The Doom that came to Kickstarter!

Alex Harvey, one of the developers of Tangiers, pointed me to a Kickstarter debacle a few minutes ago.

The Kickstarter was for a board game called The Doom That Came to Atlantic City. Ironically appropriate considering the game fell apart after more than reaching it’s Kickstarter goal. The goal was $35,000 and they received over $122,000 and were just unable to make ends meet in the production of the game.

So what actually happened?

They set out to make this game a launch product for a company they wanted to create, to develop board games. However they just made all the wrong choices. Instead of first focusing on building the game they put money into starting the company from the funding, and moving back to Portland. The first priority should have been the game that the backers funded.

This mis-management of money has now put the lead developer in a very bad position. He is now promising to pay back all the money supporters have put into the project, but in order to do that he has to get a new job, as he quit his old job to start this company. So it will be several years of very tight spending.

The Future of Kickstarter?

Between this screw up and the Double Fine issues, some individuals are worried about the faith of potential backers. If I had put money into a Kickstarter and it got funded, only to be canceled after the fact I would not only have lost faith in the concept of Kickstarter, I would also be pretty upset. I just hope others are more forgiving than I am.