Coolest Video Game in Years Set to Bite It on Kickstarter

For Immediate Release, From The Directorate HQ

Barring the intervention of a leprechaun farting bricks of gold from a rainbow colored unicorn, the best game concept seen this century is about to crash and burn on Kickstarter. The Directorate, a real world espionage RPG that allows players to immerse themselves in a world of cold war style adventure using geolocation enabled devices, has raised only $10625 of its $235000 goal. “If you know of any wealthy magical creatures looking for a project, please let us know,” said founder Peter Lund.

The project launched nearly a month ago to rave reviews. “You people are genius. Simply genius. I love you. With all my heart. This. Game. Is. EPIC,” wrote one backer. Another added, “I want to have little spy babies with your game......secretly.” John Bergquist, The Directorate’s communication director claims not to know why people seemed to physically fall in love with the game. “All the very personal love out there from supporters…its 99% great and only 1% creepy. We love them back,” he added.

The campaign was going swimmingly until people began to realize that the concept did not originate from a previously well-known gaming firm. “Look, if you are already famous and successful you can do a quick video with almost no proof of concept and we’ll throw money at you,” said Trisha Soundbite, a non-existent commentator, “Unknown? The project had better be pretty much done. What do you think this is, a place where just anyone can just come up with a great project, present it in a cool way and get the funding needed to complete it?”

These unwritten rules of Kickstarter seem obvious. So why didn’t the team prepare by being famous and successful? Conversely, since they seem to have taken the more difficult ‘unknown’ route, why isn’t the game already done? Chris Skaggs, Directorate CTO, points to the fact that it’s hard to become famous and successful over night, “The only way to accomplish that nowadays is by getting spray tans and engaging in whiney slapfights on reality TV. We couldn’t bring ourselves to do that.” Skaggs points to the complexity of the concept as a reason it wasn’t complete before they asked for funding. “This is much closer to World of Warcraft than it is to Angry Birds. You can’t have this type of game play and expect it to cost the same as a 16k mobile app. That’s not how this works. We’ve put a whole bunch of time into this, we’re ready to build.”

Why, then, didn’t the team take out loans and burn through their savings to build the game? Skaggs claims that the necessities of paying ‘bills’ and ‘staying in business’ weighed heavily in the decision. “Dude, I’m married,” said Skaggs, “Like, to a woman. We have kids. No game, no matter how awesome, is worth the unholy rain of hellfire that would be unleashed upon me if I didn’t bring home a paycheck. We did everything we could.”

Ultimately the fate of the game lies in the hands of its backers. Hundreds of people from around the world have pledged their support, but thousands more will have to join them in the next five days to achieve success. “Kickstarter just released a great set of standards reminding users that it’s an idea and project platform, not just a store,” said Peter Lund, “We know our idea resonates and we’ll get it built. Hopefully we’ll have the cash on hand to start next week. Kickstarter has raised way more than $235,000 in way less than five days. We just need that boost. Hopefully our backers will get us noticed by The Oatmeals and Drew Curtis’s of the world.”

“That or the leprechaun,” he added.

What is The Directorate?

You know that feeling you get after watching an awesome Bond film? The sad feeling after all the Bondness wears off and you realize that you’ve wasted your entire life by not following your dreams and becoming a secret agent with an Aston Martin equipped with machine guns and an ejection seat? We do too. That’s why we’re creating The Directorate. The Directorate is an espionage game that takes place in real life. Combining geo-location tools and RPG style leveling and questing, The Directorate allows you to become a field agent in a real life game of espionage and intrigue. We’re bringing back all the fun of the Cold War and offering it to you at your doorstep. Your neighborhood, city – the entire world, really – becomes your gameboard as you set dead drops, proximity bombs and take out your enemies with poisoned umbrella guns. 

As the foundations of the global economy trembled after the Great Recession, the world’s political landscape began to rapidly evolve.  A combination of US bond rating downgrades, inflation, weak economic growth and the impending failure of the European Economic Community caused massive devaluations of the Euro and US Dollar, crippling the world’s traditional Western economic powers.  China, in a bid to take their self proclaimed rightful spot as the world’s next superpower and install the Yuan as the global trade currency, catalyzes the destruction of Western economic, political and military power, refusing to buy US Treasury bonds and substantially increasing the price of exports.  Cash rich China begins secretly purchasing the rights to massive oil and gas deposits in the Middle East and central Europe. Power has tipped even further eastward with the announcement of a Sino-Russian free trade zone, linking Russia’s massive natural resource reserves with China’s huge production capacity and seemingly endless pool of cheap labor.

Western political and economic interests, in a bid to ally against the ever growing Eastern threat, establish covert collaborative networks, secretly linking their military, economic and intelligence infrastructures.

As the West’s major governments, bureaucracies and companies close ranks, the battle lines for the Second Cold War are drawn.

Two clandestine organizations, the Specialized Eastern Covert Tactics and Operational Reconnaissance group (SECTOR) in the East and the Centralized Intelligence and Operations Network (CION) in the West have become the on-point agencies for this new struggle.  Though hidden from the public eye, each organization represents the interests of their faction, including ties to the intelligence, economic, political and military groups in their representative area.

We’re building The Directorate on the most versatile espionage platforms ever: smartphones, tablets and browsers. That smartphone in your pocket is the most valuable spy tool yet invented. Think about it: video and audio recording, encryption, endless access to the world’s best databases, satellites pinpointing your exact location…1960’s James Bond would have given a kidney to have what we all carry around in our pockets. We’re going to open up the superspy potential of these devices and let you play with them. 

As a new field agent you will be tasked with leaving dead drops, sabotaging enemy installations, transferring intel to contacts and even taking out your enemies with a broad range of virtual weapons. Though most missions have standard templates, each individual mission will be unique because of the location where it is played. As you gain rank and influence you'll unlock new items and new play types.  And, of course, the real world is where you play; we hear the graphics there are amazing. 

If you prefer to play spy at work when your boss isn’t looking, we have you covered. Our extensive browser based mission control console will allow you to be your Agency’s eye in the sky during live missions. You’ll assist agents in the field with updated intel, and dispatch key assets into the field, all from the comfort of your favorite chair.

As you create and hone your spy cell, you will have the opportunity to engage in larger team based simulations, pitting your spy army against your enemy in large public spaces. For example, one cell may be carrying mission critical info while another works to intercept it.  The outcome of the mission will have some lasting effects for each cell...perhaps even their respective agency.  We're working on several types of team missions, all incorporating different styles of game that will highlight different strategic elements, items and game-play styles.

All of the missions, especially the capture and control of safehouses, feed into the overarching plot of The Directorate game. As you gain territory for your Agency you’ll gain more assets and resources for yourself, your cell and your Agency. Special global events will be shaped around the territorial situation...you want to make sure that you and your allies control as much territory as you can.

Director of ComInt - John Bergquist

John directs all communications and media creative ventures for The Directorate. When not creating and promoting mobile apps and games for Code-Monkeys he is blogging about technology and connectedness for the Huffington Post and about the latest Kickstarter projects on FlurrysPick.com.

Chief Espionage Officer (CEO) – Rande Bruhn

Rande, a successful business and finance leader for over 30 years, spanning both young and established ventures, creates real world order out of the chaos of shadow realms and hidden agendas.  His job, which he has accepted, is to envision a better world and manage the motley crew of The Directorate,  forging new strategies to dominate the world of geo-location based augmented reality gaming.

Director of Art - Nat Iwata 

The art of The Directorate is being shaped by Nat Iwata, taking into account both nostalgic and current espionage references to create a unique look and feel. An experienced artist and art director, Nat is responsible for overseeing the creation of the in-game world, from the look of the UI to the arsenal of spy gadgets.  Nat is a Kickstarter veteran who's latest project was recently funded.

Control – Peter Lund 

The mind behind The Directorate and its chief puppet master is Peter Lund. A veteran of the start-up world, Peter provides the creative direction and drive of The Directorate. After realizing that the real world of espionage was not quite like the brilliance portrayed in the movies, he decided to create his own spy agency. Why? Why not. 

Director of Operations – Mr. S 

Mr. S is Control’s co-founder and tactical counterpart. Trained in the US Army, Mr. S heads up mission creation and logistics, as well as keeping the project on schedule with veiled threats of the types of bodily injury he can dish out with his pinky. 

Director of Technical Development - Chris Skaggs

A serial tech-entrepreneur, Chris founded Code-Monkeys in 2000 and jumped into mobile in 2008. As the drive behind over 300 apps and several chart-topping, award winning games he brings a almost fanatical devotion to development for the team.

We brought our project to Kickstarter for many reasons. First, we think you all will really like it. We love making people excited about new projects. The second reason is that we want to create this system for its users. A MMARG takes a huge level of participation from the users to make them work, and Kickstarter is the perfect place to find people willing to participate. There is more on this in our video updates, as well as in a fantastic video from the Extra Credits. Our funding level for this project will allow us to build a functioning Beta for our players, something fantastically fun that we can build on with future funding. With your help we’ll be able to keep this process transparent and collaborative with ownership from the people we’d like as our bosses: you, the players. 

There is a rather heated debate going on at the office as to what to do if we raise way more than our funding goal. Some of us feel the need for a corporate fleet of Aston Martins outfitted with ejection seats and dual mini guns, while others feel that the resources would be better used for development of a plug and play system that would allow other developers to build MMARGs of their own. Though the Aston Martin faction is vocal, we tend to think that it wouldn’t be the best use of our resources, so we’ve made them a deal. If we raise more than $25 million we’ll get the Aston Martins. Anything under that will go into future development efforts. We’ll discuss this further in a video update if it looks like we’ll blow past our funding mark. Please don’t give us 25 million dollars. It’s not like we’re a real government agency; our toilet seats currently run us well under five hundred a pop.

So, in all seriousness, here are the basic (approximate) funding levels for building this game:

$235,000: Functioning Mobile Beta.  You'll play the game in the real world using smart-phones and tablets. 

$400,000: Additional and more complex mission types, more intense team play, optimized tablet interfaces.

$750,000+: Right around here we can start working on other player types including mission control and analyst. Upwards of this mark we're getting close to having a full fledged game including very detailed gameplay and missions, fully integrated cross platform play and major intel gathering capabilities. 

There have been so many people that have helped us get to this point, but we have to single out four here.  Max Mitchell provided our heart-thumping music; he's quite a talent.  Cascade Cigar and Tobacco in Clackamas, Oregon provided the setting for our live action shoot, along with ersatz office space to Control and Mr. S for the last year.  Thanks to you both. Sean Brown Cinematography and Amy Hunter provided us with an amazing film shoot and sound work.  We couldn't have done this without them.

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