GamesBeat: Is that one of the difficult things about building the Kickstarter model? Figuring out what would be part of the initial pitch and what would be a stretch goal?
Johnson: That’s right. I’m right in the thick of that right now. In fact, it’s one of the things on my to-do list for today, to try to take another pass at what those stretch goals are going to be. It’s tricky. Committing to stuff at this stage in the game, when you’re not really sure how much work or complexity there’s going to be in it — you want to make it appealing enough so that people will be excited and want to up their donations. That’s the whole Kickstarter thing. It’s a lot of head-scratching and trying to figure out how all that goes and hoping I’m making the right decisions.
GamesBeat: Is there any fear that Kickstarter is beginning to dry up for video game projects?
Johnson: A little bit. I’ve been reading about it, how the average donations and numbers of backed projects are dropping now, halving every six months or whatever it was. But I think, fingers crossed and knocking on wood and stuff, there are lots of ToeJam & Earl fans out there. I think we’re pretty well suited for Kickstarter. It’s the sort of thing that tends to do pretty well. There’s still enough life in this.
I was reading an interesting article this morning, I’m not sure where it was from, about how somebody’s predicting that, in the future, all games — including triple-A titles from big publishers — are going to be crowdfunded. That’s going to become the main model for funding, which isn’t necessarily good news for little indie developers. It could still mean the well dries up for the little people as more and more developers move into the space, big players, and it gets saturated. But we’ll see. It’s all a grand experiment. I don’t quite know what to expect.
Above: Hard to believe split-screen multiplayer is now nostalgic.
GamesBeat: Is Kickstarter the end-all, be-all for getting this project made? Is that where the hope begins and ends for this sequel?
Johnson: Oh, no. Let me back up a little big. There are two factors as far as making this happen. One is money, and one is just general interest level. If I don’t meet my minimum bar — I’m probably going out with an ask of around $400,000. That would leave me with about $300,000, or a little bit less — I have a lot of physical merchandise to ship out as rewards — for the actual development. If I can’t even raise that much, I have to question how much people want a new Toe Jam & Earl game and consider whether I should turn to something else.
There are certainly other ways I can get funded. I have enough connections in the industry and the investment community that I think I could dig up the money for it. But I’m just not sure I would do that. I’d have to really sit down and put my head together with some people — my friend, who I’m building this with, who is not Mark by the way. He’s off in some other career and has been for the last decade. I stayed in the games business, but he’s not, so I’m doing this with another engineer friend. We have to figure out what we’re going to do next. His name’s Jeff Kreis. He was my lead engineer for a DS title I did that never got released. It was in some ways a sort of precursor to Doki-Doki Universe. I’ve worked with Jeff before. He’s a great guy, a super-goodhearted guy.
GamesBeat: Was there ever any thought about reaching out to Sega? It sounds like you kind of had your fill of them.
Johnson: In a way — I don’t blame them for any of the choices they made. It’s an awful lot of money on the line. Publishers always have to do what they think is best to mitigate their risk. Even then, I never felt victimized by their choices. I just didn’t agree with them. But I went along in as good a spirit as I could muster. I don’t have anything against Sega at all. In fact, just the opposite. I feel thankful. They’ve been almost like a second parent to these characters. They’re still selling. I’m not really totally up on the business side of things, but I have the impression that Sega is not super-flush these days.
Above: Nothing screams modern like a day/night cycle!
GamesBeat: Yeah, there’s been talk of downsizing and moving toward digital releases.
Johnson: They’re moving more into mobile. They’re not so much into console. If I was going to work with a publisher, I think I would go to them first, probably, just because of the Toe Jam & Earl history, but part of what I want out of this is the old indie dream of being my own master and making the games I want to make the way I want to make them. I see this as an opportunity to do that. I’m going to take a shot at it without any big money behind it. But it also comes with all the other stresses of bootstrapping and — I’m spending my own retirement account right now, paying salaries for other people. I’m out on a bit of a financial limb, having faith that it’s all going to work out. That’s the indie life. We’ll see.
Honestly, I don’t know if we’re going to just barely make our bar or if we’re going to make a lot more and have a chance to build it out. We’re going to do all kinds of things. I’m going to have the Hyper Funk Zone. I want to have rhythm matching like we had in game three. I want to do customizable skills for the players, customizable clothes that have persistent abilities. An A.I. character as a helper for you. All this cool stuff. I want to blow it out and make the awesome game I really want to play. We’ll see what resources I have to work with and I’ll make the best game I can given what I get.