Trivia / The Areal

• Creator-Driven Successor: After being asked to write for book series based on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games literally two thousand times, Tarmashev gave up and wrote a series of novels about stalkers... but in his own setting, instead of using pre-made one, stating that it wouldn't be interesting for him otherwise. Series takes certain elements from Stalker and, even more so, Roadside Picnic (on which it's indirectly based), but otherwise has its own setting, lore and cast.
• Vaporware: Ill-fated video game adaptation. It was announced by (then newly-founded) Las-Vegas-based studio West-Games in early 2010; the team, allegedly composed of the "developers of S.T.A.L.K.E.R." (which other former GSC Game World employees denied), started a crowdfunding campaign to make the video game adaptation of the book series, specifically post-Disinfection novels. Campaign was taken with suspicion right from the start: they had no gameplay footage to show, oddly small budget of mere $50 000 (they stated that they can do their task with small budget, but it contradicted their Kickstarter, which stated that they've spent existing budget), and used art from both Stalker games and Areal books instead of drawing new concept arts. When the gameplay video was released, creators were accused of using stock Unity assets with bare minimum of changes. When Kickstarter campaign was about to end, failing to gather the required sum, they received a (ridden with mistakes and likely fake) "letter from Vladimir Putin", whose daughter allegedly liked the game. Later they received $24 000 from two unknown backers, which was enough to finish the campaign, but it's when Kickstarter shut the campaign down and banned them from the site, refunding all the money. They announced attempt to gather money through their own site and by the second half of 2014, gathered $12 000, but eventually it died out as well, and all mentions of the project were removed, likely killing it for good. The chronicle of scandal can be read here (in Russian).

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