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Press Release
Las Vegas Resident Half Of Viral Startup Fundraising Success in "Roll20" Application
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
LAS VEGAS, NV (April 22, 2012) - Riley Dutton and Nolan T. Jones have seen greater than anticipated success in fundraising efforts for their online "virtual tabletop," Roll20.net.
After college both moved away from each other-- Dutton to Wichita, Kansas and Jones to Las Vegas, Nevada-- but found that they wanted to find a way to regularly gather their mutual friends separated by distance.
"Video games require too much attention for real interaction, while a scheduled phone call or video chat is too easy to skip because someone might feel they're caught up on what's going on in the other persons' lives," said Roll20 co-creator Nolan T. Jones. "But traditional tabletop roleplaying games have something of a serialized story which keeps people coming back for more, while providing the sort of camaraderie we missed."
The pair set about looking at options to play such games over long distances, as they could no longer gather around a table physically with the map, character tokens, and dice-- including the 20-sided variety from which the Roll20 application takes its name-- that are traditionally part of the pen-and-paper roleplaying game experience.
"We looked at a lot of options that were already out there and most lacked the ease of play that we sought. We wanted it to feel just like a table... but online. A way to share and move images with each other while interacting face-to-face with integrated webcams. Then I realized I had already been working on programs with similar image-based functions and that this was a strong idea. It felt so perfect that I tried to get Nolan to talk me out of it."
Jones did just the opposite, and soon the the duo had gathered friends from across the country around their virtual table and were playing these storytelling adventures. As they did so, they realized they weren't the only friends unable to continue such games because they were separated by distance. The biggest problem with taking the service public would be the hosting costs for the amount of online traffic and storage the program would generate with a large group of users.
So they turned to Kickstarter; a method of funding creative projects via online donations. Kickstarter operates via an all-or-nothing method in which creators decide how long the fundraising will last and if the project is unable to raise enough donations no money changes hands. However, it also allows projects receive more than the minimum requested funding from donors, as a way of rewarding and expanding upon good ideas. Dutton and Jones asked online users to pledge $5,000 to Roll20 to cover server costs and to do so within an 18 day period that began April 13th.
"We had the requested $5,000 in a day and a half. We had $10,000 in about four days. Right now we’ve raised $17,000 from over 700 contributors, the vast majority of whom we've never met. It's still rising, and the Kickstarter campaign doesn't even end until midnight of April 30th," stated Dutton, with Jones quick to add, "I guess I'm not the only one who thought Riley had a pretty great idea."
Roll20 will be beta tested by contributors starting in May before being offered for free to the public at the end of summer 2012. All additional funds being raised will be utilized to make further improvements to the system, including creating an online marketplace that allows people who write or make art for roleplaying games to sell their creations for others to utilize via the Roll20 interface.
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LAS VEGAS, NV (April 22, 2012) - Riley Dutton and Nolan T. Jones have seen greater than anticipated success in fundraising efforts for their online "virtual tabletop," Roll20.net.
After college both moved away from each other-- Dutton to Wichita, Kansas and Jones to Las Vegas, Nevada-- but found that they wanted to find a way to regularly gather their mutual friends separated by distance.
"Video games require too much attention for real interaction, while a scheduled phone call or video chat is too easy to skip because someone might feel they're caught up on what's going on in the other persons' lives," said Roll20 co-creator Nolan T. Jones. "But traditional tabletop roleplaying games have something of a serialized story which keeps people coming back for more, while providing the sort of camaraderie we missed."
The pair set about looking at options to play such games over long distances, as they could no longer gather around a table physically with the map, character tokens, and dice-- including the 20-sided variety from which the Roll20 application takes its name-- that are traditionally part of the pen-and-paper roleplaying game experience.
"We looked at a lot of options that were already out there and most lacked the ease of play that we sought. We wanted it to feel just like a table... but online. A way to share and move images with each other while interacting face-to-face with integrated webcams. Then I realized I had already been working on programs with similar image-based functions and that this was a strong idea. It felt so perfect that I tried to get Nolan to talk me out of it."
Jones did just the opposite, and soon the the duo had gathered friends from across the country around their virtual table and were playing these storytelling adventures. As they did so, they realized they weren't the only friends unable to continue such games because they were separated by distance. The biggest problem with taking the service public would be the hosting costs for the amount of online traffic and storage the program would generate with a large group of users.
So they turned to Kickstarter; a method of funding creative projects via online donations. Kickstarter operates via an all-or-nothing method in which creators decide how long the fundraising will last and if the project is unable to raise enough donations no money changes hands. However, it also allows projects receive more than the minimum requested funding from donors, as a way of rewarding and expanding upon good ideas. Dutton and Jones asked online users to pledge $5,000 to Roll20 to cover server costs and to do so within an 18 day period that began April 13th.
"We had the requested $5,000 in a day and a half. We had $10,000 in about four days. Right now we’ve raised $17,000 from over 700 contributors, the vast majority of whom we've never met. It's still rising, and the Kickstarter campaign doesn't even end until midnight of April 30th," stated Dutton, with Jones quick to add, "I guess I'm not the only one who thought Riley had a pretty great idea."
Roll20 will be beta tested by contributors starting in May before being offered for free to the public at the end of summer 2012. All additional funds being raised will be utilized to make further improvements to the system, including creating an online marketplace that allows people who write or make art for roleplaying games to sell their creations for others to utilize via the Roll20 interface.
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