Hey – look at me – I'm a producer. I just paid to produce a game. It started with a sentence embedded in the press release for Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller. Well, thrillers with women at the helm are just our speed so I read the release. Somewhere halfway down I came across this sentence, “With today's announcement, Phoenix and Khaeon have launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the series' initial development costs: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/postudios/cognition-an-erica-reed-thriller”. They want ME to pay to produce the game? Well, I like Phoenix Online, developers of The Silver Lining, a freeware take on King Graham so I investigate further. Kickstarter (www.kickstarter.com) is a funding platform for creative projects arts, technology publishing - games fall into that category.

The project will only be funded if at least $25,000 is pledged by Sunday Dec 11, 2:59 EST. The perks range from the soundtrack, poster, copies of the game, your name in the game, but best of all, you can be a producer. As of today, 11/11/11, they are three quarters of the way there with 356 backers, 19,453 pledged and 27 days to go. Pledges can be a minimum of 1 dollar to $10,000, with pledges between 40 and 100 dollars having the most backers.

Here is Phoenix's release on the game: Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller will release as a series of four episodes, a format Phoenix knows well from their work on the ambitious freeware game The Silver Lining (http://www.tsl-game.com). After playing The Silver Lining, Khaeon representatives approached Phoenix to develop Cognition, a project originally conceived by Khaeon's art director Romano Molenaar. The game's design team will work closely with story consultant Jane Jensen on Cognition's plot and investigative gameplay.

Katie Hallahan, Romano Molenaar, Jane Jensen - I'm willing to put in a few bucks on it.