Games

The Doom That Came to Atlantic City Board Game Will Not Be Made: Kickstarter Funds Spent

July 27, 2013
Michelle Topham

The Doom That Came to Atlantic City board game will not be made

Yet another Kickstarter funded game will not be made. Yet another Kickstarter game developer will be keeping the money given by backers — at least for the forseeable future. And yet another Kickstarter developer seems to be clueless, inept and absolutely useless with finances, at least if the story of The Doom That Came to Atlantic City is to be believed.

What was The Doom That Came to Atlantic City?

The Doom That Came to Atlantic City was a board game that was funded on Kickstarter just 13 months ago. Not just minimally funded either.

In fact, the game developer, project lead Erik Chevalier, asked for a paltry $35K. He was funded to the tune of $122,874 yet, even with almost four times the amount of money he asked for, he managed to piss away most of it, not even produce a few copies of a BOARD GAME for chrissake, and didn’t pay most of the staff that worked for him. Pathetic comes to mind. Criminal even more so.

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So where did the Kickstarter money go?

To listen to Erik Chevalier, there’s not much of an apology going on either. His initial statement made as an update on The Doom That Came to Atlantic City’s Kickstarter page simply said:

“Every possible mistake was made, some due to my inexperience in board game publishing, others due to ego conflicts, legal issues and technical complications. No matter the cause though these could all have been avoided by someone more experienced and I apparently was not that person.”

And then a whole lot of other stuff about personal squabbles and legal problems.

Nope, not much of an apology there now, is there? Even if, at the end of his note, he does say “sincerest apologies”, it all seems to be said with not much emotion behind it and you get the feeling he really doesn’t care or even understand how serious a situation he could be in.

Wonder if any of Erik Chevalier’s legal problems had anything to do with this direct rip-off of the Monopoly game?

Interestingly too, Erik Chevalier hasn’t come up with financial statements as to where almost $125,000 went to, except to say he had to pay to form the company ($100 in Oregon), move to Portland from California (not what backers had given their money to fund), and paid for licenses, found artists to do game rule books and paid for miniature statues.

All I can say is if Erik Chevalier couldn’t even manage to put together a simple board game for $125,000, how on earth did he think he was going to do it for $35,000?



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The story, of course, is a bit more complicated than this and Eurogamer have done an excellent job summing it up.

If you’re a backer, can you file a complaint?

You can also check The Doom That Came to Atlantic City’s Kickstarter page where many backers in the comments section have already posted that they’ve filed a complaint with the The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), which is an organization that works in affiliation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C).

Looks like Erik Chevalier might think he’s off the hook, simply by promising to refund backers’ money — eventually. Backers, however, have different ideas and, frankly, you can’t really blame them.

 

Michelle Topham
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