

Clang game project has run out of money - jere
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang/posts/604023

======
aeturnum
"Loyal donors may be curious as to why an apparently promising game is
difficult to finance."

Is this game really "apparently promising?" It's a highly technical fighting
game that they admit, "is underwhelming in its current state." They're using a
new control scheme that requires a special controller. It's also entirely
possible that potential sources of funding are waiting for other games that
focus on swordplay to release[0]. In addition, their team is a bit light on
game veterans. The co-founders are both authors who don't appear to have
business experience, much less game development experience. Their VP of game
development is an industry veteran, but one who has mostly done art
development. It seems like their most prominent backer is Valve's Gabe
Newell.[1] I also can't find much on the actual development team, which makes
me wonder where they're getting the assertion, "Our team punches above its
weight."

It also seems odd that they're pitching this as, "people just won't give us
money for some reason," rather than, "we're doing something really risky and
so it's hard to get funding." I like the idea, but I think the team has gotten
too deep into their own project.

[0] [http://www.blade-symphony.com/](http://www.blade-symphony.com/) [1]
[http://www.subutai.mn/company.php](http://www.subutai.mn/company.php)

~~~
Fuzzwah
Some of the core guys behind Blade Symphony are people I worked with on
Dystopia (the multiplayer cyberpunk HL2 total conversion). They've done it all
on the back of a kickstarter campaign which raised $19,058 back in 2011 and
more recently pre-orders (which includes beta access). $15k of the kickstarter
money was used to cover the source engine license cost.

I'm obviously biased since much of the team are good friends of mine, but the
quality work these guys are doing blows my mind.

~~~
sillysaurus2
Holywhatthefuck. $19,058? In 2011? Are these guys independently wealthy or
what? That's amazing, either way.

~~~
Osmium
You can go a long way when you don't consider your own time an expense!

~~~
delinka
"My own time" pays my bills. How does a group of people pay the bills on
$20,000 during the time it takes to create a product?

~~~
Osmium
Right; that was kind of my point. Only very serious hobbyists (i.e. people who
do it in their free time, who have regular jobs on the side) could possibly do
it for that sort of budget...

------
joosters
Why did they not say anything until they had run out of money? It must have
been obvious from some time ago that they did not have enough left to complete
the project, yet they didn't care to tell their backers.

Also, it seems odd that they talk about the problems they've had seeking other
investors, as their kickstarter page didn't mention anything about needing
more money. Rather, it implied that the $500k raised was all they needed to
release the game. So at some point, they realised it wasn't enough and sought
more investment, yet couldn't be arsed to post an update to kickstarter about
the funding shortfall.

Very poor.

~~~
brokenparser
It's even worse than that, I cite:

 _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_

You don't say.

~~~
thomaspaine
You should finish the quote...

>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.

His point being that Kickstarter funding makes it hard to pivot, as opposed to
other types of funding.

~~~
Wingman4l7
The rest of the quote actually gives a poorer impression.

------
hacknat
For a second I literally thought Apple had decided not to fund clang (llvm
compiler) anymore.

~~~
PeterisP
Same here. WTF even is that other CLANG (the article doesn't say), and why
should we care?

~~~
jere
CLANG is a sword fighting videogame/hardware project led by Neal Stephenson, a
rather famous sci-fi author.
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang)

[derp.... I forgot HN decapitalized titles. I was counting on that to
differentiate it]

~~~
mark-r
I don't think the capitalization would have helped, it's too subtle. I too was
wondering what a game had to do with a C++ compiler.

------
georgemcbay
"The overall climate in the industry has become risk-averse to a degree that
is difficult to appreciate until you've seen it."

This is kind of a bizarre claim. Not because it isn't true but because it was
just as true in June of 2012 as it is now. It has been many, many years since
the big money in the gaming industry has been funneled into things that aren't
Grand Theft of Duty Creed: Halo Edition.

------
codezero
"We ran out of money and can't deliver, so give more of your money to another
Kickstarter project."

What?

~~~
kevingadd
They did release a downloadable game to backers, IIRC. I've seen videos of it
being played.

~~~
necubi
The demo is basically unplayable in its current state. The controls are
unusable, and there's no real AI (your opponent mostly just stands there) nor
multiplayer. I think backers are especially annoyed because the kickstarter
originally promised a full game, but then at some point that shifted to a demo
with no acknowledgment from Subutai that this was a change. Furthermore, a lot
of us bought razer hydras (the motion controller used by the games) only to
find out there would be no real game for it and that we should instead back
some new motion control hardware on kickstarter.

~~~
wahnfrieden
Welcome to Kickstarter and early adoption.

------
jey
I'm just relieved to find out that "CLANG" isn't a video game you play by
writing C++ code with the Clang compiler. LLVM's C++ frontend is cool, but not
_that_ cool.

~~~
aardvark179
I was hoping for a game where you write optimization passes to transform a set
of programs into a different set that let you solve each level.

Actually, on a simple Robo Rally style set of instructions there may actually
be a puzzle game in that.

------
mratzloff
Well, glad I wasn't one of the 9 people who donated $10,000.

I tend to judge these projects by funding level. When I first saw CLANG with
the goal of $500,000 but no publisher lined up, I decided to pass. $500,000 is
not enough to develop something like this on a full-time basis.

------
luchs
Unfortunately, the formatting of the possibly most interesting paragraph
"LESSONS LEARNED" is broken. Here's a reformatted version:
[https://gist.github.com/lluchs/bd12ab2e17491c8c4b50](https://gist.github.com/lluchs/bd12ab2e17491c8c4b50)

------
Paul_S
I'm a backer but I have to say it looks like he just got bored with his toy
and wants to do something else now.

------
ricardobeat
$500k and a year later, they have a very limited game prototype and no money
left. Meanwhile, an amazing, polished and content-rich game like
_Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP_ cost $200k in total (and the initial
estimate was $110k), including development of it's own graphics engine.
Something's amiss?

~~~
Draiken
By looking at the numbers the only thing you can see is the truth about how
little they asked for such a big project. $500k barely pays the salary of the
team building the game.

As hard as it is to do an indie game, people do it for way less than $200k...
heck, many people do it for "free" on their own spare time. I don't see that
happening on project aiming to build an SDK made for a specific game type that
includes new hardware.

------
leokun
What kickstarter teaches us is that there is a reason why gatekeepers to bags
of money exist. Credibility, accountability and responsibility matter,
kickstarter can only provide a description, bios and empty promises.

Donors have very little to rely on when making a decision about funding, and
no recourse when things go south, which seems to be the norm. Donors are ill
equipped to make sound decisions in the first place, lacking experience,
expertise and access.

Kickstarter is a recipe ripe for failure and loss with little accountability.

~~~
mercurial
> when things go south, which seems to be the norm.

Source?

> What kickstarter teaches us is that there is a reason why gatekeepers to
> bags of money exist.

You absolutely never see games from big publishers be repeatedly delayed,
killed off mid-development, or released mid-development.

Fact is, game development is hard and fraught with risks. As far as I can
tell, this part of Kickstarter is, in this regard, doing pretty well, and I'm
certain that a game like the Torment remake would never have gotten funding
without it. Now and then, some of them are going to tank, just like games from
AAA publishers tend to do. Others will come out and be crap (though since so
many of them include "pay more to get access to the alpha", I'd say it's much
less likely that the released product will be out of line with backers'
expectation). And though people do tend to treat as such, Kickstarter is not a
pre-order system. There _is_ a chance the product you fund will not make it
(that's why there is a mandatory "Risks and challenges" at the bottom of each
Kickstarter project page). I'd just rather risk some money for a potential
product which appeals to me and would have no shot at seeing the light of the
day otherwise, than preorder an outsourced-to-5-different-studios sequel to
Aliens: Colonial Marines.

~~~
leokun
> There is a chance the product you fund will not make it

A very high chance, and the nature of that chance is not discernible to donors
who have nothing to go buy other than the marketing materials on the
Kickstarter page. People should not donate to Kickstarter, they should spend
that money on existing games.

~~~
mercurial
> A very high chance

Again, what statistics do you have to back this statement? Several game have
been successfully produced. Of high-profile failures, I know only of this one
and Haunts. On the other hand, Chivalry, Shadowrun Returns, Leisure Suit
Larry, to quote some of the big ones, all got released. It's definitely too
early to tell how statistically risky for backers crowd-funding video-games
is, but I don't think initial numbers support your argument.

~~~
leokun
That's probably true.

------
_delirium
I guess I could be massively overestimating how much money successful authors
earn, but doesn't Neal Stephenson have quite a bit of money lying around,
which could be used to bootstrap such a project if necessary?

~~~
venomsnake
You are massively overestimating for everyone but the top top tier. Neal
Stephenson has mostly cult following.

Also 38 studios showed what happens when you let your ego fund a studio - not
nice.

So while I don't doubt that he will be able to provide some funding, probably
the sums needed are way too big for him to bridge.

I am a backer of the project - lets hope that if the project is doomed they
will at least release the assets to the community that funded them.

------
jared314
This is almost just bad timing, because the 3D motion/position capture
hardware is just starting to get up to speed. At least the company itself is
also a publishing company, so the project will only be put on hold.

------
jlarocco
Haha, that was confusing.

Skimmed half the article trying to figure out how they expected to make a game
out of clang/llvm in the first place, only to realize it has nothing to do
with that project.

------
TheMagicHorsey
Anyone that reads Neal Stephenson books knows that he has an amazing
imagination, but he has no idea what makes a fun game. His games sound cool on
paper, but if you are someone who makes games for a living and you hear about
his love of "realism", and you see what his design decisions are, you realize
that he doesn't know anything about making things fun.

Making things realistic is not making things fun.

~~~
Wingman4l7
Realistic can be very fun. It usually happens when the thing that you want to
do would be too expensive for you to afford in real life _(flying jets in
flight simulators, for instance)_. In this case, it's a pretty small niche --
people who are interested enough in fencing to want a proper simulator, but
who don't have the time / money / commitment / fitness to do it for real.

------
fleitz
I'm also developing a new sword fighting game:

I've solved the hardware problem by using sticks of wood, by using sticks I
get realistic physics for free, it even has realistic feedback which prevents
you from swinging beyond your opponents sword. Also, anyone can make their own
sword for approximately the cost of a broomstick.

I've solved the game problem by re-using the rules from fencing.

In the last 5 minutes I've successfully done what took CLANG $500,000 dollars
to do. So in short if you want to play my sword fighting game download the
rules of fencing, and buy a broomstick. If you're looking for other players
I've developed a massively multiplayer offline game network called the SCA.

~~~
Osmium
Devil's advocate: there's nothing wrong with some ambition, and all the
backers knew what they were buying into.

That said, your broomstick idea is actually really interesting: imagine an
Oculus Rift + Kinect combo. You don't need any additional hardware other than
a stick or rod of some kind, since the rod will constrain the motion of your
hands and the Kinect could detect the rod anyway.

Only potential issue is a lack of haptic feedback, but we've had vibration
motors in games console controllers for decades now so it should be feasible
to make a pair of gloves that vibrate on impact fairly cheaply. Surely someone
must've tried this..?

~~~
jacquesc
I think he was being snarky in the "don't play video games, go do stuff" kind
of way.

fleitz: If interesting new ways to interact with games/computers isn't your
thing, that's fine. But telling us all to f'off and go learn to fence really
doesn't accomplish much.

~~~
fleitz
Nah, it's more of a fundamental misunderstanding of the medium. Nerds have
this idea that everything you can do in the real world can be done in
computers, when the actual strengths of the medium are all the things you
can't do in the real world.

Lets take desktops, file and folders fucking suck but everyone wants to
reimplement it, when the real advantage of computers is search.

Imagine someone came to you and said "I'm going to make an audiobook of the
Mona Lisa", you'd look at them like they were a fucking idiot and rightly so.

~~~
Osmium
> Lets take desktops, file and folders fucking suck but everyone wants to
> reimplement it, when the real advantage of computers is search.

But files and folders have their place: they're for collecting groups of
disparate items which wouldn't be found by a single search query (or at least
not one that isn't inordinately complicated), e.g. to manage a project.
Tagging files is a viable alternative, but there's no guarantee you won't
forget and end up with orphan files. You have to save a file _somewhere_ after
all, and with folders you can ensure you can find them again...

------
camus
I'm sorry i'll never get how some people can give 500 000 $ for phantom
projects.

Especially when serious projects are backed by real investors under the
hood(that will make a profit if the project is successfull).

Kickstarter is basically free money. There is no such thing as free money or
it is really just a scam.

I hear people say "It's not about the money" ,well, it is ONLY about the
money.

