Haunts: The Manse Macabre, the Kickstarter-funded game that went awry last week, has been given a new lease of life, as the developer say that it will be finished with the help of volunteers.
While developer Rick Dakan found last week that he had run out of money and lost all of his programmers, he now says in a new update that the project is going open source, and around thirty people have offered to help him.
"We're still in the process of setting up the infrastructure for issue tracking, source control, documentation wikis, and other tools necessary before we can begin in earnest," he notes, "but we hope to have that all up and running within the next week or two."
For the people who want this game and for the creator, I think it's wonderful that his project will see the light of day.
I hope this doesn't end up as a case where he received money to make a game, blew that money, had volunteers make it for him for free, then he sells the game... probably to larger than expected numbers as I'm sure the press will champion it as a great example unity in the gaming community, and puts all the money in his pocket.
It would be nice for the game to be given away for free or if sold, some effort was made to pay the volunteers from the revenue generated.
This was my first thought, cool that people want to help, disturbing that the money people donated has already gone. If it means those people still get what they paid for that's great, if it enables the creator to go on and profit from volunteers that would set a dangerous precedence.
I hope this doesn't end up as a case where he received money to make a game, blew that money, had volunteers make it for him for free, then he sells the game... probably to larger than expected numbers as I'm sure the press will champion it as a great example unity in the gaming community, and puts all the money in his pocket.
It would be nice for the game to be given away for free or if sold, some effort was made to pay the volunteers from the revenue generated.
I would really love to contribute to the game, does anyone knows how to get in touch with Rick ?