Fresh off the closing of its crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, Massachusetts-based video game company Harmonix Music Systems beat its $775,000 goal for “Amplitude.” The video game is known as a “rhythm-action music game” for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation that is based on the 2003 cult classic.
Excited to share the great news, a spokesperson from Harmonix stated,
“Going into this Kickstarter campaign, we understood the number of challenges we faced, and at no point did we believe we have a ‘sure thing.”
“The outpouring of support has been incredible and we are absolutely humbled by the response. From our fans to our friends in the industry – including the incredible contributions from fellow developers Insomniac Games and the Skullgirls teams – we could not have done this without their support and passion.
As we’ve said in the past, creating a new ‘Amplitude’ experience has been a studio dream for years. We’re incredibly grateful for the outpouring of support that will make it possible, and can’t wait to make this dream a reality.”
As previously reported by Crowdfund Insider, the campaign wasn’t doing so well and with a week left, the was far shy of goal. Concerned fans began to wonder what would happen to the game if the campaign’s goal wasn’t met.
Director of publishing and PR John Drake took to the company’s blog to address questions about the project, including why the company decided to turn to Kickstarter for the funding process. “Sometimes, our ideas for projects are small enough that we can tackle them on our own and self-fund – we’re fortunate to be able to take those small risks without a third party. But other times a project come along that’s too ambitious in scale, scope, or cost for us to be able to responsibly make it completely out of pock. In those cases, like any other group that wants to make an ambitious project, we have to find ways to pay for the development of the games we want to make.”
Mr. Drake also admitted “Amplitude” didn’t sit well with the publishers the company approached. “Sometimes the publishers we approach won’t fund a game that we’re excited about and that we think fans would be excited about – maybe they don’t think it fits with their portfolio strategy, maybe they don’t think it would be commercially viable and worth their investment.”
He then added, “In a different era, this would mean the game idea would be dead in the water – we’d simply have to walk away because publishing executives at a few companies don’t share our vision.”
Almost immediately after Mr. Drake explained the situation, the campaign raised not only the $775,000, but a grand total of $844,127 from over 14,000 backers.
Harmonix Music Systems was founded in 1995 and is responsible for bringing famous games like “Dance Central,” “Rock Band,” “Guitar Hero,” and the upcoming Xbox game “Fantansia: Music Evolved” to the video game world. In 2003, the company created a smaller version of “Amplitude” that “defined the PlayStation 2 era of interactive music.” 11 years after the game’s release, the company has decided to respond to the pleas from devoted fans of the game and revisit this game to update it to the modern age.
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