Neal Stephenson's CLANG Canceled

For every successful Kickstarter, there are at least two failed ones. And for every two successful Kickstarters, there’s one that, despite funding, isn’t able to follow through and crumbles apart. It happened to The Doom That Came to Atlantic City, it happened to OZombie, and now it’s happening to a Kickstarter project I’m sure you’ve either never heard of or forgotten about: Neal Stephenson's CLANG.

Two years ago, Neal Stephenson, esteemed science fiction and cyberpunk writer, started a kickstarter for a game he called CLANG, which hoped to deliver a historically accurate sword fighting simulator that used motion controls. See, historically, sword fighting wasn’t blades clashing against blades, soldiers locked in an intricate dance of death: it was an extremely brutal couple of seconds of one guy trying to stab the other guy dead before being stabbed himself. Swords rarely touched, if at all, and witty banter was significantly more concise, in that there was no witty banter.

He asked for $500,000 USD to make the game, and came out with a respectable $526,000: not exactly stretch goal material but he got more than he ultimately needed. But after two years of development and “breaks”, it was officially announced that the game was being canceled and refunds were being issued.

But this wasn’t a case of a game going beyond its depth or a developer underestimating how much money they need or how hard it is to make a video game, as is often the situation: this was merely a case of the game not being very good. As it turns out, there’s a reason video games decided to avoid depicting historically accurate swordfights—they’re not very fun. They had a functioning prototype of the game, but Stephenson admits, "the prototype was technically innovative, but it wasn't very fun to play."

So the game’s been canceled. Fortunately for backers, the rewards have already been shipped out, so other than the game itself everyone got what they were promised, as well as their money back, to boot. While it’s never a good thing when a Kickstarter fails, it’s reassuring, at least, to see developers take responsibility and refund the money, rather than, say, keep it and run, as is the unfortunate case for several speculative kickstarter projects.