John Romero and Night Work Games have decided to “pause” the fundraising campaign and cancel the Kickstarter campaign for their upcoming first-person shooter, BLACKROOM. The reason behind this cancellation is simple; a lot of PC gamers have been asking for a gameplay demo and Night Work Games decided to actually listen to its fans.
Therefore, the team is now working on a gameplay demo for BLACKROOM. Naturally, this will take a while, which is why Night Work Games decided to cancel this Kickstarter campaign, and launch a new one when BLACKROOM’s gameplay demo has been finished.
As Night Work Games claimed:
“There’s a hitch here, a hitch that’s making us do something that’s right for the game, the team, and the community: we’re pressing “PAUSE” on the fundraising campaign for BLACKROOM to complete this gameplay demo. Simply put, this will take more time than the Kickstarter has left, so we’ve decided to suspend the campaign and launch a new one when the gameplay demo is ready. We believe, however, it is the right choice. We know you do, too. Thanks to your feedback, we know we should have included it at launch.”
In all honesty, this is the right thing to do, so kudos to Romero and Night Work Games for actually listening to their fans!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Good move but still comes off as strange as all this is really doing is delaying funding and in turn development for the full game. They could have worked towards a demo while continuing the kickstarter unless they were worried the Kickstarter was going to fail.
No, they say in the post that they were NOT going to get a presentable demo off the ground within the kickstarter’s duration. That means the kickstarter campaign (which certainly would have succeeded, just look at the numbers) wouldn’t have been indicative of anything, as it would have been based just on name recognition / lip service to popular sentiments among PC gamers.
I wasn’t implying the demo needed to be finished and in peoples hands by time the kickstarter closed.
Respect points gained.
*Respeck
Listening to fans is good and only seems to ever happen when there are no publishers involved. Unfortunately though the campaign itself is to raise enough money to get a publisher interested and therefore will still end up being a dictated production based on what those publishers think will sell. It is very unlikely to turn out as what the people/fans funding it want it to be.
That is of course if the KS campaign doesnt end up turning into another massive success like Star Citizen, which is highly unlikely considering the slow start the initial Blackroom campaign has gotten.
Probably to remove Randy’s affiliation with the project. Smart move.
Makes sense. Pleope are crying for see a demo or gameplay.
Not sure if it’s a good idea at this point. Their crowd funding campaign was doing well and they had to prove to their private investors that there is demand for a game like this. Canceling the campaign might not sit well with the investors.
The investors are likely the reason for this step. This campaign was about showing the investors how much interest there is for a game like this and having no gameplay whatsoever drastically limits the number of people willing to contribute. They could have gotten to those 700k in under 2 weeks, they know that, the investors know that. But that’s just a test of Romero’s / classic id’s reputation. The real question is how many people want a game like this once they see a barebones representation in-engine. You can get a small group of dreamers to imagine the greatest game of all time by concept art and some buzzwords like “speed” and “complex movement”. But can you get a large group of reasonable optimists or even skeptical realists to donate (or at least to watch your youtube videos, get some twitter hashtag trending or whatever) with an early look at software running in real-time? Is there more to this than a recognizable name? That’s the real test that I would want to have answered in the shoes of a potential investor. A campaign that pulls millions with gameplay footage is a more accurate test than a very small scale “success” in the hundred Ks based on creative fiction.
That’s good point. I hope they can put together a good demo soon. The game sounds really exciting.
Really? Then I take it back. Was at ~36k when I last looked at it.
Standing ovation.
Good move. I really hope this project succeeds! The FPS genre needs the old-school level design back in some form.
I am hoping for a positive outcome…looking forward to the damo!
That’s a pretty bold move, I hope it pays off, I’m really want to see this become great.
As a backer I’m okay with this decision. I’ll re-back when their new campaign begins.
Good decision! Keep up the good work Romero!!!