American writer Neal Stephenson's Clang, a simulation game based around sword fighting, has been cut down and laid to rest on a funeral pyre.
Before Clang went clunk, the game attracted 9,023 backers on Kickstarter and beat its $500,000 fundraising goal by $26,125.
Stephenson brought Clang onto Kickstarter in July 2012 with the expectation of releasing the game in February 2013. But after roughly a year without releasing any significant update to Clang, Stephenson made the decision to terminate the project.
Stephenson's Subutai Corp., of which he's a co-founder, managed to create a prototype of Clang and the game maker handed out the backer rewards it promised, but Stephenson says the game was simply a bore.
"The prototype was technically innovative, but it wasn't very fun to play," states Stephenson. "This is for various reasons. Some of these were beyond our control. Others are my responsibility in that I probably focused too much on historical accuracy and not enough on making it sufficiently fun to attract additional investment."
In an effort to take tangible responsibility for Clang's sheathing, Stephenson and other Subutai Corp. members absorbed financial losses associated with the game's failure, says Stephenson.
"They showed intense dedication and dogged focus that I think most of our backers would find moving if the whole story were told," says Stephenson of Clang's development team. "I will forever be grateful to them. In the end, however, additional fundraising efforts failed and forced the team to cut their losses and disband in search of steady work."
Stephenson says his team searched out at least 24 Clang backers through forums and gave them refunds for their support of the now-terminated game. While it wasn't required of him, he says he feels it won't compromise backer expectations of other struggling Kickster campaigns.
"Well, speaking of refunds, I would gladly accept mine... because this project was really mishandled," states a Clang backer on Kickstarter. "I get something can go awry, but long months of silence, after that saying "money are gone, bye"... nope. There is no way to burn half million dollars and have nothing to show. But instead of refund I can also accept future ebook from Neal Stephenson."
Stephenson rose to fame with "Snow Crash," a cyberpunk novel published in 1992. The author, known for his speculative fiction, has since released many other novels and works of nonfiction, though Clang is now skittering into the abyss.
