Cartailed: MotorGun Kickstarter Cancelled
Pixelbionic's Kickstarter for vehicular carslaughter game MotorGun was curtailed twelve hours ago, having reached only 10% of their requested donations at $63,120 out of $650,000. Previous Interstate '76 developers Michael Kaufman and Mike Arkin said in a post last night:
"Kickstarter is a harsh mistress. Lots of projects are pitched to the community and sometimes they resonate and sometimes they don’t. In this case, what we were pitching wasn’t exactly what you guys wanted. So, as a result we’re making the tough decision to not drag it out, and we’re going to cancel the campaign and start working to reformulate it."
The game was intended to be a team-based goal-oriented combat multiplayer, where the Mad Max-based battle arenas would provide a place for modes such as Capture the Flag. You would also be able to customise and strip down your vehicles for speed or build them up for tanking. Sadly the game as it stood will not be coming to our desktops any more.
The post put up last night also outlines the team's plans to reformulate another Kickstarter for the same idea. Though losing out on money to bring something creative to fruition is always a sad thing, part of me is quite critical of this idea to try again, given that their theme is 'cars with guns'. Though many ideas on Kickstarter are sentimental hark-backs through well-driven territory, there's always something interesting you can do with a twist in narrative or a new innovation or slant on an old brand. MotorGun's successor needs something original to set it down the right dirt track.
Twisted Metal creator David Jaffe, who was also involved with the project, perhaps inadvertently points out what might be a big problem with the game idea when he talks about MotorGun in the Kickstarter video: "When you think about the idea of...big heavy cars...and missile launchers mounted, that's just as exciting to me now as it's always been." Is it perhaps that the game playing public is not excited by that any more? If so, Pixelbionic may have to spend a little time rethinking their next proposition.