Gas Powered Wildman Kickstarter becomes bid to save company

Gas Powered Games CEO Chris Taylor has announced that he had to lay off a number of employees from the development company. Initial reports from Kotaku’s sources say that nearly the entire staff has been let go.

Amid the news of the lay-offs, Gas Powered Games launched a Kickstarter campaign for a new game development project, Wildman.

Taylor has now posted a video to the Kickstarter page explaining his decision. He says that had he retained the full team and the Kickstarter project failed, he would not be able to pay the staff money owed, and he wasn’t willing to gamble on that.

Essentially, his decision was made to keep Gas Powered Games afloat, a company he has spent 15 years building, and to be fair to his staff and not gamble with their future livelihood.

In the spirit of crowd-funding projects, Taylor has now asked the gaming community to advise him on whether or not to continue with the Wildman Kickstarter project.

“The studio is still operating, but we had to slim way down to conserve cash reserves. We spent all the last dough that we’ve had, and the last several months working on it. So we’re betting the company on it,” said Taylor speaking to Gamasutra.

Head on over to Kickstarter to share your opinion.

Chris Taylor is renowned for working on great PC titles, such as Dungeon Siege, Supreme Commander, and Demigod, so the news of him getting involved in a new IP is an exciting prospect.

Wildman will take all the best strategy and RPG bits of those famed games and squish them together to create something familiar but unique.

The game has a pre-historic caveman-esque setting, with a lot of the concept art being shown in the Kickstarter video.

Gas Powered Games are looking for $1,100,000 in funding, and currently sit at over $291,300, with 24 days to go.

Check out the video below: