Kickstarter video transcripts

English transcription from audio: JPL narrates: The age of humanity has long past. The endless conflict continues to march into the vast darkness of space. Battles rage across the cold void: annihilating planets, moons, and asteroids; cosmic obliteration for a purpose long forgotten. Technology has been captured, assimilated, refined, and transformed into brutally efficient self-replicating mechanisms of war.

The age of publishers has long past. The endless conflict between funding and game developers continues to march into the vast darkness of space. Battles rage across the cold void in search of fans to initiate the contributions through kickstarter. Technology has been captured, assimilated, refined, and transformed into brutally efficient gaming mechanisms of war.

BB: What should we talk about first? Why we're making this game?

JM: I dunno, why are we making this game?

BB: We don't know if we are yet.

JM: Oh.

BB: We don't know until the Kickstarter goes [??? ???] right?

JM: Who's it up to?

BB: It's up to the fans. It's up to you.

JM: So, you know, as the CEO of Uber, I came to you and said, you know, we should make an RTS game. What was your kind of initial reaction?

BB: Are you ****ing crazy? RTS game? Who's going to publish that? Who's going to fund that?

JM: And then you kinda came to me and you were like, "Hey, we should do something on Kickstarter." And I was like... What was my reaction?

BB: You thought I was crazy.

JM: Personally, I've been burning to make another RTS game for years. I just really enjoy working on them for some reason. I think there's fascinating technical and design challenges. And I really don't feel like anyone else is serving the RTS genre. There's only a few companies out there that make RTS games and most of them are kinda going on the more zoomed in kinda viewpoint, smaller squads... And I wanna see massive battles. And I wanna see massive battles taking place across planets. And I wanna see planets smashing into one another and... rock missiles and nukes and all the kinds of stuff that, you know, RTS gameplay can bring to you when it's done on a grand scale.

JM: The philosophy of these kinds of games differs between Command & Conquer, something like Starcraft, TA, and I see Planetary Annihilation as basically being kind of more the spiritual successor to the Total Annihilation kind of side of things.

JM: Whenever I mention that game to anybody, they're like, "You worked on Total Annihilation? Holy ****! I played that game when I was twelve and it was awesome and I blew up all kinds of robots and blalalala..."

JM: So I remember I came to you about, I dunno, few months ago and I was like, "Steve, how would you feel about, you know, spending some time making a video that is visualizing this game?", and you were like, "Aww yeah man, I wanna...", you know, you were so excited about it that I... that, to me, that's what made the difference or made the decision to go forward with this.

ST: The core concept of Planetary Annihilation is complete destruction; huge battles; massive scale. We're gonna be sending units to planets, building bases on moons and asteroids and even using asteroids as a big kinetic bombardment weapon. It's gonna be huge. It's gonna be really cool. I'm super excited about the scale, the grandioseness of it all, the massive battles and, of course, the explosions, and the robots.

CE: The cool thing about having worked with the same group of people for years... it's [???] know, you know, we push each other and it's great to see just the best of the best together.

JM: Why does Uber particularly need to make this game? Uber needs to make this game because we have the right team...

AC: ...because we're the best team. We have the most talented and most experienced people.

JM: ...the right technology, the right experience -- almost all of us have worked on RTS games in the past...

ST: We also have a coffee machine.

JM: Oh, and a coffee machine.

ST: So that helps...

JM: It's a really good coffee machine, actually...

AC: I think the best beer to go with Planetary Annihilation is an IPA. Maybe even an Imperial IPA... something strong and hoppy as you watch your planet burn.

JM: The feature I'm most excited about is pretty simple: it's annihilating planets. Hence, the name "Planetary Annihilation".

ST: Yeah, I'd like to say it's annihilating planets.

JM: You think that's your... the best feature in the game?

ST: Yeah, can I... can I use that one? Can you choose a different one? Cause that's my favorite one.

BB: I'm most excited about smashing planets into each other.

JC: Cause we're not shooting for realism; we're shooting for awesome.

BB: Kickstarter is the perfect framework to do this kind of project in. Because it is... this is not a, you know, real sexy project from a publisher's point of view. This is not something that I think would have a real success in getting funded through traditional means. This is really a game for the fans. Kickstarter also gives us the ability to connect really directly with our fans, you know; they get to help drive this entire process. In fact, you know, we're really revealing a lot more about the game than we normally ever would during this part of the development process.

HM: For Planetary Annihilation, we decided to go with dub step. [dubdubdubdubdubstep...] No, seriously, we wanted to go traditional classical music but with a little bit more twentieth century contemporary addition to it: very very brassy, very very full orchestra, full choir... just very emotional music... music that makes you want to destroy planets.

JPL: Hi, I'm John Patrick Lowrie. I'm here working on Planetary Annihilation, inspired by Total Annihilation, a game back in the 90s that I was the narrator on. It's very exciting to me and I hope it will be to you guys too. Get out there to Kickstarter and make your voices heard, fans.

JPL: Will you be among the Uber? Support our Kickstarter... or be annihilated.

JPL: They weren't even looking!