No, you’re not imagining things. There was indeed a completely different Kickstarter for a Shadowrun pc game a few months ago. But that was a more classic PC rpg in the vein of Fallout or Baldur’s Gate. This is an MMO. But wait, aren’t MMOs massive an incredibly expensive and in no way feasible on a Kickstarter scale? You would think. But this is a “Browser and Tablet based MMO” which I guess means it can get made for five hundred grand. Not chump change, but not exactly The Old Republic money either. Unfortunately, the fact that it is a “Browser and Tablet based MMO” also means that I instantly hate it. I know that’s not fair, and I’m sure there are plenty of fun and exciting Browser based MMOs. Actually, scratch that, I’m not sure of that at all. But I’m sure there are people out there that love their browser based MMOs. But there are plenty of people out there that love Farmville. That doesn’t make it a good game. Just a boring, repetitive game with shitty graphics that’s designed less to be fun to play, and more to encourage you to get you to cough up those sweet, sweet micropayments. That’s not fun.
Anyway, off topic. Shadowrun. They make a lot of bold claims about character driven storylines and a world that’s shaped by the players, but I’ve heard all this before, and we usually just end up with a game that look pretty much like all the other games in the same genre. Remember Matrix Online? that was supposed to reshape the MMO as we knew it, and that went no where. Even The Old Republic is just World of Warcraft with a better story. Hard to believe you can make a browser based mmo for half a milion dollars, AND have it achieve the sort of things that much more impressive games have tried and failed at. Best case scenario, you get a game that’s pretty much just Ultima Online, except everyone’s wearing a trenchcoat, the forests are replaced with skyscrapers, and it’s always dark and grimy out. If we’re really lucky, you’ll be able to own property or something. I’m not jazzed. Single player RPG seems like a much better deal. If I ever wanted to play Shadowrun multiplayer, I’d just get the books and play the pen and paper rpg instead.