Neverending Nightmares Enjoys A Happy Kickstarter Ending

[Karloff]

Neverending Nightmares Enjoys A Happy Kickstarter Ending

The last 4 days were the kicker.

"I can't believe it! I feel like I'm dreaming," says Matt Gilgenbach, "except that I almost never have good dreams." Neverending Nightmares [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/127247-Neverending-Nightmares-Takes-Its-Terror-To-Kickstarter], Gilgenbach's exploration of his personal demons through the medium of survival horror gaming, managed to cross its Kickstarter Rubicon, taking $106,722 when it had hoped for $99,000. Gilgenbach's in no state to comment right now - he spent last night at a dance party on Skype - but he's overjoyed with the result.

It all came together in the last few days. Even as little as four days prior, the project was only 64% funded, and Gilgenbach was preparing to accept defeat. "Could we really raise that much funds in one final push?" he asked himself. Now he knows the answer, and it'll please not just him but also one unfortunate backer who - in a mistake over where to place the decimal point - pledged $9,500 when he meant to pledge only $95. "He worked really hard to afford the $95.00 pledge he intended to make," said Gilgenbach to his supporters, "so we don't want to leave him on the line for 40 times that!" Judging by the enthusiastic response, he won't be.

This exploration horror title will see the light of day - metaphorically speaking - late 2014, simultaneously on Windows, Mac, Linux and Ouya. It will be part of Ouya's #FreeTheGames Fund, so pledges made will count for double value; a pleasant bonus for Gilgenbach's team.

Source: Kickstarter [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/infinitap/neverending-nightmares]

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[Omegatronacles]

Good luck and all but misplacing the decimal that badly does not bode well for this game's design.

From my reading of it, the decimal point was misplaced by one of the backers, not the development crew.

 

[jericu]

Good luck and all but misplacing the decimal that badly does not bode well for this game's design.

From my reading of it, the decimal point was misplaced by one of the backers, not the development crew.

To clarify, the backer in question is from South America, where they use commas instead of periods to denote the change from dollars to cents (as do a lot of non-USA countries). IE, Ninety Five dollars and Zero cents would be written as 95,00.

When the backer in question put that into Kickstarter, it was interpreted as 9,500 dollars.

But yes, congrats to Matt Gilgenbach and his team! I didn't have the money to contribute to this Kickstarter, and I'm not a huge fan of horror games, but I'll still give this a fair shake when it releases!

 

[Eternal_Lament]

I've always been curious...what would happen if, when a a backer makes their pledge and they don't have enough money to actually pay for it? From what I understand, the way it works is that you can lower your pledge only if doing so wouldn't prevent the project from reaching its goal. So I guess if a project needed to get $20,000 and made $24,000, anyone could lower their pledge as long as it didn't result i the project not reaching its goal. In the case of Neverending Nightmares, it seems the backer is fine now, but still, what would happen if it didn't get resolved and the guy was still stuck with the full $9500?

 

[Phoenix1213]

Joystiq went a little more in-depth:
http://www.joystiq.com/2013/09/29/neverending-nightmares-kickstarter-wakes-from-funding-nightmare/

Basically a kid from Brazil earns a lot of money (technically $220 with exchange rates)a, ups his pledge and makes the mistake. A few minutes later amidst the celebration you see him going "NO NO NO NO NO, I MADE A MISTAKE!"

In the following half hour everyone wraps their heads around what happened and starts pledging and upping their pledges in order to bail out Gabriel. (basically in the last 24 hours you can't de-fund a funded kickstarter by lowering your pledge)

Gabriel was able to lower it by about $4000, but the remaining $5000 or so still had to be funded so he could get back down to $95

Towards the end when Gabriel is still panicking and worrying about what to do, a backer named Thomas decides to ease the pressure by pledging $3000 and getting Gabriel out of the hole. But in the end it was the nameless backers that were the real heroes, because both Thomas and Gabriel managed to reach their original pledge amounts thanks to generous strangers.


It's all a rather bizarre chain of events, especially for me... I saw the kickstarter needing $9000 left and only about 21 hours to go. I figured it wouldn't make it and pledged $25 on a whim, figuring either a miracle would happen, or I'd get the $25 back. Then bored at work, I just happen to notice this happening. I ended up following the events the rest of the day and even gave in to the good feelings by upping my pledge by $10. In the end it was a pretty entertaining and heartwarming event.

Not that I think there was any wrongdoing, but I kind of have to wonder if things would have turned out so well were it not for that mistake, maybe that was the miracle at the end.