Clang – Video Game project on Kickstarter

Click Here to watch the funny video: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang

About this project

Hi, Neal Stephenson here. My career as an author of science and historical fiction has turned me into a swordsmanship geek. As such, I’m dissatisfied with how swordfighting is portrayed in existing video games. These could be so much more fun than they are. Time for a revolution.

In the last couple of years, affordable new gear has come on the market that makes it possible to move, and control a swordfighter’s actions, in a much more intuitive way than pulling a plastic trigger or pounding a key on a keyboard. So it’s time to step back, dump the tired conventions that have grown up around trigger-based sword games, and build something that will enable players to inhabit the mind, body, and world of a real swordfighter.

CLANG will begin with the Queen of Weapons: the two-handed longsword used in Europe during late medieval and early renaissance times. This is a well-documented style that has enjoyed a revival in recent years thanks to the efforts of scholars and martial artists worldwide.

At first, it’ll be a PC arena game based on one-on-one multiplayer dueling (which is a relatively simple and attainable goal; we don’t want to mess this up by overreaching). Dueling,  however, is only the tip of the sword blade. During the past few years, we have been developing a rich world, brimming with all  manner of adventure tales waiting to be written–and to be played. In conjunction with 47 North, Amazon.com’s new science fiction publishing house, we’ve already begun publishing some of those stories, and we have plenty more in the hopper. Once we get CLANG off the ground we intend to weave game and story content together in a way that’ll enhance both the playing and the reading experience.

“How will this be different than SoulCalibur?” you ask. …..

Low-latency, high-precision motion controller: Critical to a satisfying sword fight is fast, accurate response. This is especially important for CLANG given the depth and complexity of moves that are used in real sword arts. Initially, CLANG will make use of a commercial, third-party, off-the-shelf controller that anyone can buy today

Depth: Roundhouse swings and crude blocks just aren’t enough. Real sword fighting involves multiple attacks delivered from different stances, pommel strikes, grappling, feints, and parries.

Expandability: Implementing the longsword style will oblige us to construct a toolkit that can then be used–by us, or by others–to create other examples of what we’re calling MASEs (Martial Arts System Embodiments). If your thing is Japanese kenjutsu or Viking sword-and-board, then in principle CLANG should support it.

Raising an army (or, in this case, building an enormous story-driven video  game) is an expensive proposition and can take a number of years. In  keeping with the scrappy, ragtag band of adventurers model, we are  building this larger vision one step at a time. The next step is to  build a functional proof of concept in the form of an exciting prototype we  can share with you and use to achieve our next level of funding–which will enable us to provide more character  models, more environments, and more MASEs. Which is to say, other weapons and styles from other places and eras. We are building a framework that can be expanded as far  and as deeply as possible. We have, after all, several thousand years of martial history to draw from.