Well that's a shame.
What happened? It seemed to be going well early on.
Is there any way the comic might get made now? I didn't care at all about the game, but I was going to pledge for the PDF comic.
It wasn't trending towards being funded, and judging by the cancellation email that went out, they'd gotten enough numbers to decide that there wasn't sufficient interest to go forward in those particular directions.
It sounds like they aren't going to go forward with the comic at all at this time, which is unfortunate but measurably understandable. Out of the ~600 people who pledged for some version of the comic (digital, physical, physical + game) if every one of those people were willing to buy the digital version directly from GtG, that's still only ~6000. I don't know what kind of infrastructure upgrade they'd need to support the ability to make those sales & downloads, but apparently the cost/benefit isn't worthwhile. Sad for those of us willing to pay for it, but that's business.
For those who hadn't backed the KS so didn't get this:
Hello, fans and friends of the Multiverse.
We have learned a lot from Kickstarter over the years. During the Kickstarter for the Shattered Timelines expansion for Sentinels of the Multiverse, we said we would not run any more Kickstarters for Sentinels of the Multiverse products - that game is well established enough to support its own expansions. Since then, we have decided to go a step further and not run Kickstarter campaigns for expansions for any existing products. If a product is strong enough to warrant an expansion, it shouldn't need a Kickstarter campaign to make that expansion happen.
When we run Kickstarter campaigns, the purpose is two-fold: procure funding for a product we are interested in making and gauge interest in said product. As a result - even though we are cancelling the Kickstarter for Sentinel Conflict and the Cosmic Contest comic book - we consider this Kickstarter campaign to have successfully done its job. It let us know whether we should make these products or not.
We had hoped there would be interest in a Sentinel Comics version of Story War, as we had played and enjoyed Story War. However, the response here, on our website and others, and on social media has been clear: Story War is not a direction people are interested in seeing the Multiverse go. Good to know! We are glad to have learned that now and not after printing several thousand copies of the game.
We were more surprised by a general lack of interest in the comic book. "When are you going to start making actual comic books?" is a question we get with great regularity, and so we were excited to answer "NOW!" with this campaign. And when we were asked for a digital version, we figured out what we needed to do to make PDFs of the comic available as pledge levels. However, here we are, most of the way through the campaign, with barely over a hundred backers of the comic book levels. This Kickstarter has also informed us that, though people may be interested in reading comic books from Sentinel Comics, few are interested in purchasing them. And that is good to know. We are still interested in making comic books, and Adam and I will continue to work on them, but they will remain side projects at most, as we have to continue to make actually salable products to continue to survive as a company.
The other feedback that we have gotten from this campaign is just how much people want us to continue making content for the Sentinels of the Multiverse card game and for the Sentinel Tactics tabletop game. That is great! Those of you interested in Sentinels of the Multiverse should check out our recently released Challenges and Achievements! Also, you will be excited to learn that the Wrath of the Cosmos expansion hasbegun shipping, so if you preordered it, you'll get it soon! And if not, it'll be available for sale soon! Sentinel Tactics fans can look forward to more official Sentinel Tactics Tournaments! And gaming events are happening all over the place this month as part of Multiverse Month! Get your local gaming store involved!
Additionally, keep an eye on our website, as we will have even more exciting news about the world of Sentinel Comics in the next few weeks. The cancellation of this Kickstarter is a somber event, but what we have learned from it is invaluable, and we look forward to giving you more of the game content you want!
Thank you for being a part of our Multiverse. We couldn't do this without you. Keep on saving the Multiverse
-Christopher Badell
Game Design Director
Greater Than Games, LLC
From how the cancellation update was worded, it would appear that they decided not enough people wanted the comic. Which I would probably disagree with, since there was a significant amount of people backing the comic+game bundle, even though there wasn't many of one or the other. And I'd wager a comic is easier/cheaper to mass produce than a game.
Oh well, maybe it will resurface again eventually.
Numbers don't lie. People's desire or the comic didn't convert to them backing it. Without numerical evidence of support (i.e. Cash dollars) GtG has no evidence to support the undertaking of production ad printing cost.
I kind of ran into this early on when trying to convince peope to pledge. I would talk about how awesome the comic would be and almost everyone agreed, but when it came down to pledging pretty much everyone said. "Oh when its funded I'll just borrow it from you!" Now its not funded and no one gets to read it. 
I wonder how many people would have pledged for the comic once they got the 48hr reminder email. At least one (me), so I suspect others.
I'd have done it unwillingly, since I had absolutely no interest in Story War and didn't want my KS profile to look like I'd backed it (vanity, I know). A pledge for just the comic would still look like I backed both, but I did just about got over that.
I'd have liked an actual physical copy, but $40 international shipping seemed way too much for me when Sentinel Tactics plus an expansion shipped for $40.
I don't get why the two projects were bundled together.
I wanted the comic but did not back the kickstarter because I had no interest in the game.
If they had ran a separate one I would have backed.
+1 I wanted the digital comic but the idea that my buck for the comic was endorsing another direction that really didn't convince me felt just wrong.
I will also add that the re-art upgrade of the freedom four comic had me lukewarm. There's more than enough story content in SotM to not have to use the same script over. I still like old badly drawn comic book as drawing is only half of it's essence. Speaking of wich WotC is shipping without us getting the dev journal on progeny. I remember the mechanic being discussed in podcast but that's not the same as getting to know where it comes from what it is, what motevates it, why does it have a bone to pick with KNYFE. It's one thing to run a game against a villain with new players but it's a better experience when you can flesh out the encounter with such information and the dev. journal are a great opportunity to share some of that.
Even counting everyone who pledged for the comic + game, there was not enough interest in the comic to justify the cost of production. The reason for this is that not only is there infrastructure, etc, necessary to make something like that, but comics are also incredibly time consuming from both an art and a writing standpoint. We wanted to know if it was worth it from an economic perspective to invest that time, and it turns out it probably isn't, which is really good to know!
Super secret behind-the-scenes business knowledge: Realistically, we probably need 1200 - 1500 people, at minimum, who are interested in buying a comic in order for it to make sense. We were willing to fudge those numbers a little on the Kickstarter if Sentinel Conflict really attracted a lot of interest (i.e., we would have been OK making the comic with 1000 customers if it were subsidized by the game), which is why we paired them together.
Wait, so the comic wasn't done?
That explains a bit actually. Sad that the comic is being shelfed: I would have gladly paid money for that.
Thanks for the insight, Paul. It helps to know a little more about how decisions are made, and I can see why having low numbers for this project translated to not having enough interest.
With that being said, what if the stigma of backing an undesired product was removed from the kickstarter, as Silverleaf and Medic-Tank pointed out? Most, if not all of the updates and information we received was about the game, and the comic seemed like an "extra add-on." Had we known more about what to expect from the comic, do you think we would have had more interest?
I hope the possibility of comics are revisited in the future. It's probably one of the first questions I was asked when introducing Sentinels of the Multiverse to my friends. I sheepishly dodged the question, mentioning that it was in the works, also not realizing we had a couple of digital versions, as well as the scenario books in Tactics (those totally count! 
).
I hope we can see that comic at some point, even if just in digital. Don't know if it would work to tie it in to a stretch goal on the next card game expansion or not, but I am dying to read more about the time period WCos covers.
Paul, maybe you can speak to this, but do you think maybe a little bit of this has to do with where Kickstarter is in general?
The tabletop section of Kickstarter hasn't really been seeing the kind of success it was seeing 2 years ago. The number of large and popular projects which draw in most of the page views to the Tabletop tab have been dwindling. There is not as much excitment and competition drawing eyes there as there was in mid 2013. I have seen one very large project since the end of Summer and that was by CMoN who know how to run a decent KS but are primarily benifiting from a lack of strong competition from other projects. Do you guys feel any sense of this as well?
I'm not saying that this KS didn't fund due to Kickstarter, but that a project with the specific niche Story Wars has would have benefited greatly from a larger number of foot traffic. The original Story Wars KS completed funding in March 2013, right in the middle of the huge boom of big projects and large funding and backer numbers. It had enough eyes to catch those who were interested. I am just not seeing anything near that level of backer confidence on the tabletop section of KS recently.
Yes, I really want to hear that story! I hope that we see comics in the future.
I'm also wondering if lack of exposure and engagement affected things. There was nothing on BGG until well after the KS was launched including no game entry, and just a few teaser pictures on Facebook before. No-one seemed to be talking about it. I imagine that many non-forum Sentinels fans heard nothing about it until ads started showing up on BGG (if then), again later than launch.
Seems that many successful KS campaigns start creating buzz early. For example Tiny Epic Galaxies hasn't even launched yet and there's already been lots of talk, with print and play files released, prototypes given away in exchange for advanced reviews, adverts, updates to previous campaigns announcing the new ones... and I have no doubt that it will fund crazy fast. Sure, different game and different audience, but it seems recently that you can't just put your project on Kickstarter and expect it to fund without seeming to do very much to promote it. Several comments on the campaign suggested that they thought >G had kind of "abandoned" the project due to lack of engagement.
And again I can only speak personally, but I didn't promote this campaign myself, because I wasn't interested in the game at all and couldn't just point people at the comic since it was inextricably linked to a game I didn't want to look like I was supporting.
I was just thinking that a playthrough video would have been helpful, showing people actually enjoying and having fun with the game. Call it the Tabletop effect if you like, but I've totally bought games that aren't my usual "type" because I've seen other people having a great time playing them.
I mean, anyone who's met Christopher (or seen him in a video or heard him on a podcast) will know how interesting and engaging and exciting he is, and he's obviously a natural storyteller. And Paul's great fun to play games with too (can't comment on Adam since I haven't met him). It would have been great to use those assets to show us how good the game could be.
Christopher's inherent charisma would be great tool to utilize for those things, I totally agree with Silverleaf here.
At this point I'd probably buy Christopher's laundry list if I saw/heard him explaining how cool it was.
Probably not for $40 shipping, but I'd be tempted.
I did back the whole shebang (despite European shipping and all), but to be perfectly honest, I have to this day no notion of what the heck that game was about.
I am not annoyed at that, after all, I could have made an effort and read the Story Wars rules, but it does mean that I bought this more or less entirely on good faith. Which is totally fine by me, but proably not something that everybody is prepared to do.
I was tempted to buy the comic book, but 25 USD for a single comic just seemed absolutely outrageous, for reasons previously described in this topic.
As for the digital version? Honestly, I don't find digital worth paying for at all... Ten USD for what amounts to a rental? That's very thing that's driving me away from video games- and by consequence, the same thing you more or less have to thank for me moving to board games- I like actually owning stuff, not merely getting permission to use it for a while. When I want to do that, I borrow something from a friend (and have ended up buying many a book, movie, or game that I've previously borrowed). Even with the Sentinels of the Multiverse digital version, the only reason I really bought it was to get the physical promo card that came with it... I still prefer to pop out the real thing when I want to play. I went through each of the villains once on the tablet, then never returned to it. I even go so far as to jokingly tell my friends that "I bought this card and it came with a free copy of the digital version of Sentinels!".
I learned today that the word "shebang" can also refer to the punctuation #! . I have no idea what the proper use of #! is, but I intend to either find out or invent one. Also, did you know that "interrobang" refers to a combination of question marks and exclamation points!?!! I thought everyone would want to know.
Back on topic now. The Kickstarter could definitely have benefitted from from the infectious enthusiasm that the folks at >G have demonstrated repeatedly; but this campaign felt very hands-off. The combination of the comic and game felt a little weird; they seem to be aimed at two audiences that, I imagine, don't have a lot of overlap. I'm not at all interested in Story Wars, but I don't care if people see that I backed it (I backed Katalyka, too, but Citizen Dawn and I still get along). My big disappointment was that the comic (which I really want to happen) is tethered to this mostly separate thing that drew a bunch of negative comments. Even if there are compelling business reasons, it somehow seems wrong that the fate of one should be tied to the other.