Author Neal Stephenson has unveiled a Kickstarter in which he declares the time has come for a revolution in how swordfighting is portrayed in the video game world.

Stephenson - famed author of sci-fi classics such as Snow Crash and Diamond Age, and more recently REAMDE (which we wrote about recently because of its strong MMORPG-focused story) - has long had an interest in sword play, with katanas featuring most notably in Snow Crash. With the arrival of high resolution and low latency controllers, Stephenson writes that the time has come to harness this technology to make the ultimate swordfighting game, and his Kickstarter for the game CLANG is now online:

At first, it'll be a PC arena game based on one-on-one multiplayer dueling (which is a relatively simple and attainable goal; we don't want to mess this up by overreaching). Dueling, however, is only the tip of the sword blade. During the past few years, we have been developing a rich world, brimming with all manner of adventure tales waiting to be written--and to be played. In conjunction with 47 North, Amazon.com's new science fiction publishing house, we've already begun publishing some of those stories, and we have plenty more in the hopper. Once we get CLANG off the ground we intend to weave game and story content together in a way that'll enhance both the playing and the reading experience.

Also interesting is that it sounds like they're not just trying to make this a standalone game, but create technology which will allow anyone who wants to add swordfighting into their game to simply license their technology and integrate it directly. (Maybe we'll finally get the lightsabre fighting game that everyone has been dreaming of?)

The video is hilarious and shows the level of accuracy that he's striving for. It also features Gabe Newell working on a crowbar (with a bit of a nod to Half-Life 3) - who apparently has his own forge in his garage.