Jungle Adventure Headed to Kickstarter Disaster

[Karloff]

Jungle Adventure Headed to Kickstarter Disaster


Activision co-founder says everyone turned against his Kickstarter campaign as soon as they saw the price.

David Crane, co-founder of Activision and creator of Pitfall, set up a Kickstarter campaign [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jungleventure/david-cranes-jungle-adventure-0] to fund Jungle Adventure. He asked for $900,000 but so far only $21,629 has been pledged, and the campaign has eight days to run. Crane had hoped that Kickstarter was capable of putting "the same indie effort into larger game designs", but now wonders whether "people won't let go of what they think [crowdfunding] is."

"They look at my project and say, you're asking way too much money," Crane said. He feels that "everyone turned against me as soon as they saw [the price]." The topic was a hot button issue in an Ask Me Anything Reddit session with fans and backers, in which one commenter asked how Crane could justify the budget when other people could put together indie games working part-time on nights and weekends. "Believe it or not, the Kickstarter budget is real," replied Crane. "It is a simple matter of multiplying the number of professionals needed to make the game by the number of months they have to work."

Professionals in this instance means people like David Bergantino, John vanSuchtelen and Bill Wentworth; all of them high profile names - former Viacom/Nickelodeon executives with decades of experience - but people like that don't come cheap. It begs the question why Crane didn't try to get venture capital funding, a question that Crane refused to answer when asked it in the AMA.

Another problem is the lack of any real information about Jungle Adventure. Beyond some art and the video seen here there isn't much for pledgers to get to grips with, and the video hardly sells the concept. Crane claims that this information paucity was a deliberate strategy as the game was supposed to be developed with full backer participation, something that couldn't happen until the Kickstarter concluded. However this does mean that people were being asked to pony up the dough pretty much on a whim, plunging on a project supported by David Crane's reputation and not much else.

Source: Gamasutra [http://gamasutra.com/view/news/177270/Living_in_Pitfalls_shadow.php#.UEno95ZAWht]


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[Tahaneira]

...it's Activision. They can get that kind of money without really trying. I think people are more likely to donate when it's a smaller developer who wants funding with fewer strings attached than usual game development provides. A massive producer like Activision? Not so much.

Unless he's not a member of Activision anymore? I have to admit I don't really know game industry 'faces' as well as I should.

 

[Enizer]

i'm going to say this is because of "activision" being in the vague area around this kickstart,

a lot of people who play indie games and look for them on kickstarter actually DONT like the major publishers, especially EA and Activision

others see that activision has plenty of money, and they probably find it arrogant of them to ask for it

being famous only works if people actually like you

 

[Waaghpowa]

Price isn't the problem, seeing as Wasteland had an asking total of 900k.

 

[Knight Captain Kerr]

I could talk a bit about my view on all of this but I think it can be best summed up with one youtube video of a futurama clip.

 

[Zombie_Moogle]

Could it be that the video, meant to entice people into donating their money, looked like something posted on Newgrounds after a drunken 3-day weekend?

 

[Blunderboy]

Seeing as Amanda Palmer got more than a million dollars when she kick startered an album I'm calling bullshit.

 

[NightHawk21]

I think its not that its a lot of money, its that the game is created by Activision (or at least by one of its founders). That company does not have good rep, and is so damn rich that dropping 1 million would barely do anything to their bottom line.

That or if we take a more baby eating and puppy punching vision of activision, the purpose was to gather a 1 million dollar bonus and push out a bad game that some people made on company time or something.

 

[Rabid Toilet]

So the video that tells us absolutely nothing, the fact that the guy is from Activision, and the general lack of information surrounding the game had nothing to do with it? Nope, clearly it was the price of the game.

You know, the same price that Wasteland 2 was asking for.

The game that got more than triple that amount.

The game that people were actually interested in.

 

[Ralen-Sharr]

anyone else recognize a lot of the sounds in the clip from TES2: Daggerfall?

 

[Enizer]

actually this is quite sad after looking him up on wikipedia

he left activision in 1986, and i'm pretty sure the responce is due to people linking him with activision, and thinking that activison dosnt need money

this is probably a very good project that's getting a lot of misdirected bad attention

 

[Rad Party God]

Wasteland 2 asked for that amount of money and it reached it's goal and even surpassed it's original goal without any problem.

Money isn't the problem, the problem is Activision themselves (or at least that's what the article makes it to belive).

 

[Azuaron]

Hmmm... let's look up some previous successful game budgets:

Double Fine: $3.3 million

Shadowrun Returns: $1.8 million

Shadowrun Online (that's right, Shadowrun pulled two Kickstarters this summer, and both were successful): $558 thousand

The Banner Saga: $723 thousand

Wasteland 2: $2.9 million

Yeah... I'm thinking his problem wasn't the amount.

Edit:

...it's Activision. They can get that kind of money without really trying. I think people are more likely to donate when it's a smaller developer who wants funding with fewer strings attached than usual game development provides. A massive producer like Activision? Not so much.

Unless he's not a member of Activision anymore? I have to admit I don't really know game industry 'faces' as well as I should.

While he helped found Activision, he hasn't been associated with them since 1986. This is not an Activision game, it's a game made by a guy who left Activision 26 years ago and recently put together a small team to make this game.

 

[Enizer]

Hmmm... let's look up some previous successful game budgets:

Double Fine: $3.3 million

Shadowrun Returns: $1.8 million

Shadowrun Online (that's right, Shadowrun pulled two Kickstarters this summer, and both were successful): $558 thousand

The Banner Saga: $723 thousand

Wasteland 2: $2.9 million

Yeah... I'm thinking his problem wasn't the amount.

Edit: Note to everyone, while he helped found Activision, he hasn't been associated with them since 1986. This is not an Activision game, it's a game made by a guy who left Activision 26 years ago.

i wish we could draw attention to this fact, i'm not sure he himself realizes that this project is getting negative attention because people think this is a kickstart by activision, not by an ex-employee of activision

as is he dosnt have any chance

 

[cikame]

Planetary Annihilation recently broke its $900,000 goal. This is a team of developers who made Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander, they understand and are proven at making ground breaking RTS's.
Pitfall isn't exactly something i'm craving right now, and if it's jungles you want Crysis is awesome and cheap, MGS3 is also awesome.

 

[DEAD34345]

My god... The guy is just making Pitfall! again, but somehow even uglier.

First of all, I'm surprised he got any money at all for this idea, and secondly, how is that even possible?

Spoiler: How do you make something that looks worse than this!?

 

[Litchhunter]

Perhaps Activision shouldn't try to be "indie" and ask for $900,000 while being, you know, ACTIVISION.

 

[GasparNolasco]

I don't know about you guys, but if I was the co-founder of Activision and didn't have 1 million dollars to spare I'd be incredibly depressed.

 

[FallenTraveler]

Could it be that the video, meant to entice people into donating their money, looked like something posted on Newgrounds after a drunken 3-day weekend?

I agree.

If people were given anything other than that piece of crap video maybe there would be some backers.

 

[Uber Waddles]

The point of kickstarter was to KICKSTART a project that, because of funding, would otherwise be impossible. To do so, the people who chip in would probably want some feeling that the money they've pledged is going towards a project with some merit.

David Crane does not show this merit. The last game he worked on was in the late 90's. He left Activision, which, although not making the literal fuck-ton of money it is now, was still a pretty decent company to found his own, which eventually went bust. To which he found another company, which makes cheap games like "Texas Hold Em'."

The point of Kickstarter is for a lesser established company to get funding. You've had your hands in the kettle long enough that you should have MORE than enough money, personal or business, to fund this project.

That's why people aren't caring. If you also tout yourself off as a 'co-founder of Activision', it tends to taints peoples perception of you. For one: it almost sounds like a 'Yeah, I'm still working there' kind of thing, and two, you are associating yourself with a game company that nickles and dimes is user base for everything, and is only graced from being the worst company because its competition is EA.

I'm sorry, but I feel no sympathy for this guy. If he wants his project to come to life, has the money to do so (which I would wager he does), but doesnt want to spend it because hes afraid of losing money on the return, then I don't really see why he should get the money in the first place. I'd much rather fund a studio that needs the money because they actually need the money than some guy who just wants the money.

Its gonna start getting ugly on Kickstarter soon.