Gridiron Thunder's Bad Break

Back about a month ago I wrote about the OUYA and some troubles it was having with the nice, but ultimately bothersome, Free the Games program, where OUYA would match a projects crowdfunding (if they made at least $50,000, at the time the issues came up. It's been lowered to $10,000.) and agreed to a short exclusivity to the OUYA. At the center of the problems that arose was Gridiron Thunder.

Most are using this opportunity to talk a bit further about how OUYA's policy wasn't good from the start (like I had before), or how OUYA's heads don't seem to know what they're doing (like I had before), but I'd like to talk about Gridiron Thunder, if briefly.

Gridiron Thunder, if someone didn't know what a gridiron was, would be a pretty good name for a SHMUP, but it's actually just a football game. Yeah, another football game in world dominated by the likes of EA and it's Madden Football franchise; and a lackluster looking one at that. Somehow, however, the game miraculously made $171,000 from just 183 backers, averaging out to be almost 1k per backer -something that really never happens in the world of crowdfunding, let alone for a Tecmo Bowl looking android title.

Obviously this raised some red flags, considering 73% of OUYA owners haven't bought a single game for their Android-based console.

Just recently the developers behind Gridiron Thunder have "backed out willingly" from the program that would have them stay exclusive to the OUYA for a six months period, so they could delay the game till October 30th, so it could be release for both Android and iOS.

Now, no offense to the makers of the game (or maybe some, if they did scam the system. In that case, that makes them cheats) but this is just another football game. And from all accounts I've seen personally, Its not going to be all that mind blowing or ground breaking. It doesn't really need to exist, and does sound like a silly excuse to waste funds when there are much more deserving projects in need of funding. The fact that a ho-hum football title got so much tender loving care from so few people only punctuates why Gridiron Thunder got so easily caught (or, at least, caught up) in the web of issues with OUYA's program.

Had this game been a platformer that resembles a beloved franchise , or some cleaver looking adventure game, $171,000 wouldn't have made very many folks bat an eye and look deeper at just how many had put in for it. This just leads me to believe that, not really to call people names, someone involved with Gridiron Thunder may not have been the sharpest tool in the shed, or simply didn't care how they'd look on the other side of this.

Or, these folks obviously don't watch AMC's Breaking Bad.

During season 2, Walter White's shady, ambulance chaser, lawyer, Saul Goodman, tells him how to somewhat safely launder his drug money without raising too much suspicion, using the website his son created to ask for donations to help the family pay for Walt's cancer treatment. Basically: use thousands of small donations to cover up the fact that your trying to achieve pushing through a large amount of money into what should be a small space (although on the show, Saul had "a guy" who could hack thousands of computers around the world to act as zombies to make the donations for them). The many, smaller, donations wouldn't raise suspicion from anyone, because who would bat an eye at 3000 donations of anywhere from a few bucks to just over $100?

That is really all they needed to do with Gridiron Thunder. A slew of throwaway dummy accounts to move small chunks of ultimately fake money (considering its believed that the money didn't exist, because they were simply looking for the free money that OUYA was giving to match the end amount), spaced out over the course of the entire funding initiative. Throw in some "please, help us" press around the net, because there didn't seem to be any, or enough, of that, and people would simply had believed that all these donations were given by kind hearted souls that were ready for some football (a OUYA night party). Instead, if there was foul play involved, they *ahem* fumbled the whole thing.

Hell, even big publishers have gotten away with similar, with user reviews on Metacritic. Sure, those accounts and publishers have often been called out on it, but I'm pretty sure they're still getting away with it after all this time. Only, those "reviews" don't really rob anyone of anything. Scamming this program, if done on such a large scale, would presumably send OUYA under pretty quickly, leaving one less platform to hopefully sell your game on (Read: The plan is as shortsighted, as it is destructive).

But the end result of what actually transpired would have sent Saul flailing around his office, looking to shred every file he had. Huell wouldn't be happy.

And to top it off, the game really didn't need to go over $50,000 at the time. Hitting $171,000, a pretty high number to raise too fast, called too much attention to the whole thing. It put a target on its back.

And that's one of the first rules for this sort of thing: Don't get greedy. Being a greedo leads to bad things. If some sort of shady situation was going on, someone obviously got "the itch" and bit off more then they could chew. It feels safe to assume it's because they knew OUYA would have matched that whole amount.

In spite of how it may sound, I'm not saying the game shouldn't exist; It has every right to in a space that probably won't see very many sports games to begin with. And, I've always believed that in some way every game deserves to exist because, hey: I love videogames, the more out there for people to play, the better! But I can't see how it wouldn't be met with a resounding, universal, "meh," no matter what happened with it, embarrassment or not; OUYA or not. It really feels to me like the game wouldn't have been all that notable to any one if it was never a part of this controversy, even in a section of the industry where bad press usually means high exposure and better sales. Any press being good press.

But it's funny how, after all of this, next to no ones really talking about this game still, but talking around it to get to chatter more about the OUYA. The only purpose the game serves now is to be a cautionary tale for those both looking to get their game funded for the OUYA, and even more so for those possibly looking to help those developers fund their games. Even then we probably won't call it the "Gridiron Thunder incident," but, instead the "Free the Games incident."

What it ultimately leaves me wondering is: was a dinky little football game really worth all this mess?