artizens_charles

Right now we're planning on releasing expansions monthly, so each one will be smallish, but they'll add up quickly. We're thinking each month we'll add either a new monster, craft, cluster of mods, mission type, or something larger we've been working on for awhile.

However, we could also group these additions and have less frequent, but bigger expansions. Do you have a preference?

We've got a bit of an interesting system planned for that right now actually.

Every player who buys the basic game will get about 10,000 shines, our virtual currency. They can use these to buy player content at the trading post or new expansions. You can get more shinies in two ways: buying more with real money or earning more by selling stuff to other players. So if you're creating content that players want, you can buy expansions without putting any more money into the game. That's a nice incentive to make quality stuff.

If you're a player who's not really interested in selling things and just want to pay money for expansions, I think it'll be a la carte with purchases for just a single new mission at a dollar all the way up to bundle packs for new locations full of monsters and crafts for about 10 dollars. Those are just guesses at prices for now, but it should give you a sense of the system.

I was the game design lead at E-Line Media working primarily on Gamestar Mechanic.

Kai was the client programmer there as well. (The only one...he's a beast.)

Adam was a freelance music composer and world design contributor at Starlight Runner.

We're very focused on Artizens for the forseeable future (gotta give those lifetime backers their moneys worth). But I know I'll be making games for the rest of my life, so we'll see what's next. I'm especially excited to design for augmented reality in the future. Hopefully sooner than later.

I don't think it came as much surprise to my family. I've always been pretty independent, wanting to do my own thing. Adam and Kai's families have been incredibly supportive. They invested in us right away and that's why we've been able to get the stage we have. E-Line also invested in us as well and we're incredibly grateful to the for that.

Having that kind of support is crucial. Financial is great, but I mean the moral support and that generous faith our families and friends have in us. We couldn't do this without them.

Adam and I came up with the idea for Artizens in grad school and we've been working on it on the side for the past 6 years. Honestly, I think it was just a matter of time before we started our own company to make this game. What put us over the edge was meeting and teaming up with Kai. He's an amazing programmer and, better yet, he loves a challenge, so he's a great match for Adam and I who will always give him one :)

The estimated release of our alpha is July of this year. From there we'll be releasing updates and new content about every month and staying in close touch with the community the whole time.

Nope, there's no moderation gate on new uploads.

Instead, we have a two features to let the community see what they want to see.

• Immediate Personal Hiding - Any player can quickly click on gear they don't want to see to hide it for their account and just show the default look.
• Flagging for Permanent Takedown - If you think no one should see what you just saw, you can flag it for the moderators and tell us why. If it makes sense to us, we'll hide it for everyone's account except for the player who owns it, so they can still enjoy their abomination.