One of the more high profile Kickstarters that recently wrapped up was Sportsfriends. The package brought together a number of highly acclaimed, sports-like indie titles that are the talk of the town, with the highlight being Johann Sebastian Joust, which has long been a darling at gaming festivals across the planet.
Many assumed that Sportsfriends would be green lit, without question, especially given how the Kickstarter also got plenty of buzz also. But for the most part, it struggled. And as Polygon explains, despite making a rebound during its final week, the last day was an emotional roller coaster for all its supporters, and especially for the individuals behind the project.
The thing was, after reaching its goal with just a few hours left on the clock, a rather curious thing began to happen: the amount of money began to decline, and at a rapid rate. What happened was high donors at the highest level began began retracting their bids. According to Douglas Wilson, creator of Johann Sebastian Joust:
"I don't want to linger too much on it, because obviously, we're fucking thrilled as shit to have made it… But the end was a little weird."
The reason? Bennett Foddy, one of the other game makers behind Sportfriends, has a theory:
"Bennett's take is actually that, he thinks it's flattering because — and I think this is true to some extent — it meant that these people, these superfans that were really invested in seeing it happen, gave more than they really wanted to or were prepared to to see us to the finish line… Then, when their donations weren't needed, they kind of dialed it back."
As Polygon, plus plenty of others have pointed out, Kickstarter does not allow donors to pull their funding in the final 24 hours if it might drop the project below its target. Also, once a project has successfully met its goal, that's basically it. Even if the numbers end up dipping below at the very end. So Sportsfriends had no real risk of not being successful.
