Tripwire, Lines blurred between mod team & developer
How would you like to be on a mod team and actually get paid? With the announcement of Rising Storm, the totalconversion for Red Orchestra: Heroes of Stalingrad, Tripwire Interactive is offering an opportunity to do just that.
They will be involved in a “first-of-its-kind collaboration” with the Red Orchestra modding community by working closely with the team and providing them early access to all their developer tools. If that wasn't enough, the mod team will actually receive financial compensation for the time and work they invest in the project.
"Rising Storm will take that experience one step further, to the gruelling theatre of the Pacific 1941-5. Like HoS, the game will give an experience of WWII combat never seen before. The players will take part in some of the most bitter and punishing battles ever fought as either a US or Japanese soldier. As in all of the Red Orchestra franchise, the aim is to deliver unrivalled accuracy and attention to detail, along with gritty, vicious combat in multi-player, co-op and solo modes. Not only have Tripwire listened to the fans of the original game, they have included some of the core modders of the game in their production team." -risingstormgame.com
Some early screenshots of Rising Storm.
Click on through for initial impressions on this newly announced collaboration.
What makes this deal of a lifetime even better, and why I wanted to share it with you, is that the Rising Storm Mod Team will be using the Unreal Engine 3 - One of the world's leading game engines. With a lot of the Polycount Community being Unreal aficionados we're sure a few of you will appreciate whats happening over at Tripwire. Oh, and Tripwire is looking for experience Unreal modders to get in on this action, but we'll get in to more of that later.
The way we see it, this is a great time to be a developer with the Unreal Engine 3, as the community support has been amazing with opportunities such as this and also with the release of the Unreal Developer Kit late last year. I personally love the idea of a developer backing its talented community and giving them the funds needed to produce shippable content for their game. Kudos to Tripwire for recognizing where they started and offering this unique opportunity to the mod community.
The Rising Storm Development Team are actively looking for developers, especially those with Unreal experience, to join the team so if interested in getting involved you can do so by applying here.
What are your thoughts on professional developers collaborating with the modding community to release a commercial game?
Replies
If this is handled correctly, I think this is a great idea, and its awesome to see Tripwire doing this.