On September 11th, 2013, Project Phoenix raised over $1 million dollars. The game was scheduled to release in March of 2015. Yesterday the leaders of Project Phoenix announced that it will be delayed until late 2018.
Project Phoenix promised to “set a new standard of excellence for the Japanese gaming industry.” But they made many promises that seemed nearly impossible to deliver.
There seems to be an epidemic of Kickstarter campaigns either not keeping their promises, or vanishing into thin air after the campaigns are over. Game development is very expensive. Crowd funding can be a real Godsend to developers who need help with funding. But with all of these projects coming up short, people are starting to become weary of backing upcoming projects.
I have several friends who are game developers. Many of them spend years of time developing their games, investing a lot of their own hard earned money into the games their developing. For many developers, their dreams of producing a game people will love is but a pipe dream without crowd funding.
Even though Project Phoenix fell short on its release date, they do not plan on offering refunds to Kickstarter backers. Instead they expect their backers to wait an extra 3 years for the game to launch. What a slap in the face!!!
Even though there are many shady projects like Project Phoenix hornswoggling good people trying to back game devs, I encourage you not to give up on crowd funding projects just yet. Instead you should call them out on your social media pages and blogs. It can be tough to spot out the good developers, but look for signs of shadiness on campaigns. If it sounds to good to be true, it usually is.
#BooProjectPhoenix
Info & Image Source: Kotaku
