KickStarter H. P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward - Failed

[polo]

It's a shame, pitch was good, but they should have waited for Asylum to come out.
Also, lol at the cartoony SotC comment.
Someone reminded me these guys are from Argentina, i totally forgot 'bout that

 

[Infinitron]

I would have wanted to see his interpretation of that part of the story where the protagonist accidentally resurrects a Mythos-busting medieval sorcerer.

 

[Infinitron]

Kickstarter failed - massive postmortem: https://www.kickstarter.com/project...the-case-of-charles-dexter-ward/posts/1035283

http://gamasutra.com/view/news/229183/Another_developer_sees_diminishing_returns_on_Kickstarter.php

Another developer sees diminishing returns on Kickstarter

"Kickstarter is dying."- Developer Agustin Cordes describes a trend he's seen in the course of crowdfunding multiple games on Kickstarter.

Early last year, Scratches designer Agustin Cordes successfully funded the development of his upcoming horror game Asylum on Kickstarter. A year later he returned to the platform with a bigger pitch for a more complex game, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward...and fell flat.

"It’s impossible not to notice a sense of apathy towards Kickstarter these days," writes Cordes in an updateto the Charles Dexter Ward Kickstarter page. "In short, few people seem to be backing games these days, including our own."

Cordes points out that while his latest Kickstarter has a funding goal that more than doubles that ofAsylum, it also enjoys the imprimatur of H.P. Lovecraft's estate and earned far more press attention than his earlier, successful Kickstarter campaign.

"Between our pre-launch campaign, buzz on Twitter, local and international celebrities supporting us, our own posts that went viral, and a massive article in the second-biggest newspaper in Argentina, I estimate well over 100,000 people heard about Charles Dexter Ward," notes Cordes.

"It boggles the mind, then, that barely 2,000 people have backed the game — with such a strong launch and the evident appeal of the project, a year ago we’d easily have reached $400k."

Instead, they've earned pledges of just over $100k towards a $250k goal, and on the final day of the campaign the developer is putting the project "on hold" and focusing on finishing Asylum.

"We’re disbanding part of our team as we focus solely on completing Asylum, which is coming along great," writes Cordes. "There’s nothing left to do; this was our best shot."

We already knew that Kickstarter campaigns were slumping in 2014, at least when it comes to crowdfunding games; Cortes' commentary suggests that interest in the platform has continued to wane.

Update: Of course, not everyone agrees; many developers have taken to Twitter and to the comments section of this story to rightly point out that this campaign may have failed for reasons beyond Kickstarter's slumping appeal.

Most notably, Charles Dexter Ward developer Senscape has not yet delivered Asylum, the game it Kickstarted and initially expected to release last year.

For more details, you can read a mini-postmortem of the failed crowdfunding campaign over on the game's Kickstarter page.

 

[Zed]

I thought that was a board game when I saw it some time ago, not scrolling past the short pitch, following a link on twitter.
"Travel back to vintage Providence and face horrors lurking underneath in the first official game based on the work of the famed writer."¨
Call it a fucking computer game, or an adventure game, next time. Not just game.

 

[skuphundaku]

Kickstarter failed - massive postmortem: https://www.kickstarter.com/project...the-case-of-charles-dexter-ward/posts/1035283

http://gamasutra.com/view/news/229183/Another_developer_sees_diminishing_returns_on_Kickstarter.php

snip

"It's all Kickstarter's fault. The fact that our game is a shitty abortion has absolutely nothing to do with out abject failure."
...and nothing of any value was lost.

 

[Jaesun]

I'm hoping they will give this another go. They just need to refine it better.

 

[Darth Roxor]

WHY ARE PEOPLE NOT DONATING TO OUR KICKSTARTER?!

ITS NOT LIKE WE ARE DOING ANOTHER KICKSTARTED GAME THAT'S BEEN IN DEVELOPMENT HELL FOR YEARS

KICKSTARTER IS DEAD! DEAD!!!

 

[Kz3r0]

Another inane rant about Kickstarter fatigue.

Instead, they've earned pledges of just over $100k towards a $250k goal, and on the final day of the campaign the developer is putting the project "on hold" and focusing on finishing Asylum

Maybe after btoken age adventurers are more wary of this stuff.

 

[AngryKobold]

Bloom. Blooooom. Blooooooom. Must be some postapocalyptic world after Cthulhu has awaken. The library is placed underwater.

I consider the future to be a bit better without that game.

 

[Pyke]

Meh...I don't understand why creatives are obsessed with Lovecraft. Just going on reddit.com/r/writingprompts gives you more inspiring settings.

• John is a depressed man in his 20's. He is under the illusion the entire world is against him, he finds out it's not an illusion.
• (Pi) turns out not to be infinite. When the end is found, a tiny gap in every circles is discovered. Doorways to...
• Humans figure out warp drives and take to exploring the galaxy. Ironically, it is found that we are the only species to have survived the invention of the "A" bomb.
• All of your close friends and family vanish and only you remember them, 5 years later they start to reappear but have no idea who you are and how they were connected to you...
• Calling the number 666 gets you through to a helpline where you can ask someone to commit a crime FOR you.
• In the future, certain emotions are illegal. Write about the day of a black market emotion dealer.
• Aliens try to invade Earth on Halloween but nobody takes them seriously.

I literally find ALL of those story prompts more interesting than Lovecraft. And that's just on the first page.

 

[Drakron]

Meh...I don't understand why creatives are obsessed with Lovecraft.

Lovecraft is hard because it worked on a medium (writing) that doesnt really work in other mediums, its interesting if you realize its theme but that does mean you have to abandon any idea of being horror because it only works on writing, problem is few want to do that and try to adapt a medium to another that is incredible hard.

Lovecraft can be done if you stop trying to a 1:1 adaption, just explore the same themes but ignore the lure of doing "fan service".

 

[Infinitron]

I, for one, don't think Asylum was the primary reason this failed.

I think it failed primarily because it looked like an unappealing 3D adventure game, the likes of which you can buy a few times a year on Steam for a 75% discount. Why Kickstart when I can just go and buy the latest Sherlock Holmes on Steam right now?

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if a retro early 90s-look would have earned more money (while being cheaper to produce). He should check how many people who visited the Kickstarter page bothered to play the pitch video upon seeing the title image.

It probably also didn't help that Charles Dexter Ward, while an excellent story, is very "bookish" and not easy to sell - though on the other hand, the popular squiggly green Cthulhu thing is so old hat by now that it probably wouldn't have worked either.

 

[Archibald]

I kinda doubt that many people are aware of that specific story, Lovecraft (and the big guy) has become kinda iconic and people are aware of this "horror style" while not knowing anything about the actual works.

 

[tuluse]

I, for one, don't think Asylum was the primary reason this failed.

I think it failed primarily because it looked like an unappealing 3D adventure game, the likes of which you can buy a few times a year on Steam for a 75% discount. Why Kickstart when I can just go and buy the latest Sherlock Holmes on Steam right now?

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if a retro early 90s-look would have earned more money (while being cheaper to produce). He should check how many people who visited the Kickstarter page bothered to play the pitch video upon seeing the title image.

It probably also didn't help that Charles Dexter Ward, while an excellent story, is very "bookish" and not easy to sell - though on the other hand, the popular squiggly green Cthulhu thing is so old hat by now that it probably wouldn't have worked either.

I'm not so sure. Look at InXile's double dip, they had an almost universally positive reaction to the gameplay video before they launched T:TON. They get more money.

This company and Double Fine both have a mixed reaction to their initial ks, and their follow ups do far worse.

 

[taxalot]

InXile has Brian Fargo and some other very strong names and IPs. I am only vaguely aware of those guys. Which is why I backed both InXile projects without problem but would not back one of theirs, especially with such a suspicious art style.

 

[Western]

I, for one, don't think Asylum was the primary reason this failed.

I think it failed primarily because it looked like an unappealing 3D adventure game, the likes of which you can buy a few times a year on Steam for a 75% discount. Why Kickstart when I can just go and buy the latest Sherlock Holmes on Steam right now?

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if a retro early 90s-look would have earned more money (while being cheaper to produce). He should check how many people who visited the Kickstarter page bothered to play the pitch video upon seeing the title image.

It probably also didn't help that Charles Dexter Ward, while an excellent story, is very "bookish" and not easy to sell - though on the other hand, the popular squiggly green Cthulhu thing is so old hat by now that it probably wouldn't have worked either.

That was probably a factor in not drawing in new backers outside their existing backer base, as an existing backer there is a reluctance to give more money to a dev that has delayed an existing project, it shakes confidence in their ability to manage, they'll need to deliver on Asylum to restore that confidence.

 

[Western]

Meh...I don't understand why creatives are obsessed with Lovecraft. Just going on reddit.com/r/writingprompts gives you more inspiring settings.

• John is a depressed man in his 20's. He is under the illusion the entire world is against him, he finds out it's not an illusion.
• (Pi) turns out not to be infinite. When the end is found, a tiny gap in every circles is discovered. Doorways to...
• Humans figure out warp drives and take to exploring the galaxy. Ironically, it is found that we are the only species to have survived the invention of the "A" bomb.
• All of your close friends and family vanish and only you remember them, 5 years later they start to reappear but have no idea who you are and how they were connected to you...
• Calling the number 666 gets you through to a helpline where you can ask someone to commit a crime FOR you.
• In the future, certain emotions are illegal. Write about the day of a black market emotion dealer.
• Aliens try to invade Earth on Halloween but nobody takes them seriously.

I literally find ALL of those story prompts more interesting than Lovecraft. And that's just on the first page.

I've only read a bit of Lovecraft but personally I'm not really sure it's the setting itself that's interesting, the mythos feels more like a bunch of loosely connected stories that created a setting with some stories feeling like they're not related to the setting at all. There was certainly some pioneering originality at the time, in terms of the setting and having humanity play second fiddle to the alien terror of the old ones.

Personally what I enjoy in a lot of Lovecraft's stories is the teasing, the alien objects, settings, creatures, that are almost never given full exposition, I feel like he crafts and teases that fear of the unknown and the stories often feel unsettling but in a more subtle and cerebral way than modern gore porn. I enjoy that well crafted suspense/fear, I feel it informs and inspires The Thing for example.

When exposition comes it usually comes wrapped in some form of madness, the appropriate response to something truly alien, or an awful/unthinkable discovery.

I also enjoy his word craft, as well the underlying themes of his work.

From The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

"It was the end, for whatever remains to me of life on the surface of this earth, of every vestige of mental peace and confidence in the integrity of Nature and of the human mind. Nothing that I could have imagined—nothing, even, that I could have gathered had I credited old Zadok’s crazy tale in the most literal way—would be in any way comparable to the daemoniac, blasphemous reality that I saw—or believe I saw. I have tried to hint what it was in order to postpone the horror of writing it down baldly. Can it be possible that this planet has actually spawned such things; that human eyes have truly seen, as objective flesh, what man has hitherto known only in febrile phantasy and tenuous legend?

And yet I saw them in a limitless stream—flopping, hopping, croaking, bleating—surging inhumanly through the spectral moonlight in a grotesque, malignant saraband of fantastic nightmare."

A direct quote from the man.

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

 

[Infinitron]

I, for one, don't think Asylum was the primary reason this failed.

I think it failed primarily because it looked like an unappealing 3D adventure game, the likes of which you can buy a few times a year on Steam for a 75% discount. Why Kickstart when I can just go and buy the latest Sherlock Holmes on Steam right now?

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if a retro early 90s-look would have earned more money (while being cheaper to produce). He should check how many people who visited the Kickstarter page bothered to play the pitch video upon seeing the title image.

It probably also didn't help that Charles Dexter Ward, while an excellent story, is very "bookish" and not easy to sell - though on the other hand, the popular squiggly green Cthulhu thing is so old hat by now that it probably wouldn't have worked either.

I'm not so sure. Look at InXile's double dip, they had an almost universally positive reaction to the gameplay video before they launched T:TON. They get more money.

This company and Double Fine both have a mixed reaction to their initial ks, and their follow ups do far worse.

Brian Fargo will tell you that the most important thing for a Kickstarter's success is to successfully create the impression that your game will fill a niche that the industry isn't currently providing for. Right now it looks like fans of "3D adventure games" feel like they have their fill.

If the Charles Dexter Ward brand had been stronger, the game may have been able to transcend the mere "3D adventure game" label and become something more (the same way Torment wasn't just an "isometric RPG"), but it wasn't, so it didn't.

 

[kaizoku]

My wallet was raped is fatigued from all the KS.
And I am also fatigued from having to check why the fuck a bunchload of the KS have not shipped or even finished the game.
I would actually would prefer for a 12-18 months slumber until the next KS wave. But I guess I'll fail on that and pledge to Thimbleweed (will be checking the KS page today).

Only found out about this game vapor today.

I do find it a lot interesting. Even more than Asylum that I also pledged.
Would be on the fence if this was still ongoing.
Kind of glad if failed. Hopefully they will do a good job with Asylum and will be able to reap on that.

I don't find the graphics to be cartoony, but that library sure needs to cut on the bloom.



One thing, aren't H.P. Lovecraft stories on public domain?
Why the need for a license?

 

[Jaesun]

I don't know for certain, but it may be that Lovecrafts works are still held by a Family. Similar to Tolkien and James Bond rights.

 

[Gragt]

I don't know for certain, but it may be that Lovecrafts works are still held by a Family. Similar to Tolkien and James Bond rights.

From what I remember, there has been a bit of a controversy over the ownership of Lovecraft’s works after his death. It seems that he designated somebody but August Derleth decided to claim he was the rightful heir, and his estate still upholds that claim now. Under EU law, all of Lovecraft works are now in public domain in these territories, but US laws and the various Mickey Mouse laws are a bit more difficult. I think some of Lovecraft’s last relatives claim that they hold the copyright but an investigation revealed that the rights have not been renewed and thus Lovecraft’s works should be public domain in the US anyway.

Seriously, I wish they got rid of all the Mickey Mouse extensions and just released some works and characters in public domain. It is even more hypocritical in the case of Disney when you consider that some of their mainstay characters are originally from the public domain!—Alice, Pinocchio, the Jungle Book cast, Aladin, Snow White, The Little Mermaid, etc. Speaking of James Bond, I’d love to see what some people could come up with, both in movies or video games, if the character was public domain, as he should have been by now.