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Work Halted On Neal Stephenson's Kickstarted Swordfighting Video Game
An anonymous reader writes "Last year, sci-fi author Neal Stephenson and a team of game developers set out to make video game swordfighting awesome. They set up a Kickstarter campaign to fund the creation of hardware and software tech that would make replace console controllers with something more realistic. Now, production on that tech and the game in which they showcase it has been halted. In an update on the Kickstarter page, Stephenson explains how they've sought other investments without success. The project is 'on pause,' and the team asks for patience. He says, 'The overall climate in the industry has become risk-averse to a degree that is difficult to appreciate until you've seen it. It is especially bemusing to CLANG team members who, by cheerfully foregoing other opportunities so that they could associate themselves with a startup in the swordfighting space, have already shown an attitude to career, financial, and reputational risk normally associated with the cast members of Jackass. To a game publisher crouched in a fetal position under a blanket, CLANG seems extra worrisome because it is coupled to a new hardware controller.'"
...about why I don't trust kickstarter.
Sure, I'll fund you. Once you have something ready to deliver.
Otherwise, I'm not going to trust a bunch of newbies with my money, essentially giving them an interest free loan.
As someone who has done a bit of both Japanese and French style fencing, I was excited about this game. But its pausing (read: cancellation) does not come as a surprise. Any game that requires special hardware is going to face an uphill battle. My guess is that it became apparent the hardware they needed to make the game work they way they envisioned was going to be unrealistically expensive (like over $100 per unit). Theoretically, that hardware could come down in price in the near future and they could start back up- but I seriously doubt it.
It'll be a lesson for other developers, perhaps they would have been better off adding the hardware controller as a stretch goal and getting the main product out without the controller to begin with. All this in hindsight of course :)
In case anybody is wondering of the state of the game, there is a nice video review of it.
Chris Kohler reports that Subutai Corporation, the developer of Clang, the motion-controlled swordfighting game spearheaded by fiction author Neal Stephenson, has burned through the over half a million dollars that backers donated and can't finish the game without even more money. "We've hit the pause button on further CLANG development while we get the financing situation sorted out," says the Clang Team. "We stretched the Kickstarter money farther than we had expected to, but securing the next round, along with constructing improvised shelters and hoarding beans, has to be our top priority for now."
But not so fast writes Kohler. "What shocks me about this particular update is that Subutai seems to be neither apologetic, nor realistic about what actually occurred in this case. Reading the update, it seems like the blame is falling everywhere but on Subutai's own decisions."
The Clang Team says that "Kickstarter is amazing, but one of the hidden catches is that once you have taken a bunch of people's money to do a thing, you have to actually do that thing, and not some other thing that you thought up in the meantime." Only after completing the whole Kickstarter did they discover the hidden trick to the whole thing writes Kohler, which is that you have to make the thing you took people's money to make.
"Hey, Kickstarter creators: If you run out of money and need to explain things to your backers, you're stuck between a rock and a hard place and I don't envy you having to decide how to approach it. But I can say one thing: Definitely do not post an update like this."
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/09/clang-kickstarter/
1) Use it to support fundraisers that are purely charity. Where the rewards don't matter. My cousin used Kickstarter to raise a few thousand dollars to get an album made for his kids rock band. Money was raised from friends and family. The tee shirts and cds he sent out didn't really matter.
2) Use it to preorder stuff from established companies that have a history of shipping stuff. A company that been in buisness for 20 years is going to get you your stuff.
3) If risking your money on something untested, risk it on stuff that is already built and tested. The Oculus Rift was already awesome and being demoed when its Kickstarter started. Artist ofter already have their songs, books, or prints ready. They just need money to print stuff.
Wow.
So let me get this straight: Best-selling, presumably well-heeled author uses his star power to hold the beggar's cup on Kickstarter.
Author spends the proceeds without delivering anything.
Author pens a nice FU to the folks that trusted him, gives up.
Stephenson: how about digging into your pocket and delivering what you promised? I sincerely hope that he now has 9000+ former fans that will never buy another book from him, and will tell their family and friends to do the same. And thus ends up taking a bigger financial hit than just simply doing the right thing.
Sure, they raised over $500k from 9000+ backers, but they hadn't raised that money to make a sweet swordfighting game... they raised that so they could raise their profile to get funding from more traditional sources. From Kotaku's take on it:
"Despite hitting its funding goal of $500,000 last year, development on the game is grinding to a halt, with Stephenson writing on the game's Kickstarter page that CLANG is now an "evenings and weekends" project because the money has run out, and many developers have sought contract work elsewhere.
But wait. That's not all. Turns out the money was never going to fund development of the game in the first place; the developers were simply using it as a starting point from which they could attract venture capitalist and/or publisher backing, which for whatever reason hasn't materialised."
They actually exceeded their donations goal by $26,125 yet still didnt deliver so where does that leave people that donated their hard-earned moeny to see this thing through? I'd be REALLY pissed if I was one of the 9 people that donated over $10,000.
If it is so easy to get over half a million in donations by claiming you're gonna do something cool then just coming up with some lame excuse a few months later, I think I might have to come up with my own kickstarter page with no intentions of ever actually delivering.
I'm thinking a kit that costs $5000 and turns your car into a personal spaceship sounds cool.
This is pathetic. They blew through $500K and they don't even have a demo. Reading through their stuff, it seems like all they really intended to do was a standard fighting game with a sword-like controller and better fighting mechanics. Nothing indicates that you'd feel a blow when you hit something, or when you got hit. A Kinect can do that. Even the old-model Kinect.
There's some handwaving about force feedback, but nothing about how to actually do it. It's not impossible, and you can do better than just putting a buzzer or vibrator in the sword. It would be amusing to put a gyro in a gimbal inside the sword. Normally, with the gimbals unlocked, the sword swings freely, but when you get a "hit", the gimbal clutches lock and you feel your wrist wrenched as the sword will no longer rotate.
And why the hell do they have a Tesla coil driving a Jacobs ladder in their video?
Because Generic Cutlass Clashers has gotten so stale lately.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
And it's working fine for the development of Wasteland 2. But that's just game development based on existing tech. It's not seeking to invent new hardware.
Clang would have been better off to base its controller(s) AMAP on existing hardware. Like the Kinect 2, the Occulus Rift, and some kind of gyro-based controller (like in WiiMote stuff), although Kinect 2 should be able to recognize an object held in one's hands and its position, speed etc... In which case, a "dumb" controller would be all that's needed, say a sword handle with some added weight just above the guard so as to counterbalance enough that it feels like the weight of a proper sword but isn't actually so long that you'll have to worry too much about putting holes in the furniture and people around you. Given that current tech should be pretty adaptable for sword-fighting, then Clang development could have focused that much more on the software end, i.e. sword-fighting tutorials/lessons, styles, etc.
However he clearly does not have the chops to be an entrepreneur.
There is currently no shortage of money aggressively chasing startups and video game studios. If he can't generate interest despite the successful Kick-starter campaign, then he should really re-evaluate his business plan, his pitch and his fund raising strategy. Failure to generate any interest at all is a great indicator that you are doing something very wrong.
I would not use the wording some others did, but i also am disappointed. The focus on additional funding which appeared over the time was not perceived from the initial project brief.
Clang has a great vision. Such visions can fail. But that would not create any disappointment from my side. That is the purpose of Kickstarter: to fund risky projects. My disappointment was created by what i perceived a creeping change of the project direction: from a game production into creating a startup company. The second i would have never backed via Kickstarter.
Getting funds from investors is (i know this very well from my own experiences) a very expensive business. I would ask Subutai here to create some transparency on how the Kickstarter funds were allocated. IMHO those funds were earmarked for the software R&D (and overhead) but not funding aquisition or marketing.
I ask for this because the state of the demo (from my perspective) does not reflect an investment of roughly 450K$. Other projects achieved much more output with a small percentile of the funding Clang has received. The demo resembles something cobbled together in a hurry and with little effort.
It may be, that i am overly critical and unfair. But after backing 60+ projects, Clang is the one where my expectations and the visible results differ the most. I have no idea where the money (of which i provided only a very small part) went.
Obviously the money went to making the game, otherwise it wouldn't have run out. And I'd hope that anyone who backs a project like is capable of recognizing that $500,000 is not enough to build a game like this.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
So it looks like they never had enough funding in the first place. This should have been obvious.
Stephenson fancies himself as being very tech-savvy, but he's no programmer. I'm sure he had this idea (that many people still have, admittedly), that making a game isn't all that hard. Making a game is *colossally* difficult. It requires all kinds of specialized skills, and the people with those skills aren't cheap, and there aren't many of them.
Yeah, you can crank out 16-bit-level games pretty quickly and cheaply these days, but for a real "A-level" title with all the pretty 3D graphics and fancy sound effects and cool soundtrack? $10 million, minimum. Plus a custom controller that needs to be developed? $20 million.
Everyone involved with this, including the people that donated, were naive in the extreme.
No matter what, the money you put towards a project needs to be like any other unsecured investment: Money you can afford to lose. On Kickstarter you are investing for creative, rather than financial, return but the rules are the same. Obviously you want to vet what you invest in first, and if it seems like they don't know what they are doing, have a poor business plan, are scam artists, etc don't invest. However even if it is an established company, good rep, etc, etc you still need to be prepared to lose the money with no return.
I love Kickstarter, I've backed 10 videogames on it so far, but it is something I'm realistic about. Currently of those 3 have delivered as promised, 5 look like they are on track for release as promised, 1 is floundering badly and will likely fail, and 1 appears to have failed (the dev hasn't announced it, but there's been nothing from him in a long time and the game is in a very early alpha state). I'm ok with that. I only spent money I could afford to lose and I didn't expect all the products would work out, particularly since it was some smaller devs in some cases.
Given the statement "We stretched the Kickstarter money farther than we had expected to" the only conclusion is that when stated that for $10,000 they'd give you:
* Steel longsword based on a design by noted sword-smith and Foreworld contributor, Angus Trim
* A Studio tour and lunch with the team!
* Gotlandic war knife based on a design by bladesmith Jeff Pringle
* Original concept art plus invitations to company parties in Seattle
* Your face on your exclusive character!
* Name a character in the large world Foreworld game project.
* Name a character in a future Foreworld story, the alternate history in which The Mongoliad (and CLANG) is set
* Complete Mongoliad trilogy signed by team plus invitations to company parties in Seattle.
* Print version of the illustrated CLANG fighting manual signed by the team
* Copy of the Deluxe Edition of The Mongoliad Book 1, signed by the writers
* Motivational poster signed by the team. OMVI patch.
* Print edition of illustrated CLANG fighting manual.
* T-shirt with CLANG/Subutai Kickstarter campaign graphic.
* PDF of illustrated Clang fighting manual.
* Download of game concept art in pdf format.
* Two copies of the game
They had no intention of actually doing so, since apparently they've already done more than they expected with the money in the first place.
Where are all the rather EXPENSIVE bonus items people kickstarted for?
I see 80k just from 8 people, who were expecting replica swords, nevermind a number of their upper-middle tier items being similiarly physical.
Are you telling me they pissed away the 500k and didn't at least make sure their *LARGEST SINGLE INVESTORS* recieved their 'fluff' rewards despite the project not getting finished?
That's the part that sounds most like fraud to me. They knew they had certain minimum returns to provide, and they made no provisions to ensure those were budgeted regardless of the final outcome of the software-side of the project.
I don't see how this isn't going to turn into an overly scrutinized legal battle in the quest for financial restitution, especially from the people willing to drop 2500-10k on funding it.
Also Neil Stephenson: FUCK YOU. I hope the slashdot collective at the very least boycotts all future purchases of your works to penalize you for your part in this (at best) misunderstanding and (at worst) fraudulent misrepresentation of you and the company's ability to complete, on time, the task for which you were being funded.
First. I would not be certain that the letter was written by Stephenson or that the failure of CLANG was his doing.
Second, I read and purchase Stephenson's books becuase I enjoy reading them; I have no intention of depriving myself of this pleasure because someone else invested in a potential idea without worrying about risk.
86 people pledged more than $500 toward this project,(out of a total 9023), this money is at risk. I'd expect that anyone investing $500 or more would perform the due diligence about making this amount of investment, but I can never tell. This project was about developing a new way of implementing sword-play and I am not surprised that the project burned through $526,000 without obtaining results given than the production costs on a small independent movie runs between $500K and a million dollars. Or to put it in other terms, the money raised buys about 5 years of experienced programer wages, or 10 years of wet-behind the ears programming.
He is a writer, not a programmer.
Should NOT be a job creation program. I think this is what happened here.
I've been saying kickstarter is a scam for a long time now.. I'm always told that i'm CRAZY and that ONE BAD APPLE doesn't ruin the whole concept. Really? How about a dozen bad apples totaling over 1 million dollars in fraud? Does that count as a scam?
I backed it for two copies and I fully expected it to fail. Look over what they are trying to do. It's impossible. Deliver a somewhat realistic sword fighting experience. Good luck.
I figured - to quote Doc Brown - "What the hell". Tossed the money. Waited to see what happened.
They should open source it and call it done.
The reality is that backing Kickstarter projects is really the risk of an investment without the returns of an investment. In the past when people hit the point in the projects that they needed outside funding they'd need to find investors who'd own part of the product, Now they hit Kickstarter charge full price for a product they may never deliver and in the event its successful maintain all of the profits.
This is particularly bothersome to me when people like Neal Stephenson and Zach Braff who have money themselves, as well as access to investors. Kickstarter ought to be the place where small time folks who've completed the product but don't have access to the funds to get the initial batch made.
No matter what, the money you put towards a project needs to be like any other unsecured investment: Money you can afford to lose. On Kickstarter you are investing for creative, rather than financial, return but the rules are the same. Obviously you want to vet what you invest in first, and if it seems like they don't know what they are doing, have a poor business plan, are scam artists, etc don't invest. However even if it is an established company, good rep, etc, etc you still need to be prepared to lose the money with no return.
Yep. There are risks involved in making an investment in stuff that people haven't done before, and one of those risks is the risk of failure.
Having RTFPs here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang/posts/604023
Almost all the reward levels have had their items shipped, and it sounds like the currently development version of the game made it into some (all?) of the funder's hands.
As such this is yet more Dice Slashtrolling where the issues are far less significant than were espoused.
NS: Sorry about the FU, it sounds like something made it out even if it was in an unacceptable form to the fans, and you guys DID at least ensure the majority of funding swag made it to the respective supporters.
Sorry to hear it, but luckily we still have GCC...
Nobody can be a bigger badass than Raven.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
My takeaway from this thread is that most posters here:
* Do not understand how venture fundraising works.
* Do not understand what is meant by the words donate or pledge.
* Are quite upset over what is ultimately a failure of (mistaken) expectations.
As others of the more clueful posters have noted, Kickstarter projects are ventures, not items in a store. And ventures are like gambling -- you should only ever play with money that you can afford to lose. Sure, it's disappointing to lose, but it's part and parcel of the process, and losses aren't all that surprising. And for that matter, Subutai says that the CLANG project is going on hiatus, not necessarily going away, so it's a bit premature to call this a loss anyway.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
They should somehow connect it conceptually to Star Citizen. There seems to be no limits to the gullibility, er, resources of the funding crowd for that.
-Styopa
Are we sure that letter wasn't posted by The Onion? It's too comedic to be true.
that the person identified as the project's Lead Programmer also happens to list on his public bio for his first title credit as a game programmer: BattleCruiser 3000AD. Not even kidding.
You have to understand the reason that I kick started these games in the first place is that their ideas appeal to me. All of them were concepts I liked, and types of games I liked. So I'm not surprised that I ended up playing them quite a bit. They also turned out quite good. The three games, in case you're wondering, Faster Than Light, Shadow Run Returns, and expansion for the Defense Grid.
You have to remember that kick starter hasn't just seen small indie games, it has also seen some larger studios. Plus some of those indie games, like FT L, have been quite good.