KickTraq

This past summer, CrowdfundInsider shared the infamous story about West Games’ Areal, which was considered one of Kickstarter’s weirdest crowdfunding campaigns to date. Although project hit its $50,000 goal quickly, the global crowdfunding giant shut down its campaign before it could raise any more funds. Now, the Areal is back, renamed STALKER Apocalypse, and is looking to raise $600,000 through a platform called World Wide Funder. (Read More)

It seems that every time a sketchy Kickstarter campaign launches there’s a small group of backers that are on the case to expose any potential improprieties. This hardcore group of sleuths go to great lengths to dig up dirt on rogue developers and their shady campaigns. In light of the recent Maksym Pashanin situation involving Knuckle Club we thought it appropriate to finally talk to one of these Kickstarter Cops; and who better than Ahmad Khan? Who’s that? Ahmad was a central figure in the blow-up of the Knuckle Club and Areal campaigns, so we thought it appropriate to speak with him about his motivations and objectives. (Read More)

The leaders of three overfunded kickstarters - the $4,000 point and click game Epanalepsis, the indie platformer The Deer God and the multi-million dollar apocalypse epic Wasteland 2 - talk to Forbes about the impact of the benevolence of crowds. (Read More)

From half-million-dollar busts to Russia/Ukraine information wars, the world of Kickstarter is filled with sad stories of money gone to waste and fans left frustrated. (Read More)

Read It's Time for Gamers to Say No to Crowdfunding and get the latest gaming news, reviews, walkthroughs and game mods at Game Front. (Read More)

Kickstarter is back in the headlines again, and for all the wrong reasons. Yogventures has fallen to pieces, taking developer Winterkewl with it and leaving a trail of passive aggressive recriminations in its wake. Meanwhile, nobody knows what the hell is going on with Areal, which has just had its successful Kickstarter cancelled and has launched another campaign. Vladimir Putin may be involved. It's very dark and confusing. (Read More)

"Spiritual successor to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. with its lead designer onboard" seems a foolproof Kickstarter pitch but crumbs, Areal has become a comedy of errors. (Read More)

The Areal Kickstarter was pushed over and then well past its goal a few days ago thanks to a very sudden spike in support, but the saga has now taken an unexpected (or perhaps not) twist, as funding for the project has been suspended. (Read More)

Areal’s Kickstarter campaign has just taken a new turn for the worse. All funding for the game has been suspended, and it sounds like pledges are starting to be cancelled. (Read More)

Huge thanks to Vice News for covering us! We love their coverage in general and are big fans of the Russian Roulette series. Check out Motherboard's YouTube channel as well as their other YouTube channels.  (Read More)

      As we've said before, most sites who have written about us have been largely objective and fair, and report without bias and based on the information that they have. We feel that every journalist has a right to cover a subject from... (Read More)

Indie gaming company West Games accused writers at Forbes and VG24/7 of lacking basic "journalistic integrity" on its Kickstarter page. However, if the evidence presented by those and other sites is accurate, then West Games has a lot to answer for. (Read More)

     Most sites who have written about us have been largely objective and fair, and report without bias and based on the information that they have. We feel that every journalist has a right to cover a subject from whatever viewpoint they... (Read More)

     Thank you all for helping us reach this incredible milestone! It's so great seeing people who were on the fence, now upping their contributions. Thank you all for making Areal a reality! We have people pledging everywhere from Germany to... (Read More)

Some people are creating accounts on our Kickstarter and impersonating members of our team. Please be aware of that and remember that only comments from west games come from us (it has to have a creator symbol for it to be us). This is not Eugene... (Read More)

      We have inadvertently become a part of an ongoing information war between Russians and Ukrainians. Nowhere is that more evident then in our comments section, which is full of people either attacking Areal or defending Areal. But that's not... (Read More)

     Thank you to all the news sites that have written about our new teaser, and a special thanks to (among many others) Polygon, Gamer's Hell, PC Games N, Load the Game and Geeky Gadgets for reporting objectively and without any personal bias.... (Read More)

The developer behind the controversial Areal Kickstarter has finally released gameplay footage for the project. (Read More)

The following video is early prototype footage that's not representative of Areal's final quality: And here is another video of our team:       The first video shown above was made in two weeks. We hope that the early footage that we've... (Read More)

We tried to answer all the questions that people gave us on reddit. Sorry if we didn't answer all of them, because doing so in many cases would mean repeating ourselves. Also, sorry that we didn't answer questions that dig into peoples personal... (Read More)

Our AMA has launched. Check it out:  http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2al8dd/we_are_west_games_a_studio_made_up_of_senior/  (Read More)

     We mentioned before that we would be doing an AMA on Reddit, and are now announcing that we are planning to do it this Sunday at 6pm U.S. eastern time! Eugene Kim and Alexey Sytyanov will be the ones who will conduct the Ask me Anything.... (Read More)

  Alexey Sytyanov is now a full member of our team, and will go forward as Areal's producer. If you'd like to find out more about Alexey, check out the interview that he did when he still worked for Vostok Games (he does not work at Vostok... (Read More)

     First of all, we would like to thank everyone who has backed and supported Areal so far! You guys/gals are awesome, and are truly the backbone of Areal. We want to emphasize that we will continue this campaign as planned no matter what, and... (Read More)

This update is about how we make games.        For many development studios, working means sitting in an office for 8 hours a day, and 5 days a week. There are plans, deadlines, scheduled lunch breaks, and official holidays where you get to... (Read More)

To all of our American supporters, happy 4th of July!      The email we gave out yesterday has received tons of positive messages, so thank you all for your support. We'll try to answer them all as soon as we can, but there are a LOT of emails.... (Read More)

I am Eugene Kim, the founder and CEO of West Games. Areal is a new video game that’s being developed by senior ex-S.T.A.L.K.E.R employees. It features a massive and intricately detailed open world environment that is extremely varied and colorful, even though it’s set in a post-apocalyptic setting. (Read More)

      It's very unpleasant for us to see that within our Kickstarter comments section, unofficial accounts are asking questions and then subsequently answering them themselves. It's even more unpleasant to see the same 3-4 people asking the same... (Read More)

     In this update, we'd like to repeat a couple of important things to everyone. First of all, with the launch of our Kickstarter, we have shown that we have worked on and were integral towards making the cult hit S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. We are... (Read More)

Today we'd like to reveal a new member of our team. He acts as a video game development consultant for Areal. He was the lead game designer and screenwriter for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. We're proud to have Alexey... (Read More)

Update 9 is going to be relatively short, and is more of a recap of some important things that have happened. As usual, we have a new image to show you today, and it's the biggest vehicle in our game: We did a phone interview with a Russian video... (Read More)

What happens when developers base shaky plans on a big name? (Read More)

The official Facebook page of GSC Game World issued a statement over the weekend calling for an end to disparaging comments about Areal, the "definitive spiritual successor" to the Stalker games that's now on Kickstarter. That led the makers of the Misery mod, one of Areal's most prominent critics, to remove all such criticism from its Facebook page; yet now GSC has reversed course, saying its expression of support for Areal was not official at all. (Read More)

We're going to be covering three main things in this update; some game-play details, Areal's back-story and a summary of how we've planned out our budget.  Gameplay details:      A lot of people are a bit confused on as to whether Areal is a... (Read More)

First off, we added a new FAQ question below our Kickstarter. We think it's important so we're posting it here as well: Question: Is your game in alpha yet? Answer: No! We have never said that we have reached alpha, but people are mentioning it all... (Read More)

We've got a new image to show you guys, with more stuff coming soon: Misery has removed the page on their website full of accusations against us (http://www.miserymod.com/?page_id=191) and has made the following statement on their Facebook profile: ... (Read More)

We are going to answer a few common questions and talk about some important developments in this update. First off, we have a new team member! As you probably know, a couple of the same profiles have been spurring negativity in the comments section.... (Read More)

      People in the Kickstarter comments section have been saying that our team is fake, and that our Kickstarter is a scam. Hopefully the video shows that we're real... We fully understand that Misery LTD and people associated with them are... (Read More)

Check out our previous updates:   Massive first Update Addressing Vostok Games      We're in our second day and already, we have more than 760 backers! Huge thanks to all of our current and future supporters. The video we promised is going to be... (Read More)

'You backed them. You made them. Now play them.' With that rallying cry, Kickstarter wants to direct our attention to more than 100 crowd-funded games which started as developer dreams and emerged as publicly playable product. (Read More)

The team behind the Stalker-inspired Areal said in a recent Kickstarter update that it has worked things out with Vostok Games and cleared up all the complaints against it. But a Vostok representative says that's not really what happened at all, and that it's been forced to let the matter drop because it can't actually do anything about it. (Read More)

     We have contacted Vostok Games about their supposed claim that we are fraudulent. They say that they have no relation to that claim and have since deleted the forum topic (https://forum.survarium.com/en/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=3450#wrap)... (Read More)

    This will probably be the longest update that we'll post, but we feel that it's needed :). Thank you all for the incredible amount of support that you've given us, and thanks to everyone who has commented on our Kickstarter, Facebook and... (Read More)

West Games spiritual successor to the cult hit S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is already off to a fast start – nearly halfway to goal after just the campaign’s first day! (Read More)

Vostock Games gets legal over developer claims to have worked on Metro and Stalker titles. (Read More)

Areal hit Kickstarter this week from former developers of the STALKER series at West Games, who are hoping to create a spiritual successor to GSC Game World's dormant survival horror franchise. (Read More)