Clang!

Neal Stephenson is fascinated with sword-fighting, and is trying to raise the funding for what he intends to be the ultimate sword-fighting video game (to be named “Clang,” and to be developed by Subotai Corporation) using Kickstarter.

He tells us that the project needs to attract pledges amounting to $500,000 (!) by July 9th to develop the game. (Those Seattle game designers clearly all drive Porsches and drink plenty of Cristal.)

They are up to $230,449 right now with 26 days to go. You have to cough up at least $25 for the right to download a copy which is estimated to be finished by February of next year. They will charge your credit card on July 9th, assuming enough optimists climb on board to provide the half million in funding.

On the one hand, I have a strong positive regard for sword-fighting and admire Neal Stephenson. On the other hand, I worked in the game design industry in my youth and, boy! our budgets were orders of magnitude less than $500,000 a game.

I’m not sure how long they’ve been trying to Kickstarter this one, but there are only 26 days left and they are not quite halfway there, which does not look good to me.

Nice costume though, Neal.