Two Years And A Million Dollars Later, Project Phoenix Still Doesn’t Have A Programmer

Japanese indie JRPG Project Phoenix was successfully funded two years ago, raising over $1,000,000, and it still doesn’t even have a programmer. The game was originally slated to come out in March 2015.

[SaveFerris]

As a kickstarter backer, this is troubling to hear. I am surprised that the developers didn't have some kind of backup plan in place. I'm not sure what this means for the game and whether it will go ahead or not.

[Aenea]

No programmer no game, as easy as that I suppose...

[Game4Next]

programmers, programmers, programmers, making computer game needs programmers, why is there still people who don't understand this?

[rdgneoz3]

"why is there still people who don't understand this?"

Why do you need to stall a game you got $1 million donated to you to make, just for 1 person to possibly join? He might be a great programmer, but 2 years later they've done sh!t and people aren't going to get any return on their investments anytime soon.

[christrules0041]

Well as a person who has done some work with Unity and the Unreal Engine. I can tell you that you can make video games using strictly blueprints in the Unreal Engine, so you wouldn't even need to touch scripting at all. Using blueprints gives up control for ease of use though. So some developers will use blueprints to test different mechanics/rapid prototyping, delete it and then use C++ so that they can optimize those mechanics that they put into there video game.

[DJ]

Why on god's green earth did they hold out for one guy? That's time and money wasted for no reason. There's plenty of great programmers out there.

[DJ]

Well there's one silver lining:

Note: <$200,000 of what we have pulled in has been spent so we still have a majority of the funds left for finishing the game and producing the rewards. A lot of this has to do with the fact that most of the team is working under a royalty contract and are not being paid with the KS funds.

[luckytrouble]

The fact that they've spent the better part of $200,000 accomplishing nothing is not what I would call a silver lining.

[Crimzon]

This is what happens when you get a bunch of people saying "I've got an idea for a game!" without actually having a clue how to make one. I'd have thought that the first thing anyone would do before making a Kickstarter is to have a functional prototype, but since these guys got themselves a million dollars in funding maybe I'm wrong about the whole thing? Seems Star Citizen walked away with ridiculous funding with simple ideas and nothing to back it up as well. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go craft a pitch for Teh Bestest Vidyagamezor Evar!!!!11one11

[DevilOgreFish]

You can download star citizen off the home website and play it. Star citizen receives funding for expansions, new ships and other content.

[Spenok]

Except Star Citizen is available now... and continues to get updated with new content.

[alti]

Uhh programming is the biggest part of game development. What on earth are they thinking?

[Jayszen]

It seems it is the backers that are going to end up bearing the cost of bad decisions made by the devs as now they are unable to give refunds as the money has effectively been used up and yet the game is nowhere near being ready.

Kickstarter sgould not be a place people like these get a change to gather money and then they can walk away if the game never materializes as a result of poor planning, bad decisions and just not having enough experience to be in charge of a project like this.

The guy talks of how he would have to use his personal money to give refunds and he simply does not have enough to make refunds if everyone demanded it. So what? Does he think that the backers deserve to be treated in such a manner just because he was stupid enough to depend on a person on joining a project without having any assurance that said person would actually do so? Did he never consider what would happen if he could not get the programmer he wanted - a back-up plan or that they should not use the money until at least the programmer confirmed that he would join. This just reeks of an attitude that says 'we do what we want because there is nothing anyone can do'.

[DJ]

They only spent 1/5th of the money. But yeah, this is just terrible project management.

[DiaperFace]

As long as it gets done.