One of the recent Kickstarter projects that caught my eye (and the eyes of many others) was Maia.

One of the first game campaigns on the British Kickstarter site, Maia is a very British project, promising a god game in the style of Bullfrog’s Dungeon Keeper, but with the action transported from a fantasy land to a dysfunctional colony at the beginning of terraforming.

With the gaming inspiration of Peter Molyneux, and the cultural inspiration of Douglas Adams’ Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the rich vein of dystopian science fiction that flourished in the 1970s, from John Carpenter’s Dark Star through Silent Running  and Alien. Dark comedy in a broken future – what’s not to like?

Maia has now been funded, surpassing its £100,000 goal by £40,000 after a flurry of funding pushed it over the edge with only days to spare. As the hours ticked down, I asked project lead Simon Roth about the process, his ambitions and what happened next.

“The AAA industry seemed to have no interest in creating the game I wanted to play”

First up, quite broadly, why Maia? More specifically, what was it about the Bullfrog model of god game (or godlike game) that appealed? Did you do any focus grouping/market testing beforehand, or were you always set on this genre?

It’s something I’ve wanted to make in one form or another for the last decade and I’ve had my mind very much set on it for the last year. I grew up with god games and I never get bored of them, yet somehow they all started to die out early last decade.

The AAA industry seemed to have no interest in creating the game I wanted to play and whilst there are some smaller developers taking a punt at management games, they fail in the execution and create difficult economy based game mechanics that turn their games into a spreadsheets. The hard lessons learned by Bullfrog, Muckyfoot and early Lionhead seem to have been completely lost in time.

I didn’t do any market research before starting development, it was a side project at the time and I was focusing on creating a great game, not a product to sell. As soon as I started releasing screenshots, people got very excited and it was apparent that I was on to something that could become really special. That was enough for me to take the risk of going full-time.