Mark Kern Launches Petition For Ember, Firefall's "Spiritual Successor"

Former Red 5 Studios CEO Mark Kern still thinks Firefall is the proverbial one that got away. After voicing his displeasure with the game as it was published back in May, he's decided to take the first steps toward re-creating it, with a new game he calls Ember, labeling it as the spiritual successor to Firefall's initial vision.

There isn't (much) money going into the project at this time, though; right now, Kern has two pages set up, one for a petition on Change.org for Ember, to gauge interest in it, and a small fundraiser on IndieGogo to produce the game's website, art, and forums. Kern says the petition needs 8,000 signatures "to launch the project's first milestone," and it stands just shy of 1,500 as of this writing. The IndieGogo is doing much better, sitting at $2,366, well ahead of its stated $500 goal. If Mark Kern has one talent, it's getting people to throw money at him.

As for the game itself, Ember would be set in the universe of Crixa, a "tabletop, space-opera RPG currently under development" also being developed by Kern. It would offer many of the features that early versions of Firefall boasted, such as horizontal progression, involved resource gathering, an open-world sandbox, and customizable "omniframe" weapons suits.

Kern hasn't stated whether Ember would be free-to-play and, honestly, the game is so early in its conception that I doubt any decision's been made on a payment model. And a petition + fundraiser is light-years from a playable product, even an early access/alpha one. We'll keep an eye on it, though, and let you know if there are any other notable developments. Is it something you'd be interested in?