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My side of the Kaiju Combat mess.
6 years ago
The popular assumption is that Kaiju Combat was considered a "successful" Kickstarter, ruined by one individual: me. I suppose it helps disappointment by placing the blame on one person, especially when that person is in a community that's demonized as "a bunch of social rejects" by outsiders. And it certainly makes the story that much more believable when it's a "demonized" individual.
The truth is, Kaiju Combat was NOT a successful Kickstarter. Far from it. The first time the project launched, the guy running it asked for a full million dollars without anything as far as a prototype or an engaging video.
But I kicked in anyway. For a $500 pledge, you could work with him and his concept artist to produce a monster that, if voted in by the Kaiju Combat Kickstarter community, could end up being a character in the game. Plus, Duncan a notoriously large, monster-sized troublemaking kangaroo, so that'd be pretty fun to see in action.
Ultimately, $500 for a full-character that could potentially end up being 3D rendered, rigged, and playable in a fighting game is a pretty damn good investment if you ask me.
The benefit to Kickstarter is that you're just pledging the money. If it never gets to the goal, you never get billed for the money. Kickstarter fails, it costs you nothing. And boy did this Kickstarter fail. I could be wrong I don't think it even cracked six figures the first time around, and I think it was even canceled half-way through. Again, I don't remember.
When it failed, I got contacted by the creator. "Hey, we're going to restart the Kickstarter at a lower goal." I'm paraphrasing. "We need to build our roster before we do. Wonder if you're still interested in being a part. Let's chat about your character."
And so we did. Seemed to go well. I totally get Duncan isn't meant to be taken seriously. He's a goddamn giant green kangaroo. He'd work better as a Saturday Morning cartoon than a monster fighter. But as we talked, the creator eyes lit up with ideas like scavaging for items in the middle of the fight, plucking up cartoon bombs or boomerangs or whatever. Sounds great! Here's my $500, let's make it happen.
My first clue of Duncan's unpopularity was my initial conversation with Matt Frank. He really, really didn't like Duncan. Because this was all over videochat I don't remember what he was trying to change or add, but I was like...huh. Yeah. Hmm. Nah. The way the conversation went, it felt like it was Matt's way or the highway. And I've never liked working with artists who don't want to work with you.
So after this call, I sent an email to the creator. "Matt's not digging Duncan, I'm out. I'll just support the project as a normal Kickstarter pledge." I'm paraphrasing, but the response: "No, stay, I'll talk to Matt, Duncan will be a fun addition." So I stayed.
I think the Kickstarter launched before I got my character and design sheet. I didn't write the description, but boy did the Kaiju Combat forums really notice the mention of "No visible genitalia." I think he was trying to be silly, but it had the negative effect when people started dissecting why Duncan is stupid and should never be included in anything Kaiju related.
The forums were half "Ha, that's silly, Duncan's great" and half "WTF??! He's just a kangaroo!!" The vocal half was the WTF.
Still, no guarantee I'd be added to the game, and all it would take is me not getting voted in. Of course I'm gonna ask my friends and followers to vote me in by pledging for the game, earning the right to vote for their favorite characters. So here comes the furry crowd to "poison" the Kaiju fans' project.
You guys came through with Kickstarter pledges and votes. and Duncan got into the game in the first round. He was one of the first to be 3D rendered, one of the first to be animated...clearly someone on the team prioritized Duncan.
Making video games is a very, very slow process, and I just never followed what was going on with Kaiju Combat's development. There's a card game being made? Ok, cool. Someone's 3D printing the character models? All right, I'll buy one. They have to add "Colossal" to the name now cuz of Wizards of the Coast? Sure, makes sense.
Every time I peeked into the forums, there was something non-gaming being talked about. It was a mess. What's the status, when is it coming out, which characters are playable? Shrug emoji.
I stopped checking in, it felt like a waste of time. No big surprise, there hasn't been any movement on the game since 2016. I found a trailer that had Duncan animated, hey that's cool...still wicked rough, but at least I know he's been animated!
And then I learn the tall tale that I'm the sole reason the game failed. Pretty funny stuff. But it took on a life of its own, probably from one person spreading the story, and everyone just believing it. Why wouldn't fans of the game believe it, Duncan's a furry, which means he's a social degenerate, right?
To all my fellow social degenerates: I am sorry you put your money into this failed project. I have no regrets on my $500 loss, I got a Matt Frank original and a few animated gifs of Duncan uppercutting a shark. I consider this a win.
(Crossposted from my Twitter: https://twitter.com/duncanroo/statu.....026169344?s=21
The truth is, Kaiju Combat was NOT a successful Kickstarter. Far from it. The first time the project launched, the guy running it asked for a full million dollars without anything as far as a prototype or an engaging video.
But I kicked in anyway. For a $500 pledge, you could work with him and his concept artist to produce a monster that, if voted in by the Kaiju Combat Kickstarter community, could end up being a character in the game. Plus, Duncan a notoriously large, monster-sized troublemaking kangaroo, so that'd be pretty fun to see in action.
Ultimately, $500 for a full-character that could potentially end up being 3D rendered, rigged, and playable in a fighting game is a pretty damn good investment if you ask me.
The benefit to Kickstarter is that you're just pledging the money. If it never gets to the goal, you never get billed for the money. Kickstarter fails, it costs you nothing. And boy did this Kickstarter fail. I could be wrong I don't think it even cracked six figures the first time around, and I think it was even canceled half-way through. Again, I don't remember.
When it failed, I got contacted by the creator. "Hey, we're going to restart the Kickstarter at a lower goal." I'm paraphrasing. "We need to build our roster before we do. Wonder if you're still interested in being a part. Let's chat about your character."
And so we did. Seemed to go well. I totally get Duncan isn't meant to be taken seriously. He's a goddamn giant green kangaroo. He'd work better as a Saturday Morning cartoon than a monster fighter. But as we talked, the creator eyes lit up with ideas like scavaging for items in the middle of the fight, plucking up cartoon bombs or boomerangs or whatever. Sounds great! Here's my $500, let's make it happen.
My first clue of Duncan's unpopularity was my initial conversation with Matt Frank. He really, really didn't like Duncan. Because this was all over videochat I don't remember what he was trying to change or add, but I was like...huh. Yeah. Hmm. Nah. The way the conversation went, it felt like it was Matt's way or the highway. And I've never liked working with artists who don't want to work with you.
So after this call, I sent an email to the creator. "Matt's not digging Duncan, I'm out. I'll just support the project as a normal Kickstarter pledge." I'm paraphrasing, but the response: "No, stay, I'll talk to Matt, Duncan will be a fun addition." So I stayed.
I think the Kickstarter launched before I got my character and design sheet. I didn't write the description, but boy did the Kaiju Combat forums really notice the mention of "No visible genitalia." I think he was trying to be silly, but it had the negative effect when people started dissecting why Duncan is stupid and should never be included in anything Kaiju related.
The forums were half "Ha, that's silly, Duncan's great" and half "WTF??! He's just a kangaroo!!" The vocal half was the WTF.
Still, no guarantee I'd be added to the game, and all it would take is me not getting voted in. Of course I'm gonna ask my friends and followers to vote me in by pledging for the game, earning the right to vote for their favorite characters. So here comes the furry crowd to "poison" the Kaiju fans' project.
You guys came through with Kickstarter pledges and votes. and Duncan got into the game in the first round. He was one of the first to be 3D rendered, one of the first to be animated...clearly someone on the team prioritized Duncan.
Making video games is a very, very slow process, and I just never followed what was going on with Kaiju Combat's development. There's a card game being made? Ok, cool. Someone's 3D printing the character models? All right, I'll buy one. They have to add "Colossal" to the name now cuz of Wizards of the Coast? Sure, makes sense.
Every time I peeked into the forums, there was something non-gaming being talked about. It was a mess. What's the status, when is it coming out, which characters are playable? Shrug emoji.
I stopped checking in, it felt like a waste of time. No big surprise, there hasn't been any movement on the game since 2016. I found a trailer that had Duncan animated, hey that's cool...still wicked rough, but at least I know he's been animated!
And then I learn the tall tale that I'm the sole reason the game failed. Pretty funny stuff. But it took on a life of its own, probably from one person spreading the story, and everyone just believing it. Why wouldn't fans of the game believe it, Duncan's a furry, which means he's a social degenerate, right?
To all my fellow social degenerates: I am sorry you put your money into this failed project. I have no regrets on my $500 loss, I got a Matt Frank original and a few animated gifs of Duncan uppercutting a shark. I consider this a win.
(Crossposted from my Twitter: https://twitter.com/duncanroo/statu.....026169344?s=21
But you have it right. Its the same reason people like Trump are successful. They give a clear, definable point for all the blame. And at that point, most people are sold, be it true or not. It sucks...
That about sums it up.
It's strange how... you're not mentioned at all. People are just hating on furries.
To blame any single one person in a game that's openly taking community contributions is flat out ridiculous.
Definitely a good deal to be included in a project at that price. Did you post the art you got, or the animation sequence anywhere or a have link? I'm curious. There was a brief scene in the other video linked in the comments, which looked good.
Just for context for those unaware, and what I've seen over the years; the "story" is that you were being horribly unreasonable when it comes to redesigning Duncan to fit the games themes better of "giant scary monsters"- that a cartoon character didn't fit among godzilla beasts and the like (and if I'm being brutally honest I can *kind of* see where that's coming from as he did stand out from everyone else in a somewhat jarring way, but that's just from what little I've actually seen posted so YMMV.)
People were also mad that you were
A) Paying to get Macroceli in. The discourse was that you were trying to get as many macro furs into the game as possible to turn this into a game for you specifically instead of the Kaiju fans that were into it.
and
B) You're big in the macro community so you getting people to vote for you and starting a campaign of it was seen by a handful as rigging the polls in your favor. That some of the other "better" designs didn't stand a chance because they didn't have as much clout as you so it was inherently unfair.
This spiraled wildly out of control into "Duncan is taking over the game and warping it to be what he specifically wants and going against the artists vision. He's wholly unreasonable and is threatening to pull money out if he doesn't get his way with his kangaroo"
The story then started getting far more personal than it had any right to be about how if anyone disagreed or called you out. "Duncan will just sic furries on you to quiet you down and talk over you so you can't even argue with the guy" to some pretty nasty personal stuff about "controlling" Dejaroo.
Together everything painted you as the ultimate villain of the game and a all around awful person to work with.
That being said a few points to address and clear up. I never saw people hating on you because you're a easy target or a degenerate or whatever. In fact Macroceli was often praised as "at least his character fits the game better and he worked to make his OC resemble a monster and not some lol so randumb XD character."
And it wasn't just you getting labeled as the reason the game failed. I have absolutely no idea who the other person is but there was another OC that got in that the owner of was super protective over to the point of demanding to be a boss character and overpowered "Or else" that got dogpiled on for being insufferable.
-And making sure it's clear, I'm not saying I agree with any of this. I'm just trying to provide some context as it seems a few of your journal viewers have no idea what was being said. I personally don't have a horse in this race and the only time I glanced at it personally was when I was linked to random concept art or threads that went around.
I don't think Duncan """"ruined"""" the game or anything of the sort
As for asking my friends to vote for me, I’m absolutely confident that other owners of monsters also did the same thing. There’s be nothing different if they had a community of friends following them on twitter or a message board. Just so happens I have a lot of people that are willing to jump in and help me. I see nothing wrong with this.
My point on the “degenerates” is it doesn’t matter what the story is, outsiders are willing to believe a negative story about someone in the furry fandom.
This wasn't me throwing down a gauntlet or anything- just trying to give context is all :u
The difference there is that Mighty No. 9 actually came out.
A kickstarter fell through because most are doomed to failure, and this one seemed like many game design ones, to lack a disciplined team and more importantly clear goals. It's shitty any fans would try to lay that on you for being furry.
While I did get a Matt Frank piece out of it, I felt disappointed yet again by kickstarter projects that fail (my 3rd such such instance where I couldn't get my investment back on either projects that simply stopped or have taken 7-10 years with no end in sight).
Sucks that you got labelled by the ignorant, trolling masses as "the reason" it failed; obviously nonsense. I hate to hear that a death in the creative team may have been the reason but at least that is a less irritating excuse other than the reason I thought, which was simple inefficency of budget and/or largely a scam.
The project failed hard! Me and everyone else had nothing else to show for it the only persons who came out on top with that project was the director of the game Simon Strange. And I will never ever forget the note he sent me on the forums telling me NOT to make a dark version of Xarimuss . Because of this and that...
with the fall of nemesis ugh.
And then the bullying that happened with my character Xerimus/X-I aka Xarimuss it was just a very bad experience and it still has left me feeling horrible.
It saddens me a bit that the game was a failure, but what happened happened I guess.
Though if even though I was inactive with the community, the game did make me find you and though we've never met or interacted before, I can say and see that you're a very nice and caring individual. Would like to meet you at a con one day and maybe chat for a bit.
And people wonder why I have such a low opinion on people that aren't furries.