Yogventures: The Story of Two Overconfident Studios Failing on Kickstarter
Yogscast's First Video Game Officially Cancelled, Sparking a Lot of Questions
"Yogventures," one of the largest Kickstarter video games in the early era of crowd-funding, has officially been cancelled. Winterkewl, the developers of the video game, claims to be out of money and ready to dissolve the company, following the failure of the title.
Yogscast and Winterkewl announced they would be partnering in 2012 on an ambitious open-world style project, similar to "Minecraft" but using the "Yogscast" IP. Most details were kept away from the public eye, but once the Kickstarter ended, we heard little to nothing on the subject of Yogventures from either party.
The Failure of "Yogventures"
After grabbing more than $500,000 in payment from Kickstarter, Winterkewl's founder Kristafer Vale started giving $35,000 lump payments to the developers and artists to keep them on board for a year. The first issue arose when one artist left after two weeks on the project and didn't have to pay back a single penny.
This lead the Creative Director and Co-Founder of Yogscast, Lewis Brindley, to take $150,000 from Winterkewl to make sure the physical rewards were delivered to backers. The move appeared to be the first in many by the Yogscast to distance itself from Winterkewl after noticing some of the issues with Vale's lackluster experience in business.
In 2014, Vale ran out of money for the project and could not continue development. It just recently came to light that Yogscast would offer TUG in its place alongside all of the physical rewards promised. This news made some people happy, but others were disappointed it will not be "ogscast-related.
Ambitious Dreams
Winterkewl was only a six-man team, developing an open world similar to "Minecraft" but with more-quest orientated features, it was always going to be a hard push. The development team was not working full time on "Yogventures" either, most had it as a side project, meaning Vale had to put more effort into the video game in areas he did not fully understand.
This is not all Vale's fault though, Yogscast did accept the idea and put the project on Kickstarter, alongside doing promotional material at E3 and other events. The Yogscast have amassed big fan-bases on Minecraft and other games, it is easy for their face to be recognisable and promoting a potential failure is partly their fault.
Both studios are young, and Yogscast is in a much better position because they didn't have to waste their money on this game. But both have learned valuable lessons from the ordeal. Vale might struggle for a few years, but the developer has good experience in games development; we expect he will find another job soon.
Kickstarter: Investment, Not a Store
The big thing to take away from "Yogventures" is that Kickstarter is an investment website for products and ideas. It is not a pre-order store. Once you pledge money to a campaign and it's funded, the money is gone. If there is no return on investment, the fault lies on you.
Kickstarter is still young and people believe in the videos, the photos, and the promotion. It leads some people to donate thousands on a project that may never come to light or might fail to meet their expectations along the way.
It might seem fun to invest $20 in a new title, but if you really want to find an experience, there are thousands of playable games on Steam and other platforms. If you are worried about money going nowhere, just buy a game already available, and leave Kickstarter to those that have the money to waste.
Source: Eurogamer Yogscast Reddit
