Not every Kickstarter story out there has a happy-ending, and Pixelbionic’s MotorGun has learned this hard lesson by officially canceling its Kickstarter funding campaign on July 24th.
The brains and heart behind MotorGun consisted of a pretty all-star team, with the likes of David Jaffe (creator of the Twisted Metal and God Of War series), Zack Norman (creator of Interstate ’76), and many more giving this game a lot of potential.
The team described the game as :
“An exciting new vehicular combat game with RPG elements. Think Interstate 76 meets World of Tanks and mix in some old Autoduel.”
It was asking for $650,000, and had been up and running since July 16th. They managed to reach $63,120, but pulled the plug recently in hopes of reformulating and returning later. They admitted defeat gracefully, stating:
“Lots of projects are pitched to the community and sometimes they resonate and sometimes they don’t. In this case, what we were pitching wasn’t exactly what you guys wanted.”
Despite this setback, the Pixelbionic team believes passionately in the Kickstarter community, and its ability to involve player feedback in game development. They were looking to “…cut out the middle-man and go directly to the community to bring to life the game we’ve always wanted to build.”
Even though they admitted defeat before the campaign’s planned ending, citing woefully how “Kickstarter is a harsh mistress”, they also expressed gratitude to their fans and backers:
“We are profoundly grateful to our fans. You guys are why Kickstarter works so well and when you spoke we listened and we learned. We made changes and the numbers went up, but not enough. We’re going to change our pitch and change the game, so keep talking, we’re still listening!”
Going back to the drawing board is definitely a hard choice for any Kickstarter project or indie dev. It’s great to see a game developer respond to their fan’s feedback, and then look to implement said comments in any future campaigns. MotoGun may not have ended successfully, but with this level of commitment there is still hope for the future.
