OFF GRID is 82.73% funded today (£16,546) and there is just one week left in the campaign!
That means there is £3454 left to raise within the next seven days - that’s under £500/day!
We can do it. Help us smash it!
All or nothing.
Kickstarter campaigns are all-or-nothing: either we hit
our goal, get the funding, and everyone gets their rewards, OR we fall
short, and backers get their money back without the rewards. <-- We do not want that to happen.
You want your rewards. We need the funding to get them to you. Help us make it happen!
If you have been thinking:
“There’s a group I should really post this in... “ Do it. “I have a mate that would really like this.” Tell them.
“I don’t have a big following, my tweet won’t matter.” It totally matters!
“Having a name in the game would be a super cool gift.” YES IT IS!
“I’d really like the goods in the next tier..” Up your pledge!
“Could this be a good use for my bitcoin riches?” Definitely. 100%. “I wonder what being a character in a video game would feel like?”This is your chance to find out! Go on!
Now is the time. Together we can do this!
To everyone that has backed OFF GRID so far: THANK YOU! Your support means *everything* to us!
LET'S DO THIS!
The Off Grid Team
If you haven’t already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!
If we’re *exact* about it, we’re 81.355% funded at time of
writing - backers have funded us to the tune of £16,271! There’s just 8
days to go for us to raise the last £3,729.
A quick reminder: it’s an all-or-nothing campaign, so we absolutely must hit the £20k goal in order to receive the funding. Help us get there by continuing to share the campaign in any way that you can.
Real life trickery
We hope you enjoyed yesterday’s surprise character reveal!
Hackers and hacktivists have become iconic figures in recent
times, making a huge impact on the public dialogue around data privacy,
information security, freedom of information, whistleblowing, mass
surveillance, and digital rights.
Having real hackers in the
game is an opportunity for players to dig into the themes of the game in
a more meaningful way. After all, their stories helped inspire and
shape OFF GRID.
Our halloween themed scare is all about these scenes from the OFF GRID intro...
Each represents a real scare that happens regularly.
They
are not fiction. They happen. Governments really do smash their way
into homes (or use trickery to gain access), and bundle away teens and
other souls with little, poor, or even no substantial evidence.
The
people we are featuring in the game have been through this, and they’d
be the first to tell you that’s a trick-or-treater you don’t want
knocking on your door. So whatever you do this Hallows Eve - stay safe
on the interwebs!
Help us reach 100% funded!
If you haven’t backed OFF GRID yet, what are you waiting for?! Go ahead and treat yourself - it will help us make this game the best it can be, and shine a light on the aforementioned issues.
If you are quick about it there’s still some early bird £14 copies available as an exclusive to Kickstarter! SO BACK NOW!
Just 8 more days to go!
Happy Halloween and THANK YOU!
The Off Grid Team
If you haven’t already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!
Did you happen to spot this image on the Kickstarter page, scratch your head, and wonder who it might be?
Drumroll please...
Former LulzSec, Anonymous, and other well-known hackers will feature as characters that players can meet in OFF GRID!
Hackers to be featured include:
Ex-LulzSec and Anonymous members and now security researchers
Mustafa Al-Bassam
Jake Davis
Darren Martyn
Alleged Anonymous hacktivist and digital rights campaigner
Lauri Love
Noteable whitehat security researcher
“March” O’Neill
. . . with more to come!
Hacker characters to feature in OFF GRID: Mustafa, Jake, Darren, March, Lauri
This will be a very cool feature of the game as it builds on the
notion of exploring hacker culture in the game world with an
authenticity that is hard to come by in mainstream media.
It will
give the hackers themselves the chance to tell some of their stories
about the future of the internet, and if this proves popular, will
provide something to really expand upon.
Some of the early concept art
We have found it hard to keep from blurting this one out, and it has been excruciating working on the art without saying anything. Turns out well known hackers know how to keep a secret too!
Hacktion figures
We have exported the models in a 3D printable .stl format so that you can print your own characters from the game.
Ever wanted your own Lauri Love action figure?
They are released under Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 so feel free to share and remix, have a play!
If you haven’t already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!
Friday, 26 October 2018
OFF GRID is 76% funded and officially loved by Kickstarter! <3
The campaign was given a 'PROJECT WE LOVE' badge earlier in the week! We had hopes and dreams
of getting that nice little bit of extra love from Kickstarter before
we started, and now we’ve got it. It feels good. Thanks Kickstarter!
BIG NEWS IS COMING
We have some tremendously fun news coming next week! Stay tuned - the news is going to break on Tuesday, October 30th. You don’t want to miss it!
Once the news is LIVE - please do us the favor of sharing it to
the masses. Tweet, blog, write an article, do a little video, share,
retweet, or write us a poem.
Would you like a clue? OF COURSE you'd like a clue! Here you are:
To celebrate the release of the aforementioned news, Rich will be doing a dev stream on Tuesday to chat about it all with you! Tune in via twitch.tv/semaeopus at 5pm UK time.
Now,
let's get to smashing the 80% milestone as soon as possible, folks!
Share and chat about it as much as you can! Perfect conversation for
all those Halloween parties this weekend... the mass surveillance state
that surrounds us all is downright frightening, after all.
THANK YOU!
The Off Grid Team
If you haven’t already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!
Halfway through the Kickstarter campaign and 73% funded is a great place to be - thank you!
You backers have given us a seriously wild ride: OFF GRID was 35% funded in 5 hours, 40% funded in 7 hours, AND THEN we hit the 50% mark within 21 hours!
It has been super exciting to have the support of all of you behind us. To be 50% funded within 24 hours? Astounding!
We still need £5,330 to meet our goal - and WE NEED YOUR HELP!
If you have yet to back OFF GRID
on Kickstarter - now would be the *perfect* time. Help us reach 100%
funded! Every single £, every single $, is hugely appreciated - please,
please, please share far and wide throughout your own networks.
We’d also like to hear from you: what would you like to hear
more about in these updates? Character backgrounds? More on hacking
gameplay? You tell us! Let us know in the comments below or in the
discord - join it here, if you haven't already.
There are 15 days left in the campaign, and a lot can happen in 15 days. We are excited!
We’ve been Kickstarting for a week and we’re ALMOST 70% funded!
Nearly 70% in seven days is absolutely astounding. Thank you all SO
much!
It’s been excellent to hear from backers and hugely
exciting to get feedback from those of you that have played the demo.
We’ve gotten our first Let’s Plays, and overall, we are feeling pretty
good about week one!
Now for week two!
There’s a few fun things going on this week - Rich is Sweden for the Sweden Games Conference. The conference theme is ‘Games and Politics: Reflections on power, play & changing perspectives'... and we fit the bill! Rich was invited to speak AND Off Grid was selected to be on the show floor as part of Indiecator - a showcase dedicated to indie games!
If you’re in London - Off Grid is also on show as part of Inside Intel
- an exhibition of contemporary artworks, design objects and digital
assets brought together to investigate the confusion sewn by an
increasingly partisan media, sinister new technologies and the culture
of official secrecy and widespread surveillance. The exhibition forms
part of the 2018 Centre for Investigative Journalism’s Logan Symposium: Conspiracy. If the theme of our game is what’s piqued your interest - go check it out as it looks seriously cool! Plus it’s free!
We want to keep momentum for the campaign going - and we need you to
help. Please continue to share, share, share. Remember, it’s an
all-or-nothing campaign, so we must hit our target in order to recieve
the funding and fulfil the rewards. Keep on sharing, shouting, and
spreading the word for us!
Thanks again for an incredible first week, backers!
He’s out there as he’s a speaker at IndieCade today!
He’s talking about modding, digital activism, and why as a game
developer, you probably have less to say about a subject than your
audience does.
So without further ado: let’s talk about what makes Off Grid so unique!
Off Grid is first and foremost a fun yet challenging hacking game that opens a dialogue about the real world issues of data privacy, information security, and the mass surveillance state that surrounds us all. It has a compelling narrative and a sweet father-daughter relationship at its core.
It’s played with a controller, and we promise, no previous hacking knowledge is required. ;)
But if you wish to take it further, there’s so much more to it!
Replay & Community Input
We want Off Grid to continue on as a piece of
work that the community can shape along with us in order to make it
everything it can be.
It is an open stealth game with multiple solutions to levels and a
complex AI, creating missions that are fun to play through many times
over.
PLUS, the game is extensively moddable and the speed and ease
with which players and modders can turn around a level means that
interesting content and stories should be produced at a speed and scale
that will outstrip anything we could dream of as an indie development
team!
This is something we want to expand on here...
The 'South Park' of Hacking Games
Off Grid has dark humour at its centre, and the
state of this crazy googling, Orwellian hot mess of a world we live in
is ripe for modders to exploit humorous interpretations.
Off Grid is much like South Park in that important themes are wrapped up in tongue-in-cheek humour. Like South Park’s speedy turnaround of episodes to approach topical issues, Off Grid’s modding tools make it possible to produce a new level in a matter of days in order to ape news and current events.
The incredible importance and relevance of the issues around
hacking and data privacy in everyday life mean that there is a mine of
inspiration available for topical mods to be created and for streamers
to play and comment on.
In the video above, we took a real life
vulnerability and made it as a mod in the game to prove the tools could
used to tell stories of real life hacks. In this instance, we took Scott Helme's talk from Steelcon16 about the vulnerabilities of the Nissan Leaf,
and made a hackable car that carried the same weakness: a publicly
displayed VIN was used to access the app that controls the car's aircon,
battery, locks, and could get the car's location data.
The possibilities are endless! We look forward to the game being released and seeing the first official mods come back.
If
this sounds up your street and you have yet you back Off Grid, please
consider doing so now! We’d love to have you as a backer.
To all
of you that have backed and/or shared this campaign so far: we can’t
say thank you enough - it’s been an absolutely incredible few days!
THANK YOU!
The Off Grid Team
P.S. Don’t forget: please share this, retweet us, post the
link wherever you hang out online, and tell your friends! THANK YOU! If you haven’t already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!
WOW. You backers gave us a seriously wild ride yesterday: 35% funded in 5 hours, 40% funded in 7 hours, AND THEN we hit the 50% mark within 21 hours!
It feels seriously good to be 50% funded within the first 24 hours of the campaign! Your enthusiasm and support has blown us away. THANK YOU!
For this first update, we wanted to give you a little background on the inspiration for Off Grid. As you might be aware, it’s been in the works for quite some time!
The game was initially inspired when Rich heard Eben Moglen speak about net neutrality and data privacy at the INET conference in 2011. It struck a cord, and the seed for Off Grid was planted.
Soon after, Rich teamed up with Pontus, and together they built the first prototype of Off Grid. The goal was to get people thinking about data. The root notion was to try and physicalize it - to make data into something manipulable, something that people would be able to go and play with and see as a thing you can walk around.
But the concept was still a little out there: this was early 2013, before Snowden and NSA revelations.
Fast forward to June 2013, and the first ever public unveiling of Off Grid (in a livestreamed interview at Etoo London) just happened to fall nearly 64 years to the day after the publishing of George Orwell's book, 1984, and the same week that Edward Snowden made his first leak.
And all of a sudden, it clicked.
Prior to the first revelations, it was a struggle to explain to anyone why what we were doing with Off Grid was important or would be interesting. Then, almost overnight, Snowden gave everyone the vocabulary to talk about it. People understood.
Now, years on, the revelations have just kept rolling, and everyone is much more aware of the issues surrounding data privacy and mass surveillance.
It is the perfect time for a game like Off Grid: people are tuned into the effects of data mining and the impact that bad laws around digital rights have on real life. Help us get Off Grid funded, and THEN help us shape the game so we can all try to picture a less dystopian digital tomorrow.
Let’s keep the momentum going - tell your friends!!
THANK YOU!
The Off Grid Team
P.S. If you want to chat to us a bit more informally, we regularly hang out in our studio discord - we’d love to see you in there! Join us: https://discordapp.com/invite/NDEVwBJ
If you haven’t already - be sure to wishlist Off Grid on Steam - each wishlist makes a big difference to us, and we really appreciate your support!
