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PSOne IP Fear Effect is staged for a comeback, providing it is successfully crowdfunded.
Eurogamer reports that unlike the original title, the Fear Effect Sedna will be a low-budget indie affair courtesy of French developer Sushee, which got signed for the project off the back of Square Enix’s The Collective initiative.
The publisher last year invited indie devs to pitch titles based on its catalogue of IP.
Square won’t fund the game directly, but will help raise awareness of the €100,000 Kickstarter. Should the title be funded, the publisher will take five per cent of the total (after fees) for its contribution and use of the license, and then a further ten per cent of revenues.
We are a small team of ten people. We are not Kronos,” Sushee founder Benjamin Anseaume said of the original developers. We are an indie team. We want to make something that respects the series, but it’s not going to be Fear Effect 3. It’s going to be a new Fear Effect with new gameplay.”
The first Fear Effect hit PlayStation in 2000 and became noted for its innovative visual techniques. On the back of strong reviews, Fear Effect 2 was released the following year.
Square Enix’s Phil Elliott added that the public should not see this as Square Enix trying to crowdfund a publishing budget.
Why doesn’t Square Enix just fund the game? Well, frankly, we don’t have any plans to make a new Fear Effect game ourselves – and this process isn’t about trying to get other devs to reignite our old franchises on the sly,” he explained.
What we’re trying to do is to open the door and make available for developers to use and build upon some of our dormant franchises – because we know how hard it is to launch original ideas these days.
Doing it this way, it’s really very similar to licensing the IP out. This means that, while of course we retain the ownership to the Fear Effect IP, the developer will then get to have creative control over the project. Since it’s up to the developer to raise funds, while Square Enix will publish the game for them, the developer will retain the majority of net revenue upon release.”
Should the game be funded, it is aiming for a release on PC in mid 2017.
