A
Kickstarter update announces the cancellation of the fundraiser for Spicy
Horse's "Oz Action Adventure" that was to be a zombie game set in the merry old
land of Oz. The post explains they saw the writing on the wall that the
campaign would fail (they had raised a fraction of the $950K they sought), and
says they can restart it in the future, but for now they are returning to the
idea of securing the film rights to American McGee's Alice:
The Oz
campaign has to end. There are two realities driving the decision.
First, we’re facing a challenge with the Alice film rights. Since working to
remove it from the Oz campaign we've been unable to launch it as a separate
campaign here on Kickstarter – the submission has been rejected multiple times
and our appeals have failed (multiple campaigns are not allowed). To launch a
campaign for the Alice films rights means we must first shut down the Oz
campaign.
Second, we wouldn't consider shutting down the Oz campaign if it were trending
towards success. As it is, we've reached 15% of our goal with 20 days left in
the campaign. Projections suggest we’ll hit 30% of our goal by campaign end.
I've been telling myself to remain optimistic and see this thing through – but
when the reality of our funding trend is combined with the pressure of the Alice
film rights situation...
For Oz, we can always launch another campaign in the future. On the other hand,
the Alice film rights are only within reach during a rapidly closing window of
opportunity. We’ll sacrifice Oz today in order to have a real chance with Alice.
For the record, we did also consider (and put work towards) an Alice campaign on
IndieGoGo, but decided against this for two main reasons. The first is that
we’re concerned about the amount of awareness we can generate on IndieGoGo,
since we've never run a campaign there. Here on Kickstarter we have followers
(you’re reading this). The other issue is we don’t want to be accused of
‘creating confusion’ or deal with any other negative interpretation that might
come out of running two campaigns at the same time.