Art MMO Occupy White Walls’ Kickstarter comes up short of its $124K ask

It turns out that art is a hard sell in the gaming space.

The decidedly unique Occupy White Walls saw its recent Kickstarter campaign fizzle to a close today, as the art MMO was only able to garner $54,924 of its desired $124,163 goal. While the game is running in early access on Steam, the team had hoped for extra funds to create better building tools, an improved AI, more sound options, a sculpture pack, and scripting support.

This must be a blow to the project, especially after being the subject of an April 17th piece in the New York Times. “More significantly, artists will soon be able to upload their own pieces for a fee, meaning that the game could function as a marketplace, less forbidding than traditional auction houses,” the Times said. “That seems to be [CEO Yarden Yaroshevski’s] grander ambition with Occupy White Walls. As the game’s name suggests, he said he wants to unsettle the art establishment, which he regards as a shadowy cabal: the gallerists, the auction houses, the dealers, the curators, the billionaire collectors.”