‘The only way to truly fail is to give up’
[Update: Fig has sent us a reply to explain things from its perspective. A Fig representative says that the company advised as to the risks of such a high goal, but that Swery “unfortunately still decided to go for the $1.5 million.” Also, the email wasn’t sent prematurely, but rather part of Fig’s Backstage Pass program where investors are given an early heads-up about projects that are soon to be announced. The recipients are told the emails are confidential, but most everyone involved expected this one would probably leak given Swery’s passionate fan base.
Fig’s representative also added “We love Swery, and we’re all really sad this didn’t hit the goal.”]
[Original story:] Barring a surprise injection of approximately $950,000 in the next five hours, Swery’s crowdfunding campaign for The Good Life is going to fail. Over a stretch of 40 days, the campaign managed to raise something around $556,000 at time of writing. That really can’t be considered anything other than a disappointment, as it’s merely 37 percent of the $1.5 million goal.
Swery isn’t giving up, though. In a lengthy post on Twitter, he explains all the things this first push got wrong. Here’s the tweet (the message is spread across three of the images):
This is my final message of the FIG campaign of The Good Life.
Little bit ling, so I attuched pic.@yukiof @ryanpayton #Thegoodlife #supportswery #supportcreativedevs pic.twitter.com/VPAS2M48tI— HidetakaSwerySuehiro (@Swery65) October 12, 2017
There’s plenty of blame to go around. First, it seems as if Swery thinks that the initial leak caused a lot of confusion as to what The Good Life actually is. That’s Fig’s fault as a premature email blast outed the game’s existence a full two weeks before it was set to be revealed. Then, Swery says that the concept trailer only added to that confusion.
Other sources are: They could’ve better messaged all the notable people working on The Good Life; no one really understood what the reward tiers meant for the various contribution levels; and the game suddenly featured all dogs instead of all cats. Swery is clearly not happy with almost all aspects of how this campaign was executed.
So, he’s going to try again, but he’s ditching Fig for Kickstarter. It’s unclear if this is because there’s already a negative stigma of failure between The Good Life and Fig, or if it’s because he views Fig largely responsible for the first campaign’s missteps. “The only way to truly fail is to give up,” Swery writes.
There will be key changes this time around, though. The Kickstarter will feature a decreased goal “due to some great partners that are joining production.” It’s also going to better message all the unclear stuff from the first campaign. Swery’s studio is even teaming up with Limited Run to produce a physical edition.
It won’t be long before the Kickstarter goes into effect. The second campaign is set to launch before the end of 2017. It’s clearly a game he believes in. “We refuse to give up on bringing you The Good Life,” Swery says. He’s not going to let a botched crowdfunding campaign bring the whole ship down.
@Swery65 [Twitter]
