About two years ago my friend @karililt and I created a pitch for an indie game that was rejected by just about every major video game publisher in the world. It was called: THE EXTINCTION CLUB, a game for the last generation. Here is the story of our failure.
It was a time before Covid and I had an idea for a new video game. What if, unknown to everyone but you, the world was ending in 10 days. How would you spend that time? And could this insight be used to help people spend their own lives in more meaningful ways to them?
I asked a psychologist friend of mine how people get fulfillment. He told me about the Theory of Basic Human Values. I used that theory to create characters based on those values. Who the player spent those ten days with, would determine what was important to them.
I also had another question - could I make watercolor pixel art? So I worked with
@karililt to find out. The answer was yes! And the art looked sick. Me or @imkurteous would create an outline, and @karililt would print it out, paint it and scan it back.
By the time we started pitching covid had kicked off. I’m not kidding when I say we pitched this too many times to count, to publishers all over the world. Some publishers were interested in Newfound Courage, and exactly 0 were interested in the Extinction Club.
Why were they not interested? It looked unique and cool, it had a purpose, and the story was compelling. The gameplay was varied and interesting. The main feedback we got was, that due to covid, the world was depressing enough. That’s fair. But was there something more to it?
Probably not. But allow me to WILDLY SPECULATE. You see, the game was very heavy-handed about Boomers. In fact, it had a name for that generation: The Gluttons. The game was pretty clear that they were the root of all evil. Who was I mainly pitching to? Yeah… maybe Gen X?
So yeah! That's the story. The world is ending, and that’s okay. Thanks for reading my thread about failing to get the Extinction Club created. I wish we’d gotten to make this game. Here is the link to the actual pitch we used:
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