Some gaming projects that could use your time & money

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Hi everyone, I would like to point out some projects I've found that I believe are worthy causes- both for your attention and money.

The project below is on Kickstarter.com, which is a fundraising site for projects of all kinds- literature, games, books, music, movies, events, etc. How funding there works is that the project decides how much they would like to raise, what rewards they will offer for various donation amounts, and how long they think it will take to raise the funds. The project only gets the money pledged if they meet or exceed their requested amount by the end of the time period.


Zoop to the Future!

From the page about the project:
Zoop To The Future! is a new point-n-click adventure game based on the independent, animated web series, The Somewhat Comical Adventures of Prickley Pete! Inspired by classic Lucas Art's adventure games such as Monkey Island, Sam and Max, and Grim Fandango, Zoop To The Future! is full of laughs; great, mind-bending puzzles, and a style all its own.
The authors plan to make it available for every platform- mobile & desktop (including Linux).
I've talked back and forth with the authors a couple of times, and they were very responsive and happy to answer questions for me.

If you'd like to see the official game site (with a link to the web series mentioned above) it's: http://www.zooptothefuture.com/

The second project I would like to draw attention (and possibly money) to is OpenGameArt.org.
I'm pasting in their message below:

Greets!

Bart K. here, from OpenGameArt.org. As some of you may already be aware, OGA's purpose is to create and archive art and media for use FOSS video games. We've been doing this since April of '09, and we've built up fine community and a good reputation. We frequently do paid commissions of art and music for specific open source game projects, but thus far we've been unable to fund the creation of 3D art because it's so specific and expensive.

To be specific, here are some examples of 2D art that we've commissioned recently for a promising PyGame clone of Super Smash Bros called Ultimate Smash Friends that was in need of some graphics. At the moment, we're in the process of funding a complete graphical overhaul for them.

To give you an idea of what art costs, those sprites were $150 each (which any professional pixel artist will tell you is a good deal). We also do random art and music commissions for other games and more general ones for the community as a whole.

September was a fairly typical month. We spent a total of $688 ($488 on commissions, $200 on hosting), and took in $168 in donations, which meant that the $520 balance came out of my own pocket. I am not, for the record, particularly rich; I'm just an average software engineer with a wonderful and supportive wife.

We recently received a big sponsorship from Gameboom (thanks guys!), who agreed to donate server space, freeing up another $200/month for commissions.

All that being said, we've never been able to commission 3D art because high-poly 3D art costs 5 to 10 times as mush as 2D art for the same thing (character models versus 2d sprites, etc), which means that we're less able to provide help to a lot of very deserving FOSS game projects. We could afford maybe one 3D commission a month (if we get a good deal on it), but that would pretty much lock us out of sponsoring any other projects.

So, here's the deal. It would be a huge help if we could get a large number of people to sign up for a very small monthly donor subscription (even $3 is awesome). If you paid any amount of money to make the Humble Bundle (which was an excellent project that I approve of whole-heartedly) Free and Open Source, this is a chance to support a lot of other projects that are already open source and could really use some art.

Interested in helping? Just click the Donate button on our homepage. If you want to donate but hate PayPal, contact me and I can also accept money orders.

Remember, the Creative Commons doesn't go away, so any money you donate for art commissions will go toward creating something that's free to everyone, forever!

Peace, Bart K. http://opengameart.org

Thanks very much to everyone who read this far, and for taking a look at these projects!

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Hi, I probably should have included the link I found the message from the OpenGameArt.org people: http://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming...o_that_we_can/

There's also a couple comments from the head of the project there.