
“It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed” - danso
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/45588301/woolfe-the-red-hood-diaries/posts/1168409
======
dmbaggett
_I wanted to believe that a team of 6 to 10 people could make a game that
looked and felt AAA. Boy was I wrong!_

When we made Crash Bandicoot (with a team of 7), it was already virtually
impossible to make a AAA game with 6-10 people, and that was _20 years ago._

I tell inexperienced entrepreneurs to take their honest best estimate and
multiply by 10. Or, as Mark Cerny (our producer on Crash) used to tell us,
"add one and increase the unit: 1 week = 2 months; 2 months = 3 years; 3 years
= you're doomed".

For a less anecdotal version, read _The Mythical Man Month_. (The factor he
arrives at is 9.)

~~~
rkangel
Issues with estimating, particularly something like this, mostly comes down to
meta-ignorance: you don't know what you don't know.

Given a particular problem of a similar sort to something he's worked on, an
experienced engineer will be able to list 10 different issues that might crop
up.

An inexperienced engineer won't know of those potential problems and will just
see the most optimistic path possible.

When you're moving massively outside your familiar zone, many unexpected
problems _will_ crop up. Best solution is a phased approach. Pick the bits you
judge as most risky (you should hopefully have some idea) and implement
prototypes in those areas, in the hope that most of the scaries will crop up.
You've then got a better idea as you move on.

I've written this in the context of doing engineering, but it's equally true
in all fields - like trying to sell a product into a new an unfamiliar market.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I like that term 'meta ignorance'. It is important to realize that ignorance
isn't "bad" it can be fixed by learning, but its good to know that you have it
so you can start fixing it.

The other aspect of this that I see, even in seasoned engineers, is the
'presumption of simplicity'. Some things _look_ really simple, but inside they
are actually quite complicated. A smart phone is just a screen, a computer, a
battery and a radio right? Too many times people see something, think "that
doesn't look too hard I bet I could do that in a weekend"[1] but don't
actually follow through on that thought and spend a weekend building what ever
it was that was so easy. Sometimes the more experience you have the more
dangerous this is. I can recall times in my own life we're I've grossly
underestimated the difficulty of stuff, its lead me to be a lot more conscious
about things I know about and things I think I know something about,
especially when predicting schedules and work effort.

[1] A very common theme on acquihire stories here.

~~~
jeremiep
I think you mix the meanings of simple and easy here. Simplicity is an
absolute metric and describes the number of dependencies a thing has, while
ease is a relative metric describing your understanding of said thing.

For example, a singleton is easy to learn and easy to use, but since every
function using it adds a hidden dependency it quickly grows in complexity to
the point its impossible to reason about it without forgetting something.

On the other hand, a Promise is simple as it depends on nothing but a producer
and a consumer, no matter how much you compose them. Yet I've seen many
experienced developers struggle to learn how to use them as they're not easy
to understand at first.

This is somewhat related to meta ignorance. From my own experience I've seen a
tendency in novice programmers to stick with things which are both easy to
learn and use. Their projects go well initially but they grow less and less
productive over time as complexity creeps in from the composition of all these
easy to use things.

I've always said experience in our industry is knowing what not to use in
order to stay productive in the long run.

Here's a link to Rich Hickey explaining it in depth:
[http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-
Easy](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy)

~~~
vezzy-fnord
Speaking of meta, I absolutely loathe how the basic distinction between
simplicity and ease of use has since become a meme so persistently associated
with Rich Hickey. There is nothing I can really do about it, but it
nonetheless annoys me to no end.

~~~
jeremiep
I myself learned it from Rich in the very talk I linked to a few years ago and
I'm the first to admit I didn't make that distinction beforehand. I've met
more developers unaware of the distinction than otherwise, which is why I'm
curious as to why you think it has become a meme?

Also note that english isn't my first language (I'm french Canadian) and even
here in french the distinction is seldom made.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
In colloquial English, no.

The distinction between two main types of simplicity, those of parsimony and
elegance, has been a long-standing philosophical topic [1].

In engineering, the so-called KISS principle (first coined as such in the
early 20th century) has always had the implication of minimalism and
implementation simplicity, in contrast to mere ease of use.

Fred Brooks wrote a famous paper in 1986 [2] perfectly describing the
differences between accidental and essential complexity, and of the semantics
of complexity management in software projects.

Hickey has said absolutely nothing spectacular, but his name comes up every
time from the typing fingers of the historically illiterate whenever
simplicity and ease of use are brought up.

[1]
[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/simplicity/](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/simplicity/)

[2]
[http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~cah/G51ISS/Documents/NoSilverBulle...](http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~cah/G51ISS/Documents/NoSilverBullet.html)

~~~
dasil003
"historically illiterate" are pretty strong words. Actually everyone is
historically illiterate by these standards because the ideas that any one
person is familiar with is a vanishingly small percentage of all the ideas the
human race has ever had. Furthermore, the origins of ideas are impossible to
trace with any great precision. Is the most famous person the person with the
best ideas? Was the person with access to the printing press the person with
the best ideas? Frankly it strikes me as a form of intellectual hipsterism to
be bothered so much by this.

Rich Hickey gained fame for this because he stated an idea very clearly and
compellingly, this is non-trivial and should not be so flippantly dismissed as
just recyling old ideas—all your ideas are recycled too.

[https://xkcd.com/1053/](https://xkcd.com/1053/)

~~~
jdc
Alan Kay has similarly criticized the computer software industry and its "pop
culture."

[https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523](https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523)

------
rkangel
I'm actually finding it reassuring to see some of these 'our project failed,
sorry' messages coming up.

It reassures me that kickstarter is actually being used to fund new things,
rather than just as a marketplace for existing products, where you don't even
have to have found any capital up front.

~~~
thenomad
That's a very good point.

I hope that backers take it the same way. New stuff is risky by definition -
and KS has funded some pretty major successes on risky projects too (Oculus).

~~~
justin66
I would feel a lot better having been a KS contributor to this than I would
having been a KS contributor to Oculus. "Thank you for your contribution and
now some other, better-connected investors and employees are going to make
money off of their investment in us" is about the worst possible outcome of a
Kickstart.

~~~
fpgaminer
This is exactly the problem with Kickstarter. Backers assume all the risks,
but gain no benefit from success.

~~~
shdon
I'm not sure I agree with that last bit. The rewards for backers are there for
a reason. When it comes to software projects -- especially games, you can
frequently have access to test and beta versions and get the final product
(depending on your backing level, this may be at a price lower or higher than
the retail price). Additionally, it usually means you get to follow along in
the development process, maybe even provide input or feedback. Another common
reward is being made into a character in the game or providing another piece
of content.

It may not sound like much, but it is a benefit. I for one got a real kick out
of seeing my name in Broken Age's credit roll.

I've backed quite a few Kickstarter projects and so far, none that were
successfully funded have failed. Some still might and that would be
disappointing, but I wouldn't regret backing them in the least. I have
"bought" the fun of being a small part of something and watching things
develop.

------
themoonbus
"But changing gameplay from 2D to 3D had a major impact on overall development
cost (we found out a little too late)"

Not to pile on, but this was very surprising to me... how could you not know
that this would have a major impact?

~~~
bluedino
Bit off more than they could chew? Didn't have an extensive background in game
building? Perhaps they just never built a 3D game before?

It's kind of like when some of the first 3D games came out, modelers would
model a brick then build a wall out of them, instead of just modeling a brick
wall other ways, like putting a brick texture on a regular wall. They probably
just couldn't come up with a good way to 'cheat' 3D collision detection that
worked for them. Approximating is a huge part of game algorithms even with the
power of today's hardware.

~~~
tinco
Because from a distance it actually doesn't seem like so much work. The assets
get crazy expensive, but they already had that covered. 3D collision detection
and resolving is a solved problem, you can just get off the shelf components
(for free), the real problem isn't gettin the game to work, the problem is in
the polish.

Jumping over fences, AIs chasing over 3d terrains, making sure people don't
get stuck in random stuff. Everything needs weird edge-case stuff that's not
in a generic physics engine.

Perhaps they should've first made a 3d game with 2d physics, those games look
great and the overhead is much more manageable. But hindsight is 20/20 and
from what I've gathered they actually got really close to a great game.

~~~
pmelendez
> the real problem isn't gettin the game to work, the problem is in the polish

Exactly this... Pareto principle (applied to time) is really relevant in this
case.

------
bobajeff
People are acting like the game wasn't able to be made. The issue is it was
made but the sales didn't cover the costs.

"At first we could not believe that our “baby” was not more successful, in our
emotions we started looking for explanations not related to the game. Maybe
gamers are just spoilt brats, bashing on everything, maybe there is an
oversaturation of indie market, maybe all the free-to-play games by big
studios are giving players a false sense of value. How could less than $10 be
to expensive for a beautiful game like Woolfe? How could this be our fault? "

"Of course none of the emotional excuses above are the reason of our mixed
steam rating. We can only blame ourselves… "

It's good to see someone excepting the fact that their game just wasn't good
enough. Also nice to hear someone admit what a cop out blaming customers or
the market is.

~~~
vacri
Looking at some of the negative reviews on Steam, it's not a matter of
entitled gamers (and gamers are the most self-entitled demographic in
history...). Plenty of the negative reviews I've seen so far are long, and a
prime criticism is the 2-hour gameplay time. A few also mention problems with
bland gameplay. Everyone agrees that it's beautiful, but it doesn't matter how
beautiful your game is if it's short with no replay and the gameplay isn't
solid.

------
roel_v
The assets of this company are, essentially, worthless. I think the liquidator
would jump for joy on a bid of, let's say, 5 or 10k euros for all IP of this
game. I've seen cases where IP that cost orders of magnitude more to develop
sell for less, sometimes under the condition 'you have to take the office
inventory too, because otherwise I have to pay for getting it disposed of'
(where 'I' is the liquidator).

If anyone is motivated enough, it would take just 500-1000 people who would
chip in some spare change to make this open source (I'm not interested in any
of this, before anyone suggests it - just hinting to those mentioning 'open
source').

~~~
Kequc
Maybe they could do a kickstarter.

~~~
roel_v
That would be the (logistically) obvious route to take for an interested
party, but I didn't want to suggest it out of fear of coming across as
facetious :)

------
bko
> But we have literally no money whatsoever to pay for stamps, let alone print
> the artbooks and dvd-cases.

How did this happen? Shouldn't that money have been allocated earlier? Did
they spend every dollar thinking that this is the dollar that turns everything
around.

Maybe I just don't get the mentality of those looking to fund projects on
Kickstarter.

~~~
dudul
Agreed. I don't understand how they can not give anything at all to all the
people who poured money into their kickstarted. What does it say about
crowdfunding?

~~~
micampe
It says that people don't understand what Kickstarter is: you are investing in
a project, not buying a product. Investments carry risk.

~~~
s73v3r
You're not even investing, though. Investment implies a share of the company.

~~~
avalaunch
You're thinking of a very specific type of investment. Investment in the more
generic form simply means putting in time, money, and/or effort in the hopes
of some future reward. In this case, you're investing money in the hopes of a
future reward that you preselected.

------
brudgers
It's great to see people admitting their mistakes. On the other hand, the
project was doomed from the start $50,000 just isn't enough money to produce a
game, let alone a game and collateral merchandise. And the commitment to
collateral merchandise for a project like this meant that effort that could
have gone to making the game was committed to dealing with posters, printers
and postage. There's a reason startups don't return dividends to early stage
investors. There's a reason sophisticated early stage investors don't want
their investments to pay dividends.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
Well I think people are getting the wrong impression here. They started this
game in 2013 on their own money, got a subsidy to build a prototype that year,
then in 2014 raised money from a loan in Belgium to finish the game. They
communicated all of this in their Kickstarter. They then asked $50k I guess to
finish up the game and expand the scope a little bit, and make some money on
various rewards, but mainly I suppose as virtually all kickstarters nowadays:
a presales platform.

In that regard they succeeded. The game is finished, it's for sale, and the
backers got their game.

But the sales were also disappointing, and so they declared bankruptcy.

The issue here is that they created stickers, dvd crap, soundtracks etc...
Kickstarter backer rewards. And they can't ship them as they're bankrupt. The
problem obviously is that they didn't earmark funds ahead. I think that's
disrespectful towards the backers and it's a genuine complaint, but I don't
feel it's very significant in the scheme of things. Kickstarters know the
risks. And the creators of the game put their heart and soul into it and ended
up bankrupt, yet did deliver the game. I think that's a fair compromise for
the backers of the game, even if they don't end up getting their rewards, like
an artbook or wallpaper which can be pretty sweet but I doubt anyone will lose
sleep over it, while the creators must've lost a lot of sleep going through a
bankruptcy.

So this notion they raised $50k for 7 people to build a game in two months
isn't really the case at all. Beyond that, your point on merchandise rings
true but it depends on context. A soundtrack, artbook and wallpaper usually
isn't a big deal. After all, the game has a soundtrack regardless, and they'd
already produced tons of artwork in the process of modelling, you can see it
on the kickstarter. The effort is printing and shipping it. But if someone is
giving you a $20 premium to ship him a PDF you already have on your computer,
would you say that's bad business? Not really, any smart indie will pay some
highschooler $250 to take care of it, a small price to increase your budget by
$10k or something to that effect. The issue is that some kickstarters go way
overboard, and the reward/effort ratio plummets to below their IRR or even
below 1. So it really depends, in this case I think it wasn't a bad decision
as they promised rewards for things they already had laying around, they
simply should've earmarked the funds.

~~~
scott_s
I think many people are getting the wrong impression on this thread - as you
pointed out, it's the _company_ that failed, not the _project_. They delivered
on the project, but not in a sustainable way for their company.

For everyone interested, check out gameplay footage from the beginning of the
game:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGadziSy_kM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGadziSy_kM)
I hope my failures are as beautiful as this.

------
lobo_tuerto
From TA:

"What about our Kickstarter backers?

The people that believed in us from the beginning? People we made promises
too. People we have let down. Even worse… people we will not be able to give
the full rewards they invested in.

The crazy thing is, that we have most of the rewards ready for postage. All
the backer stickers and letters of enlistment just need a stamp. All the
poster sets printed, signed and ready. The artbook is ready to be printed, the
soundtrack is ready for distribution, the DVD case is ready for production.
But we have literally no money whatsoever to pay for stamps, let alone print
the artbooks and dvd-cases."

This could be a good closure. From comments:

"Fredrik Waage: Please honor your backers who believed in your game by
releasing the DRM-free version like you promised so linux backers (hopefully
via WINE) and ppl who don't like steam can enjoy your game."

Or maybe even go open source?

~~~
wvenable
Since they're filing for bankruptcy, they really can't go open source -- their
IP needs to be sold to pay the creditors.

~~~
adebtlawyer
Maybe, if there's anybody to buy it. It may be abandoned.

------
greggman
I haven't played the game and I see the reviews are "mixed" on steam but
looking at the video they certainly did an amazing job for such a small team.
Of course at the end of the day it has to be a good game but they should still
be really proud about how far they got.

I hope they try again and apply whatever lessons they learned

~~~
coldpie
OT: Hey, it's greggman :) Big fan of many of the games you've worked on. Hope
you're doing well.

------
kelukelugames
Here is the steam page.

[http://store.steampowered.com/app/281940/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/281940/)

Remind me of Alice, which had some beautiful levels.

[http://store.steampowered.com/app/19680/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/19680/)

~~~
Sumaso
It's a real shame, since I was really looking forward to this game!

I suppose I should count myself fortunate that I didn't Kickstart Woolfe.

Seeing these failed projects is grim reminder that just because you back
something doesn't mean it will be delivered.

~~~
BasDirks
"Oh I didn't get the toy I paid for".

Really? That's what you're posting when a group of talented artists see their
dream shattered?

~~~
normloman
The artists have no right to complain. They were the ones asking for money in
the first place. They promised the public they would deliver on the "toy."
They underestimated what it would take to make the game. The backers are not
free of responsibility, but the artists also have to accept blame.

~~~
scott_s
Keep in mind the game was delivered, and is available for purchase on Steam.

------
Udo
_> I guess our public silence the last few months already said a lot._

While I can personally understand this reaction to having trouble, it's not
healthy nor is it fair to cease communication in this way. A lot of promising
projects announce difficulties by falling silent, including _Limit Theory_ ,
which I was looking forward to seeing realized some day. Maybe crowdfunded
projects need to shift to a mindset where it's expected to be upfront about
problems.

 _> So with a heavy heart I have to communicate that as of now the IP of
Woolfe, all of the assets and source code is now for sale_

I said it before, but I'll gladly say it again: backing a Kickstarter project
is a bet, not a pre-order. When I back a project, I calculate the odds and
place my money accordingly, full well knowing it could be gone. As long as
makers honestly tried to achieve something, I'm fine with failure.

Not everybody sees it that way, though. It would be nice if new games on
Kickstarter would include a pledge for their IP to enter public domain in case
the project as a whole fails. Because the alternative being played out here is
most likely not very helpful to anyone, including the defunct studio.

~~~
breischl
I didn't fund Limit Theory, but I've been following it because it does look
cool. You may have missed it, but the developer recently resurfaced. Hopefully
he'll get things back on track...

[http://forums.ltheory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=4492](http://forums.ltheory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=4492)

~~~
Thimothy
Thanks for sharing. I funded Limit Theory and by now had brushed it off as a
failure. Glad to see some light coming from there, the project is really cool.

------
mattdeboard
Really honest letter that is simultaneously an apology and an explanation,
without making excuses.

I wonder if more experienced game developers could have recognized the failure
much further down the track and pulled the plug (or taken on a lot more
funding?) before it took the company under. I also wonder, if this undertaking
had been made in the US, would the outcome have been any different due to
different... I dunno, funding laws or more available funding from traditional
investors?

Was the completeness of the failure of GRIN down to the fact they spent way
more money than they had trying to prove a point (don't need to do pixel or
highly stylized art) ?

The game industry is interesting to me because of the nature of the problems
they have to solve, but it is so damn brutal I don't want any part of it.

------
felhr
Probably I am missing something but...Making a videogame (even an indie one)
with 72.139 $? They were probably doomed from the very beginning.

~~~
tinco
They apparently had investors and attracted government subsidies.

~~~
felhr
That sounds very reasonable. In that case it would be great to know what kind
of penalties they incur because no releasing.

~~~
tinco
They did release, so no penalties from the government, and they filed for
bankruptcy so the investors probably just lost their money. I don't know about
Belgian bankruptcy laws so no idea if there are personal consequences.

------
ErikRogneby
So the game did get created though right? It's $9.99 on Steam:
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/281940/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/281940/)
It sounds like while the game got made, they aren't profitable and can't
afford to make good on the kickstarter rewards.

~~~
dogma1138
This was an episodic game they've released Vol 1 which was met with some quite
poor reviews due to gameplay issues.

They could not push out Vol 2 nor the Kickstarter rewards as they pretty much
ran out of money.

I actually wonder if in such cases Kickstarter shouldn't back the shipping or
demand getting the a hold of the rewards and try to some how compensate the
backers.

Heck with the amount of projects which fail they can pretty much have a
monthly loot crate going on with the crap received from failed kickstartups...

Tho if they file for bankruptcy i wonder if giving the rewards away will not
count against them as they devalued their fixed assets value just before or
after filing for bankruptcy.

------
overgard
Wow, my heart goes out to these guys, I guess they dropped the ball but
obviously they really cared. It's hard to fault people when they made a good
faith effort and came up short. I hope after things settle down and maybe they
get some space away from this, they try again on a new project with a bit more
wisdom.

I think the lesson here (and this one really is probably important for
entrepreneur types), is getting funded really should not be viewed as an
achievement. It just means the stakes got higher.

------
marincounty
"What about our Kickstarter backers?

The people that believed in us from the beginning? People we made promises
too. People we have let down. Even worse… people we will not be able to give
the full rewards they invested in.

The crazy thing is, that we have most of the rewards ready for postage. All
the backer stickers and letters of enlistment just need a stamp. All the
poster sets printed, signed and ready. The artbook is ready to be printed, the
soundtrack is ready for distribution, the DVD case is ready for production.
But we have literally no money whatsoever to pay for stamps, let alone print
the artbooks and dvd-cases. "

I understand you failed. Find money for postage though? These were Kickstarter
investors? You have money for a bankruptcy attorney? Just shopping around for
a bankruptcy attorney can save thousands? (Maybe you are doing the legal in
house?). My point is the Kickstarter Backers will appreciate a small gift of
gratitude, and just might fund you in the future?

I think most small companies know they are going under weeks--months in
advance? I knew months for myself. There's nothing illegial about keeping a
small fund for the last days of a business.

Good luck, and with Capitalism, and all its risk-thank goodness for
Bankruptcy. When I was younger, I didn't quite appreciate bankruptcy laws. I
now keep a close ear out for any changes to bankruptcy laws.(There are
entities that want to change the federal statutes. I knew the Obama
administration wouldn't let lobbiests touch them. I worry about the next
administration?)

If I was to do it over again, I would have incorporated every business I ever
started? I might have even incorporated my legal name right out of college--if
legal?

------
kkt262
It's interesting that failure articles seem to always go up to #1 on
HackerNews. Why is that?

~~~
spydum
My own theory: people who work in the computing field learn heavily from
failure, and this is driven in deep into our practices early on.

Think about when you first started learning to program: write code, attempt to
compile, FAIL, make some adjustments, FAIL again, make more adjustments,
successful compile. Execute, FAIL, make more adjustments, etc. This rapid
failure/remediation cycle is somewhat unique, as it opens us to try new and
innovative things without fear of failure: failing is just part of the
learning process. Since failure is "cheap", we tend to gravitate to sucking up
all information about failures, in the hopes of learning from it.

Now think about most other trades: cooking/carpentry/plumbing/etc. When you
fail, there are material losses. So that learning curve is expensive, and you
often apprentice and learn from someone doing it correct, rather than trial
and error (though you get a bit of both for sure).

I suspect this is the same reason when really interesting Post-Mortems are
posted, they shoot up, and lots of positive commentary around them. We all
consume it, in hopes they prevent us from writing the same one in the future.

------
methodover
This is such a hard thing for me to read.

Game development is so incredibly hard. It feels like a winner-takes-all game
where the very top 1% have everything, and the rest have almost nothing.

It's a shame that this studio has to fold. The game looks pretty good. You
don't get to that point without having incredibly talented artists,
programmers and managers, without having a team that's working pretty well
together. And yeah, their reviews on steam aren't perfect -- but to me that
doesn't seem that terrible. Everyone stumbles before they really catch their
stride.

It sounds like they just ran out of money, really. They ran out of time. They
weren't given a real shot. What a shame. I see startups pop up all over the
valley here that don't even have a tiny fraction of the ingenuity and talent
of this company.

It's a shame that our economy doesn't value art like this more. A real shame.

~~~
sombremesa
It's not just game development, it's almost any creative endeavor. "90% of
everything is crap" \- Sturgeon's "law".

Now even if you end up making the 10% that isn't crap, you have to fight hard
to get any attention. There is a huge amount of hustling involved.

Even when you are an unprecedented genius, you will suffer immensely for lack
of business and marketing skill. Where would Einstein be without Adler? Where
would Newton be without Halley?

That's just the way the world is (and has been, since time immemorial).

------
VikingCoder
So, I wonder how much they'd sell all the assets and source for?

Could we Kickstart a project to drop it all in the Public Domain?

~~~
haser_au
I'd kick in.

~~~
VikingCoder
I'd like someone in the industry to look at the code first, to Due Diligence
that it's not just utter crap...

------
jebblue
I was watching that game, I like first person more but this is a beautiful
game to be sure! There's so much competition out there, I wonder how big The
Fun Pimps team is in comparison, I'd assumed around the same size.

------
amyjess
> I guess our public silence the last few months already said a lot. It is not
> out of disrespect that our communication dropped to almost zero… it is out
> of shame.

PG has actually written on this subject:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html)

Basically, if a company stops communicating, it's almost a sure sign that it's
in its death throes, and if a company is doing well, it's going to try to
reach out as much as possible so they can show off how well they're doing.

------
kin
So if the game is on Steam right now and I try to support them by buying a
copy, where does the money go?

~~~
haser_au
The Intellectual Property (IP) will be listed as an 'asset' in the bankruptcy
submission. Whoever picks up the IP will likely receive the money from the
game on Steam, since they are the new owners of it. No different than if
someone had bought out the studio (GRIN).

------
mirimir
I'm reminded of the Chandler project, funded and directed by Mitch Kapor. The
intention was Lotus Agenda, reimagined for the 21st century. But that didn't
work out. See _Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732
Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software_ by Scott Rosenberg. It's a very
sad story. I loved Agenda, and Chandler had so much damn potential! So it
goes.

------
redbar0n
"I wanted to believe that a team of 6 to 10 people could make a game that
looked and felt AAA. Boy was I wrong!"

"In the video game industry, AAA (pronounced "triple A") is a classification
term used for games with the highest development budgets and levels of
promotion.[1][2][3][4]"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_(video_game_industry)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_\(video_game_industry\))

It should be obvious from this definition of an AAA game that 6-10 people in a
small indie game studio can't make a game with 'the highest development
budgets and levels of promotion'. It requires lots of $$$ and other resources,
which an indie game company almost never has.

"Wisdom begins with the definition of terms." \- attributed to Socrates

~~~
bagels
The quote says "looked and felt AAA". The definition may preclude the game
from 'being AAA' but not looking like and feeling like a AAA game, whatever
that means in the first place.

------
rebootthesystem
I don't have data to back this up other than years of entrepreneurship. I'm
sure someone could invest the time to dig-up the data and corroborate or
refute my statement.

I think game development must rank way up there with restaurants in terms of
business failure rates. It might even be worst than restaurants but the data
could be impossible to collect.

Why?

Because restaurant failures are a matter of public record while game
developers more often fail privately. The data simply evaporates. It's a
really tough business, even with money.

For the most part lack of business experience and idealism or hubris can play
a big role in this. The good old "the market is <insert big number> billions,
if we only grab 0.1%" fallacy.

To be sure, hubris and doing something because you love it has it's place and
fortunes have been made because of this. That said, the cold hard reality is
that the gaming industry is paved with the corpses of probably millions of
entrepreneurial efforts who have tried and failed.

Generally speaking, for most developers, I think there's far more money in
developing games for those who have cash to burn (whether successfully or not)
than to try to create the next blockbuster.

As a small data point, years ago we were approached by a company to develop an
iOS children's game for them. Lots of animation, sound, graphics creation,
etc. They had no experience in software development at all. They wanted to
convert this low budget cartoon character into a game because they convinced
themselves they'd make millions with an app.

We told them it would cost $50K to $250K (or more) and months of development
depending on specs. Of course, they had no specifications. It would be
impossible to understand costs without a solid spec.

We also recommended they DO NOT develop this game and stick to their core
business. In fact we pushed back hard on this point. I sat down with the CEO
for a couple of hours to explain failure rates, challenges, issues, etc. They
needed to fundamentally transform their company and were not equipped to do so
at the time.

I got an angry email from the CEO telling me we were crooks and how they found
a company in India that could build them the entire game for just $15K in
three months. What the hell did I know? Right?

A year later, almost to the day, I got an email from the same CEO asking if we
could meet. We did. He revealed they burned the $15K and got nothing more than
a slideshow made with templates. They then found a larger company (also in
India) and burned an additional $50K and got something that was buggy and
wasn't even playable. By the time he asked me for a meeting they had burned
through over $150K trying to have their game made and had nothing. They
couldn't even submit it to the app store. They were nearly out of money.

You could probably guess what happened next. He asked if we could fix it for
$20K. I explained I'd be surprised if anyone would have any interest in
touching that code-base for any amount of money. And, no, $20K couldn't even
touch building the app they envisioned a year earlier. I repeated my
recommendation to stick to their core business. Which they did. After learning
an expensive lesson.

Anyhow, long story to relate one type of scenario behind game development
where ignorance and hubris meet a pile-o-cash and a bonfire follows.

Sorry to see the Woolfe team fail. I don't think I am being a pessimist when I
say this is far more likely to be the outcome with games. Kudos for trying.
Move on. Quickly.

~~~
vvanders
I don't have much to add than this is solid info and advice. Glad I got out of
the industry a long time ago.

~~~
rebootthesystem
I wonder what your thought might be on this...

The angle I forgot to add is that Apple has, in my opinion, destroyed the
ecosystem. The race-to-the-bottom they promoted created a situation where a
game development team could very well spend a million or more developing and
game and have to give it away on a hope and a prayer.

And "hope and prayer" it is because you have to dump even more money into
marketing and hope it catches on so that your freemium or in-app-purchases
model generates enough cash to recoup your investment and make money.

Not everyone is going to get a hit at the level of "Clash of Clans", yet
everyone is now expected to produce stunning graphics, animations and game-
play, give it away, create a back-end infrastructure to support hordes of free
players and hope the game engages enough to generate revenue thorough IAP or
ads.

My guess is one could do better gambling with a million dollars in Vegas than
creating a game with that money.

------
mangeletti
Serious question: why not target a platform that's more similar to what Crash
Bandicoot was built for, and then run it in some sort of Steam-compatible
emulation layer[1]? This would have given you a potentially great game, and at
least an MVP that you should sell and also show investors with a "imagine this
with way better graphics!" pitch, instead of having great graphics without as
much of a complete game, given limited time and resources.

1\. I'm shooting from the hip, because I have zero game dev experience, and I
know even know if this is possible, let alone whether it even makes sense (are
8-bit, etc. games more simple to build than those with modern graphics?).

------
agumonkey
It's interesting to see the reactions here. The matchstick project ended up
giving full refunds to the backers and yet they were trashed in the comments.
While here people are showing lots of love even after the bankrupt
notification.

~~~
danso
I know Kickstarter failures are pretty common...but I submitted this one
because I liked the refreshing straightforward admission of abject failure.
The comments on the OP are pretty mild and supportive considering that the
project isn't sending out any of its promised rewards, nevermind not finishing
the game. I'd like to think that the OP's honesty is a factor in that.

~~~
agumonkey
I don't know, I didn't pay attention to most of the failed projects, but the
matchstick guys seemed honest enough (they too took a road to difficult for
them). Especially considering they'd refund everybody. Yet people seemed quite
angry.

~~~
rockdoe
The internet is always angry.

~~~
agumonkey
Except when they aren't reimbursed.

------
Animats
They mention problems with collision detection, which indicates they were
writing their own game engine. Why? There are good game engines available, and
writing one is a big job.

~~~
victorNicollet
Collision detection, in a platform game, is an user experience problem rather
than a well-specified mathematical problem. If it feels like you should have
landed on that ledge, you don't care what the capsule-versus-AABB test says:
you expect me to "fix" the game.

------
w3ightl355
It sounds like their heart was in the right place, an effort driven by
passion, but they just ran into too many obstacles. If I had invested, I
probably wouldn't feel so bad. It sounds like they tried - like they give it
their best, sincere effort. That's all you can do, really.

------
aquanext
I think they are dead on about lack of experience being the cause here. You
can't make a AAA game on $72,000 and 6 to 10 people. That's nuts. Just one
person's salary is going to be 50-60k if they are paying people reasonably.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
> You can't make a AAA game on $72,000 and 6 to 10 people. That's nuts.

You've misunderstood what actually happened, the game had a different budget
and timeframe.

------
DjangoBKN
That was both scary and sad. As a fellow who is starting out to make a game
too.

~~~
erikb
Learn from it by thinking smaller. When you started out making GTA5+1 and in
the end have a new Tetris you are still in the top 10% of people who tried, I
think. Really, cut down everything you can and some you can't. Remember that
the first iPhone came without copy&paste. Good luck!

------
player_1
We don't even need more "cinematic platformers"on steam.

------
asciimo
The artwork and character design is excellent. The concepts are strong. I
would have backed it. I'm rewarded nonetheless with a strong warning to
balance passion with pragmatism.

------
chazu
Sad to see GRIN dissolve, I felt they were a very promising studio.

------
listic
The story of Little Red Riding Hood just keeps on inspiring new takes. For
instance, _The Path_ by Tale of Tales has been done a couple of years earlier,
to a wider critical acclaim; and in Belgium, no less.
[http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/the-
path](http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/the-path)

I wonder if the developers could possibly not have heard of them?

There seemed to be quite some money in funding for artsy games in Belgium.
Personally, I love games and I think both that and Kickstarter funding are
needed to suppor more experimenting off the beaten path.

------
z3t4
This feels a bit weird, they have a ton of press and they are on steam for
gods sake. This thread alone probably generated enough sales to pay for those
post stamps.

------
megablast
> But changing gameplay from 2D to 3D had a major impact on overall
> development cost

Really? Did anyone not think that would be huge?

------
jchomali
Thanks for sharing your experience with us!

------
paulhauggis
Games are extremely hard to get right, ship on time, and make an actual
profit. This doesn't surprise me.

