I felt it’s time to close this GoFundMe Site so that it doesn’t feel like we’re begging. Everyone who wanted to donate and help us has hopefully had a chance to do so. If not, you can always contact me in-world. I will close the site tomorrow so that everyone can still have a look at the teaser videos and pictures there before they are gone.
The teasers can also be found on our UNIA facebook page.
Last night a blogger called Estelle Pienaar (also a donor, thank you!) contacted me and told me we should have more reward levels for donors. Trust me, we thought about that very carefully. We LOVE to reward people and give them all kinds of exclusive things. However, we LOVE EVEN MORE to give them an immersive experience that will blow their minds.
From Estelle Pienaar’s blog:
“One thought that I had was that with more than two reward levels (50$ and 500$) Madpea might receive even greater support. Firstly because there are a lot of people who cannot afford to give 50$, but would like to help out if they see a reward level that they can afford. Secondly people tend to raise their contribution when they see that contributions reach a ceiling - and that is a difficult thing to do with only two reward levels. Here are some ideas how additional reward levels and the prizes could have looked like:
5$ "A madpea supporter mesh badge"
25$ "A Unia supporter mesh t-shirt for your avatar"
50$ "Exclusive Unia avatar"
100$ "Exclusive Unia launching party with the Madpea team and
exclusive 48 hours access at the start of the game (for up to 50 donators)
500$ "Exclusive UNIA tour by me (2 hours), Early Access to the Game,
FREE HUD, weapons and outfits."
I wanted to make a few points to why we didn’t go down this route:
- All our developers are extremely busy. This was not a planned decision made by the whole team, it was made by me in a desperate attempt trying to give our developers some breathing space before they collapse from the amount of work they’ve had to do non-stop for UNIA, creating hunts, creating gacha items etc. We try make everything ourselves from scratch, from concept to the realization and while it's very satisfying and exciting to do that, it is not fast.
- Whether it’s something ‘simple’ as a badge or a t-shirt, it’d need to be perfect for me to approve it. That’s why the outfits we are making are not out yet either for those who donated 50USD. It’s not fast work.
- UNIA Avatar? I’m not sure what is referred to here.. but to make a mesh avatar from scratch, rig it etc takes a long long time.. Same with exclusive parties.. it’s all very precious and limited time away from the actual game development.
- If it had been a planned fundraiser, we would have prepared for it as a team and had several levels thought out and all rewards ready in time, that’s really a no-brainer there.
I felt that these two reward levels were enough for this purpose. We’re not selling pieces of UNIA to people. Our purpose was not to go out and say: ‘Hey, give me X amount of money and you get Y in return!!!’ That’s sales. Our pledge was honest, pure, simple and to the point: ‘Hey, we’re struggling to make the money to pay for the islands because we’re all overworked and are getting tired after working on this non-stop for a year now. Please if you can, help us to speed up this process so that we can bring out an experience that will make you change your view of what is possible in Second Life.’
Mad City is closing down May 31st and as always, we’re going down with a big bang.. or maybe it’s something else this time… but in the end, it will be all gone. There is still time to enjoy the rainy streets, play the Art Gacha machines, explore the shops, try to Escape the two logical puzzle rooms or just hang out on a nice sim. Rez has been enabled for all, so that especially photo and film makers can rez their poses and props needed. It’s an end of an era but also the beginning of something even bigger.
After the closing, we’re going silent for a bit. Getting lost in our UNIA net and focusing on it 100%. If you see anyone asking ‘When’s the next hunt?’ just hit them over the head with something…
We’re working on the biggest GAME
Second Life has ever seen.
Be patient, we’re almost there and
I will be publishing updates as we get closer.
Sincerely,
Kiana <3
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