The wildly successful Doublefine Kickstarter has led to the proposal of a number of dream games, many of which are on their way to becoming a reality. But one such project sounded too good to be true — and ended up being a scam.
"Mythic: The Story of Gods and Men" was on Kickstarter up until two days ago, when denizens of message boards were able to piece together clues that indicated it was a indeed a con. The project creator yanked the page.
The game, proposed by a company called Little Monster Productions, was an action RPG by people who left Blizzard for "something better," at least according to the project page. It touted gameplay that similar to "World of Warcraft," and visuals on par with "Skyrim."
Audacious as that all was, it was the claim that "animations will be done via motion capture thanks to some friends at Disney/Pixar" that raised the biggest red flag for many. A thread on Reddit explains how members of both Something Awful and Rock Paper Shotgun's message boards did some detective work to uncover the truth. And their findings?
That much of the concept art that was posted has been stolen from around the Internet. Even a picture of the production office was falsified.
The Kickstarter was asking for $80,000 and had managed to raise almost $5,000 before the plug was pulled. The website for the game has also since gone dark.
Matthew Hawkins is an NYC-based game journalist who has also written for EGM, GameSetWatch, Gamasutra, Giant Robot and numerous others. He also self-publishes his own game culture zine, is part of Attract Mode, and co-hosts The Fangamer Podcast. You can keep tabs on him via Twitter, or his personal home-base, FORT90.com.