There is a common conception that veteran game developers are having an easy time raising funds for their new games through Kickstarter at the expense of indies. However, it is increasingly evident that everybody is having a harder time meeting backers' rising expectations.
The latest Kickstarter project to face this truth is no other than John Romero's , John Romero and Adrian Carmack did the math to find that they won't be able to reach their funding goal of $700,000 if things continue at the current rate. The original Doom developers had no option but to pause the campaign while they work on a demo that would appeal to backers who are more interested in the gameplay than in the people behind it.
"Simply put, [the demo] 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," said Romero in a backers-only update. "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."
The campaign was suspended with a little over $131,000 of its $700,000 target. While this number looks impressive for a 4 days run, it is worth noting that around $100,000 was raised on the first day alone. With a post-day-one average of $10,000 pledged daily, the campaign would've had a hard time reaching $400,000 by the end of its 30 days run. Hopefully, Romero and Carmack will be able to cook up a demo with enough substance to win more backers over.
