Ex-Sony Online chief John Smedley cancels Kickstarter campaign for Hero’s Song role-playing game

John Smedley, the former head of Sony Online Entertainment, has canceled his Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for Hero’s Song, the first game from his new Pixelmage Games studio.

In an update today, Smedley said that funding levels so far indicated that the campaign wasn’t going to hit its ambitious target of raising $800,000. When the campaign was halted 10 hours ago, Hero’s Song had raised $136,849 from 3,037 backers. This was after seven days of fundraising.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.