Neal Stephenson's swordfighting game hits financing wall

Neal Stephenson and Subutai Corporation's swordfighting game Clang, which was successfully funded on Kickstarter in June of 2012, is now an "evenings and weekends" project until the game can find new financial investors.

The developers had originally run a Kickstarter campaign to raise $500,000 to make the game — it exceeded this goal in pledges and raised $526,125. The studio raised the funds to drive Clang's first lap of development, and was relying on investors or publishers to step in further down road. According to an update posted to the Kickstarter campaign today, things have not worked out the way the developers planned, so it will "hit the pause button on further Clang development while we get the financing situation sorted out.

"We stretched the Kickstarter money farther than we had expected to, but securing the next round, along with constructing improvised shelters and hoarding beans, has to be our top priority for now," the update reads. "We hope we'll be able to make an announcement on that soon."

The developers explained that the game has been difficult to finance beyond Kickstarter because of the current state of the game industry.

"While we have been working on Clang, two major video game publishers, THQ and LucasArts, have gone out of business. Others have fallen on hard times. The current generation of consoles is coming to the end of its life cycle. Rather than invest in innovative new titles, the still-surviving publishers tend to keep their heads down, grinding out sequels and extensions to well-worn AAA franchises."

The studio added that Clang "isn't dead in dead-parrot sense," and the development team is working on it as an evenings and weekends project until it can get more funding.

The complete update, in which the studio addresses the lessons it has learned and explains why its updates have been so infrequent, can be viewed here.