- The Yogscast's Yogventures was the first Kickstarter I ever saw that set off alarm bells in my head.
If you've never heard of The Yogscast, understand that it is huge. Originally started in 2008, The Yogscast has grown into one of the most popular YouTube groups. Its main channel has over 7 million subscribers, with individual videos regularly receiving over 500,000 views. They're a big deal. They're not a flash in the pan.
Building off that success, The Yogscast lent its name and host likenesses to a Kickstarter from Winterkewl Games. The game, titled Yogventures, was to be an open-world sandbox title emphasizing adventure and player control — not unlike the kind of games The Yogscast had become popular from making videos about.
The Yogventures Kickstarter quickly raised over $567,000 from 13,647 backers. A closed beta of the game was released to backers in August of 2013. And then the developer and The Yogscast went mostly silent about the game.
Today, it was officially canceled.
And this is why I'm not a fan of Kickstarter projects. When it's your money and/or there's actual investors you have to satisfy (not kids on the internet), it helps place things into perspective. Seems like they aimed too high too quickly.
god I used to watch the Yogscast every day, first thing coming back from school. I remember them doing videos on that game and I completely forgot it existed until just now. I was with 'em through their biggest come-ups with the Shadow of Israphel series and all that. Lewis has the sort of awkwardness that bought him the appeal of 10 million squealing 12-year-olds, and that is only accented by the dense heap of childish enthusiasm that is his partner Simon. They're kids as far as I'm concerned, and they made some dumb decisions with their money. As a kid would, they tried to throw blame off and play it cool. I don't think there's a terrible disaster here, nor should we really be angry at the Yogscast cause they learned their lesson, albeit a bit late for a company as sprawling in audience size as that, but if they were to come to me with a brand new game that offered me all the satisfactory info and details I needed, I damn well would back it anew.