In October of 2016 Zoe Quinn and Chuck Tingle managed to secure $85,448 to make a live-action FMV game. In August of 2018 Chuck Tingle claimed he had no involvement with the game, and that it was all in the hands of Zoe Quinn. Quinn had briefly discussed the troubled development of the game last August while vacationing in Japan. Since the crowdfunding campaign ended updates have been sporadic and infrequent on the Kickstarter page, but the latest update wasn’t on Kickstarter but Twitter.
In the update, posted on March 19th, 2019, 200 days after the last update, Quinn responded to a Twitter user asking about the Kickstarted FMV game based on Chuck Tingle’s characters. Quinn responded with the following…
ran out of money a long time ago, not cool with asking people to work for free, got a day job to start crawling out of debt and in a place where I can properly finish it. this is the day job.
— apex redditor C2E2 (@UnburntWitch) March 13, 2019
In case the tweet is deleted, here is a backup image of the archived tweet.
The tweet came after Quinn retweeted an IGN article from Heart Machine, the makers of Hyper Light Drifter, where she stated that she was writing and doing narrative design for the game Solar Ash Kingdom.
oh hey it’s the thing I’ve been writing and doing narrative design on for the last uhhhh year or two??? https://t.co/Yqd0AnejfD
— apex redditor C2E2 (@UnburntWitch) March 13, 2019
Despite not fulfilling the Kickstarter duties, and having no answer for where the $85,000 went for a project backed by loyal followers, the big wigs in the gaming industry rolled out their congratulations to Quinn for working with Heart Machine, unfazed by the fact that the backers’ money is still unaccounted for.
This included God of War creative director at Santa Monica Studios, Cory Barlog…
thanks!!! it is SO NICE to be on a team instead of going crazy in my apartment alone on solo projects where I’m lead everything sometimes haha
— apex redditor C2E2 (@UnburntWitch) March 13, 2019
As well as World of Warcraft designer at Blizzard Entertainment, Chris Morris…
hehehehehe
— apex redditor C2E2 (@UnburntWitch) March 13, 2019
And Octodad creator, Phil Tibitoski…
It SEEMS like it COULD be narratively RAD.
— Phil Tibitoski GDC (@PTibz) March 13, 2019
I attempted to reach out to Quinn to find out where the money had been used or how far into development the FMV game is, but she has me blocked on Twitter.