

Neal Stephenson's “CLANG” Kickstarter video game officially cancelled - zacharycohn
http://www.gamepolitics.com/2014/09/19/kickstarter-funded-sword-fighting-game-clang-officially-cancelled

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zacharycohn
To address the last line in the story - "As one would expect, many backers are
questioning exactly what all of that half a million dollars was spent on -
something Stephenson hasn't addressed publicly in the two years since the
project was funded."

Not hard to imagine. $500k less taxes is pretty much enough to pay for two
years of two full time developers and a poorly paid 3d artist.

~~~
GenerocUsername
Yeah, I feel like there are members of the public who think a $20,000 dollar
goal should pay for 3 or 4 people to work on a thing for a while... IT
DOESN'T! It might pay 1 person to work on something for a few months.

This is why kickstarters should already have substantial progress made on a
project before asking for crowdfunding, but if people want to bet on the
Longshots with nothing to show but an idea, they should expect to get burnt
from time to time.

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scrollaway
So now the whole game is gone? The work that _has_ been done will be flushed
down the drain?

Seems like it would be relevant to release the whole shebang as open source
with potential commercial license incentives so that anyone truly interested
in the community can work on it, and another studio can even pick it up where
it was left off while benefiting the original devs as well.

~~~
seanflyon
It would be great if as a standard part of a Kickstarter pitch, people would
specify what they will do if they fail to deliver. I assume promising to open
source the project would be the most common choice, because that's what I
think most backers would want.

~~~
maxerickson
If they don't deliver the rewards, they should return the backers money (I
think Kickstarter says this, but I haven't carefully checked).

This quickly leads to not promising tenuous rewards, but hey, that's fine.

~~~
girvo
I disagree, when I've backed KickStarters that have failed I've never wanted
my money back. It's a risk, it's money I'm throwing away to help a project
exist, and I'm aware it might not happen. To me, that's just fine.

~~~
maxerickson
I don't think people should avoid high risk projects, I just think they should
avoid promising to deliver them. Like I said in an earlier comment, make the
reward some novelty trinket, not the complicated, never-been-done video game.

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wmil
This was doomed from the start. By trying to make it more realistic they
exposed the limits of technology.

A key problem is that the weight of a blade is a huge part of swordfighting. A
light bladeless controller can't capture the the experience. Especially since
there's no feedback from hitting another blade.

On the other hand they might be able to recoup their investment.

In the leadup to Star Wars 7 there's a huge potential market for a lightsaber
duel game. There's still enough time to develop a tie in game, and I can see
the tech being bought for over 500k.

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vilhelm_s
It seems like a risky move to announce that, oh btw, we gave $700 in refunds
to some random people from the forum. Now the comment thread is full of
backers saying "if THEY got a refund, then I want one as well!". That could
get quite ugly.

~~~
readerrrr
That statement was on the level of: look we tried to return money to those who
asked. Of course most people don't know that the project failed.

How will they deal with those? Ignore, Abort, Retry...

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subdane
According to his post, he apparently wrote a book about the whole thing.
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang/posts/9...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang/posts/989911)
If he's not going to open source the project (my vote) maybe he could give his
backers an epub!

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beloch
One thing that bothered me about "Clang" from the start is that I was never
really convinced that a Kinect-like system couldn't do it better. Per Clang's
FAQ, their position was that the Kinect had too much latency. The first
generation Kinect had a latency of 90 ms and the second generation had a
latency of 60 ms. A bad, but not atypical display has a lag of 3-4 frames, so
the newer Kinect roughly doubles the lag (or more) of a typical gaming system.
Not so good! However, for how long will that remain the case?

Arguably, a better approach would be to work on a low-latency form of Kinect.
First, this would provide richer input that includes the players body position
in addition to his blade, which could make hit detection more realistic.
Second, a Kinect system with lower lag would have more general utility than
just playing sword games. e.g. Unarmed combat would be an option too.
Additionally, authoring sword combat software for Kinect-like systems would
allow you to release something imperfect on existing hardware. It's great to
shoot for the stars, but picking off some low-hanging fruit first can help you
get there!

Clang controllers used a few methods to give users feedback about hits.
Obviously, there was no way to make the controller stop in mid air as though
you'd hit a concrete pillar with your sword. However, it could use rumble
packs in concert with audio cues to simulate glancing contact with an
opponents sword or light cuts to his body. There's no reason a Kinect-
compatible stick couldn't include the same sort of feedback.

So what's the next realistic step for advancing the state of video game
swordplay? If Clang is open-sourced, it might not be an unrealistic task for
somebody to hack up an imperfect Kinect version for people to try out. If
Clang "wasn't fun" with it's own controller, it's unlikely a Kinect version
that's laggier and lacks haptic feedback will be fun either, but at least it
will give people a chance to try it out.

Personally, I think VR displays are the key missing ingredient for swordplay
games. Seeing your stick in front of you and a sword mirroring its position on
the screen is one thing, but seeing just the video game sword as though it
were in your own hands is quite another! VR systems are going to have to work
out low lag displays and body position data anyways but, once they do, it will
pay well to be positioned to take advantage!

~~~
acgourley
I agree this could be done with a vision system, but I think you're
underestimating the challenge of it. You're proposing they build an
experimental < 50ms vision based tracker which would need a high FPS camera
and a special coupled processor with novel algorithms and PC drivers which
were tuned to rapidly ingest that processed signal. Interfacing with a 6-axis
sensor over bluetooth seems way more sane for a project of their scale.

I disagree with your second point. The slight fuzziness of kinect and the
additional 50ms-80ms of lag is absolutely enough to ruin the game and thus
it's not a good test of the other mechanics. To see why, watch this short and
enlightening video on why most motion games are not fun: [http://www.penny-
arcade.com/patv/episode/kinect-disconnect](http://www.penny-
arcade.com/patv/episode/kinect-disconnect)

If anything, they should have prototyped it with PS3 Move or Wii+

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drawkbox
Kickstarter just updated their terms so it is possible this triggered that:
[https://www.kickstarter.com/terms-of-
use#section4](https://www.kickstarter.com/terms-of-use#section4)

 _" The creator is solely responsible for fulfilling the promises made in
their project. If they’re unable to satisfy the terms of this agreement, they
may be subject to legal action by backers."_

However the CLANG project did make a prototype but it would be nice if
projects fail they have to be open sourced or able to be observed or carried
forward if possible.

~~~
Schweigi
They gave their game as part of the rewards. I wouldn't say that a prototype
fulfills this promise.

Perhaps Kickstarter shouldn't allow to give the product people back with money
as reward because if the project fails this product reward goes down the drain
too. I know like 90% of all projects do that and its kind of what makes
Kickstarter but still its not really logical. Or another option would be a
rule that backers have no rights at all. This would force the project makers
to publish budgets and more details about the project otherwise nobody would
back anything.

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bensherman
Neal, please release what you have made. We can do something with it, I
promise. Go build something bigger than this.

