14 DAY TRIAL // The development team at Harmonix, best known for its work on music-based video games, says that it is not too successful to use Kickstarter to fund a sequel to Amplitude and that it is taking a lot of risks even if the crowdfunding effort is successful in the end.
The company launches a campaign to get 775,000 dollars (520,000 Euro) in order to begin work on a sequel to the title that made a lot of fans in 2003 when it launched exclusively on the Sony-made PlayStation 2.
The company will probably not reach its stated goal and plenty of its fans have said that they are not contributing because Harmonix is high-profile and successful enough to get the resources from publishers or other sources.
John Drake, the director of publishing and Public Relations at Harmonix, explains in an official blog post that, “Without this Kickstarter, there’s no clear path to getting Amplitude made or a clear scenario where we can afford to fund the team ourselves and release it. It’s not a ploy – with the current landscape, without your support, this game won’t exist.”
He also explains that the money that the community has the option of contributing would be less than half of the overall budget and that there are no other companies that are currently interested in funding a new Amplitude title.
According to the developer, Harmonix would risk a lot of its own money even if the Kickstarter effort succeeds in the end, mainly because they are fans of their own title and want to see a sequel created.
The much talked about Viacom purchase money is also not in the hands of Harmonix, as many fans believe.
Drake also explains that, “Viacom paid that money as part of its purchase of Harmonix back in 2006 to the company’s original shareholders, which mostly consisted of the investors who kindly kept Harmonix afloat for the 10 years that we struggled in obscurity before hitting big with Guitar Hero and Rock Band.”
Harmonix is the development team most associated with the success of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, but the company suffered when the music game market crashed.
It was bought by Viacom in 2006 and was since then sold because it struggled to deliver another big hit.
At the moment, Harmonix is also working on Chroma, a rhythm-based music shooter that will be launched this year for the PC.