The new crowdfunding site Fig has failed to fund its second campaign. The campaign was created by Scribblenaut developer 5th Cell and was titled Anchors in the Drift. It surprisingly only earned 20% of its goal, making only $100,000 of the $500,000 total
Justin Bailey, the CEO of Fig, has stated that,”if the campaign doesn’t reach its goal, then no money will be transferred to 5th Cell.”
Anchors in the Drift is a free-to-play adventure game involving heroes like Medieval knights, Egyptian archers, and Vikings. They’re all set loose in an epic battle to take control of Earth from transdimensional forces. They can create their own powers by combining multiple ones together.
This is the first time a crowdfunding effort has failed on the site. Their first attempt, a spacefaring adventure game called Outer Wilds, earned more than $125,000 and attracted more than $1 million in sales for the new site. The lack of funding seems to be from a lack in momentum after their first success.
“Crowdfunding exists so that creators can take more creative risk than a traditional publisher would let them and get a signal directly from their fans,” said Bailey, who had formerly worked with Double Fine. “Sometimes the signal is that fans have always wanted this, sometimes for a variety of reasons it does not resonate. This is going to be the outcome sometimes, and that’s ok. The market, which is made up of fans, ultimately decides successes and failures. What’s not ok with fans is the idea of setting a fundraising goal that you hit, only to find out it’s some massive subset of the budget you knew you needed to deliver the game.”