Carmageddon Reincarnation Seeking Kickstarter Money

Stainless Games has decided against enlisting a publisher for Carmageddon Reincarnation. Instead, the reboot of the vehicle combat series will be paid for through Kickstarter funds supplied by gamers.

The developer hasn't made a Carmageddon since 1998. Stainless lost the ability to make any additional games when they parted ways with publisher SCi. They recently acquired the rights to the series from Square Enix, who inherited the franchise after buying Eidos (who, in turn, had bought SCi). After all the time and effort it took them to re-take the reins of the franchise, Stainless is a bit wary about getting in bed with a publisher.

"Now we have our baby back we really don’t want to have any creative control of the new game wrestled from us by a corporate investor, a publisher, or space aliens trying to subvert humanity using subliminal messaging in video games," said Stainless on their Kickstarter page. "We want to make sure that the game we make is the game that we (and Carmageddon’s fans, and a new generation of Carmageddon fans who don’t even know they want it yet) want to play."

When they first announced Reincarnation last summer, Stainless said that they were seeking partners for the project. That was well before Kickstarter became such a popular source of funding for game developers. They would've had to rely on a publisher, in spite of their skepticism, if Kickstarter wasn't such an effective fundraiser. That is one big positive of the site: it allows companies that want to stay independent to remain so.

Reincarnation, like previous games in the series, features anything-goes races through massive open-world environments. Players can complete races by finishing the course, killing all their competitors, or running over all the pedestrians. This reboot will also sport online multiplayer, replays that can be shared via YouTube, and mod tools.

Vehicle combat, like space sims, is one of those genres that used to be extremely popular back in the nineties but is now, for some reason, rarely explored by developers. Hopefully Stainless can re-capture the magic of their old Carmageddon games and bring that genre back to life.