The official press release announcing the collaboration I put together between Richard Garfield and Mind Control Software is going out today. In addition, there's a spiffy new website to promote the game plus you can now follow us on twitter (@TheMindTwist) and/or become a fan on facebook. Finally, there's an exclusive interview about the project on Gamasutra with Richard and Mind Control's CEO, Andrew Leker.

The short version of all this is that I now have a job at a kick-ass independent video game developer called Mind Control Software and Mind Control is in the process of expanding their Orbital platform infrastructure technology in order to be able to do everything I've ever dreamed of wanting to do with a multi-player online strategy game. The Richard Garfield-designed, free-to-play-but-with-microtransactions-we-hope-you'll-want-to-buy project (aka "Mind Twist") will be our first release, but there are other games in the pipeline as well.

Mind Control, by the way, is a 33-person studio that has spent the last year building Vector City Racers, which is a casual car-driving MMO built in flash and targeted at 6-12 year old boys. The engineers have performed what sound to me like miracles in order to build a real-time 3D game in flash, and get it from green-light to open beta in less than a year, so I know they can handle this one. The trickiest bit is that right now we're funding Mind Twist internally, out of profits from Vector City Racers. We'd rather have an influx of cash so that we can pour more resources into Mind Twist and get it out sooner. My current job is to try to find someone to give us that money ... so if you happen to know (or to be) an angel investor or a venture capitalist that wants to invest in an online game/platform play, please do drop me a line as I've got a rock-solid business plan I'd like to share with you.  

As for the rest of you, I'll do my best to keep you updated and I'm sure I'll eventually be fishing here for willing guinea pigs / beta testers.