A Look at Video Game Crowdfunding

An editorial on Eurogamer takes a look at the ins and outs of crowdfunding now that it’s left the honeymoon phase. The article recalls how it all began, describes the current state of crowdfunding, and wonders where it can all go from here. Spliced with a bunch of stats and quotes from Brian Fargo, other developers, and Kickstarter employees, it’s a nice read. Here’s an excerpt:

“Things are cyclical,” says Kickstarter’s Luke Crane, “and I believe things will come around. We went through a similar quiet period in 2014 where everybody was freaking out because a couple of big blockbusters failed.”

Kickstarter could bounce back. Even as I write, an MMORPG called Ashes of Creation strides towards $2m with three weeks to go. Yet with Fig and Steam Early Access and publishers and fatigue, it’s never going to be the same as it once was. Striking it rich out of the blue first time around? “That type of Kickstarter is over,” says Failbetter’s Hannah Flynn.

“It’s never going to be like 2012 or 2013 again,” adds Brian Fargo.

But Kickstarter is not dead. Changed maybe, matured, but not dead. In the grand scheme of things, crowdfunding is very young and we’re still getting our heads around it. We’re not used to playing a kind of publisher role; we’re used to seeing a game announced at E3 and then it coming out with a marketing campaign later.

“You don’t get to see right at the beginning when there might have been features that completely changed or got scrapped or whatever,” says Andy Robinson. “That’s game development, and that’s good for game development, because if you’re making a game you need to be able to, as creative people, foul, and to be able to learn from that because that’s where good stuff comes from – learning from mistakes and being able to try new things that might not work.”

All of a sudden we’re tracking games for three or four years, be it on Kickstarter or Steam Early Access, and getting snappy about why they can’t hurry the hell up. But with every completed release we learn a bit more, all of us do – game makers and game players. These are big, complex things being made, not finished board games gauging production runs. Perhaps what we’re seeing is simply a settling down into a rhythm to run for many years to come.

“The founders did this wonderful accidental thing where they created the Games category on Kickstarter,” says Luke Crane. “‘Are games the equivalent of film or music or theatre and dance?’ In 2009 this was still a conversation.

“But Yancey [Strickler], Perry [Chen] and Charles [Addler] shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘Yeah sure why not?’ They put them on this equal playing field on this platform and opened the door – but I don’t think they quite knew what they invited in.”

What they invited in helped change the conversation. Fig, Steam Early Access, publishers: they’re all in their own ways offshoots of the Kickstarter revolution. If the numbers drop for Kickstarter as a result, so what? The work it has done opening doors is priceless.

“The mission here is to help bring creative projects to life,” says Kickstarter communications director David Gallagher, “to essentially be a tool for creative people to make things. We would love to have a thriving video game category but if creative people are finding other ways to make video games then that is fine with us too.”

“We are a public benefit corporation,” Luke Crane adds, “we are not a profit-driven organisation. Our mission is to do good in the world.”

And it has.