The Repopulation Kickstarter Drive Launched

Above & Beyond Technologies' The Repopulation is the latest PC role-playing title to become part of the Kickstarter campaign craze, so if you're looking for a new sci-fi MMO to sink your teeth into, you might want to consider pledging some cash toward it. There are no physical rewards up for grabs, but you can score everything from in-game credit to the Executive Producer title among the tiers.  Here's a little background info on how the team plans to spend the money:
Above and Beyond Technologies is an independently owned development studio. It consists of a small team which has spent every last moment of free time at their disposal to fund and develop this title over the past four years. Each of our team members either works a day job, or makes ends meet by working as an independent contractor. We've invested years worth of our time because we believe strongly in this project and that it will be a success. You may be wondering why we would look to kickstart now?

We're realists. We realize that the game's success lies not only in its feature list and gameplay, but in the level of polish and presentation that it can provide at launch. Unfortunately indie studios often find themselves in positions where they simply have run out of funds and are forced to launch a game that is buggy and unpolished. Kickstarter will help ensure that this does not happen with The Repopulation.

To date we've managed to keep our costs down to a minimum due to our core team working for free, and by outsourcing to affordable contractors out of our own pockets. We were prepared to do this until launch, but the amount of interest in this project over the past few months has led us to believe that we owe our rapidly growing user base the most polished content we can provide at launch. We're kickstarting to ensure that we can accomplish that.

Even without kickstarter we are planning a launch in 2013 with all the features listed. A major part of developing any game, whether it is a simple single player game or a huge MMO, is offering more options and variety. Even with our very modest target for our kickstarter campaign this will help us to add more of the following into The Repopulation

'¢ More NPC Species, which may also serve as pets.
'¢ More refined animations for both players and npc species.
'¢ Even more armor pieces, hair options, weapon models, etc.
'¢ More advanced mission templates for an even more enjoyable mission experience.
'¢ More special effects for abilities.
'¢ More UI work for better overall usability and visuals.
'¢ Additional motion capture animations and emotes.
'¢ Improved cinematic effects for Missions and Engagements.
'¢ More aggressive beta and release schedule.

These are small touches that can make the difference between a good experience and a great experience. Many of these options also add content into The Repopulation, expanding the amount of gameplay that will be available upon release.

We start private Alpha testing for a lucky handful in late June of this year and will slowly start adding more individuals in for testing for the remainder of the year. Beta will be ready late this year or early next. As a thanks for backing us, the early tiers are getting a very lucrative break on the eventual costs once the game is released, so you are doing more than simply pledging to the cause, you are pre-ordering as well.