Ever, Jane

[Morreion]

Ever, Jane official site

Jane Austen MMO looks for funds and decorum (Massively)

Say goodbye to swords and sorcery, and say hello to gossip and high society relationships! Ever, Jane, a social MMO that takes inspiration from the works of Jane Austen, is looking to raise funds through a Kickstarter project.

Ever, Jane puts players into prim and proper avatars who build stories, gossip against each other, explore family connections, and go to dinner parties. Mini-games are there to flesh out the challenge of navigating this type of life and include sewing, ballroom dancing, and puzzles.

3 Turn Productions is attempting to raise $100,000 to get the modest MMO off the ground by May 2014. Currently there's a downloadable prototype available to tinker with, so give it a whirl and see if it's worth your investment dollars.

Awesome comment:

Welcome to Jane Austin Online! Mr. Darcy has a problem with rats infesting his basement. Go kill 10 of them and you may catch his eye!

Ever, Jane meets Kickstarter goal (Massively)

The Jane Austen-themed title passed its $100,000 funding goalpost just before its campaign month was finished. The team said that while it will continue to run the free prototype, the weeks ahead will be concentrated on setting up an account system, establishing funding stretch goals, and hosting in-game end-of-year parties.

Women are a major marketing target for Ever, Jane (Massively)

Tyrer goes into more depth about the game's mechanics, noting that what appealed to her as a designer was the rigid stratification of social classes in Austen's work. Social movement is a major element of the gameplay, with most of players' time devoted to attending balls and gossiping about one another. No word on endgame raids against Mister Darcy or whether or not wit will be seen as an overpowered stat.

I think this is a great idea- there's been nothing like it made before, it's fresh and original, and I'd play this game before I'd play yet another Fantasy Themepark of a Thousand Solo Quests.

[Regolyth]

I don't think I would ever play it, but it's cool that it exists as an option for those who might.

[Jaema]

They did make their initial kickstart goal, but just. I think most of their early supporters had to go back in and double their initial gifts. I took a look at the demo. It was very rough, so its hard to evaluate how much fun the fully developed game would be. My gut instinct is that she will have a hard time finishing this and bringing it to market and this could be one those games that never launches. But I hate to cast a pall on her game this early so I hope she proves me wrong. I am in favor of a bigger selection of games and themes.

That video in Morr's post, above, was made by a game reviewer who has never read Austen so I was rolling my eyes because he is definitely not the target market. He seemed totally unaware that he was trying a demo of a game thats in early alpha condition. I'm not a game reviewer but I understood that much before going in.