The Founder Gets To Business On Kickstarter
The Founder is a management simulation video game that takes our world, right after the last bubble burst, and plots out a possible, if exaggerated, trajectory. How is the promise of technology corrupted when businesses’ relentlessly growth-oriented and profit-seeking logic plays out to its conclusion? What does progress look like in a world obsessed with growth, as measured only by sheer economic output?
Like any good power-fantasy game, you are at the center of it! The Founder puts players into the shoes of someone who has bought into techno-capitalist logic and lets them loose in a fictional universe. The player will be instrumental in the progression to an unsavory future; a progression which will feel disturbingly rational under the logic of the game. Winning in The Founder means shaping a world in which you are successful – at the expense of almost everyone else.
The game will be available at a pay-what-you-want price (backers get in guilt-free) and will befor the web (supporting Firefox and Chrome, plus others if there is enough demand). The game is in an early state, but most of the core features are developed. There are still a lot of things that need to be added, bugs that need fixing, values that need balancing, visuals and graphics that need improving, startups that need starting.
The game has taken the developer about a year and a half to reach the point it’s at now, mainly because he’s had to make a living and hasn’t been able to devote a sustained amount of time to it. According to the developer, he has had a clear vision of the final game and I’d like to dedicate a few months to taking it that last 10% so I can finally release it. You can find the game on Kickstarter here, where it has currently surpassed its Kickstarter goal with most of the campaign time left.