It may consist largely of former Silicon Knights members — like chief executive officer Paul Caporicci and chief creative officer Denis Dyack — but new Ontario-based studio Precursor Games wants everyone to know that the two companies are not one in the same.
That negative association may be inhibiting Precursor's new crowdfunding game for Shadow of the Eternals, a spiritual successor to Eternal Darkness 2, which is off to a slow start. It launched on Monday and has raised roughly $130,000 of its $1.5 million goal, or a little more than 8 percent.
"We realize that those negative impressions exist, and we're doing our best to show everyone Precursor is a totally new entity," Caporicci told GI.biz. "I understand that skepticism, but we just want an opportunity to show people that it's not that."
He added, "We did work at Silicon Knights, but we're trying to do something new, and it's different positions and a different structure, and it is a wholly different company."
So is Precursor worried about the campaign's progress so far?
"We're going to take this campaign a day at a time, work to get our message out, and answer any questions we can with the community, and then at the end of the 30-day campaign we're just going to evaluate our options," said Caporicci. "We're going to explore every avenue we can to make this game a reality."
He said, "We would love to do a Kickstarter, but without a U.S. presence it's really difficult, and we're doing everything we can to try to make this a reality to give people more options to contribute."
Caporicci also isn't concerned about choosing the Wii U, which has a low installed base, as one of the game's two confirmed platforms.
"We felt that one of our core bases was the Nintendo fan, so Wii U would be a great platform to support," he said.
