Is Crowd Funding the Future of Game Development?
With Double Fine’s recently fully-funded (and then some) Kickstarter project leading the way (yes, I know there have been many other game development projects on Kickstarter, but none with the PR that this has received), we may start seeing a new way of doing game development, which would be a significant shift in the industry. This could eliminate publishers and allow studios to self-publish on any digital distribution system they want, Steam being the primary one of course.
The big question for me is, could this type of funding allow cancelled projects to be revived and, if so, would studios be able to do it, or allowed to do it depending on IP ownership. There are any number of cancelled projects that I’d love to see this happen for:
Instead of hiring additional personnel, studios could outsource the work to quality smaller studios or indie teams. This would allow these studios to continue to function while building a reputation for themselves. Of course, big name IP shouldn’t be the first games released this way until it’s proven that teams are capable of doing a quality job.
This could be a huge step in the evolution of game development and I hope to see more studios following Double Fine’s lead. I certainly would like to get some of my game ideas out there in the crowd funding arena. It could be the start of going full-time game dev.
You’re right, this is not the first succesful crowdfunded game project. But for every successful one there are 10 unsuccessful.
Indeed this is a good way to receive independent funding, but to actually receive as much is not as easy as it appears initially.
Keep in mind that those guys have a lot of experience in the industry and a semi professional production for the trailer. Most indies will not be able to pull that off.
Also i don’t agree with steam being the number one digital distribution system. It is the most popular for now, true, but there are a good number of other services such as indievania and what their names are that even get a better deal for the developer, or don’t expect any revenues at all (let alone steam having heavy DRM going on). Additionally Steam appears to be rather selective (in an arbitrary sense) with the titles they accept onto their platform.
Anyways i like the spread of the love for indies and i’m looking forward to see more of this happening
I’m not talking about indies so much as the bigger studios that cancelled games for whatever reason. If Blizzard were to announce a Kickstarter project for Starcraft: Ghost I’d bet they’d get several million in funding within a day or two. I’d certainly kick in at least full-game price and maybe more depending on what they offered. Put a couple of key Blizzard people on the game with a smaller quality studio doing the majority of the work. This could trickle down to indies getting some work on smaller IP that the big studios can’t spend time on.
Okay i get your point.
Although this wouldn’t be the case with blizzard. They cancelled ghost deliberately, not because they lacked funding. They decided it was not a good enough game for their standard, or not true to their vision at least.
The problem is studios (or publishers) wont hand over valuable IP’s to some smaller indie company that might end up screwing up the franchise.
But i can totally see 3drealms surviving and maybe even deliver a decent dnf if they had an opportunity like kickstarter
That’s not what the last paragraph of the wiki article says.
I stated that the big IPs wouldn’t be something done unless the studio had a great rep. Two non-Blizzard studios worked on Ghost. Whether or not this was part of the reason why it was constantly delayed is debatable, but worked is often out-sourced to other studios. I don’t think this would be a factor. Think about something like an XBLA version of a popular game done in a different genre. That’s something that a smaller non-so-well known studio could handle with guidance from the IP-holding company.