Massive Chalice and the future of Crowdfunding

With yesterday’s announcement of a new Double Fine Kickstarter, I couldn’t help but wince.

I’ve not seen any derogative press nor has anyone I know expressed discontent for this venture, everyone seems really pleased and excited about the new project.

So why does this bother me?

Crowd-funding is loved by consumers and developers everywhere, it provides an easy and cheap platform for creators to cut out the middle man and get funded directly by their fans or people who support their idea and wish them to succeed. This means that small developers and people with otherwise no chance can make their dream projects and people who fill those niche markets can experience the product while also knowing they helped make it happen.

Obviously it has also had a fair amount of criticism, by moving the generating of the revenue to the consumers this means that they now assume all of the responsibility that a publisher previously had and the creators aren’t being held fully accountable for the success of their projects, meaning they can exploit backers by making off with the money.

At the moment I’ve noticed that publishers haven’t spoken out against Kickstarter, but I think this will soon change.

Crowdfunding was never meant to take business away from publishers, it was always for projects that probably wouldn’t get backed anyway, hence Double Fine’s Adventure game “Broken Age” which broke Kickstarter records back in February last year.

But due to successes like these, more and more game developers have taken to start crowdfunding their own games.

We’ve probably all heard about Zach Braff’s controversial Kickstarter project.

Is this something we should be concerned about?

Pier Solar HD was crowdfunded on Kickstarter, one of the tiers included a Dreamcast version of the game.

No.

Does it really matter? It’s still giving a consumer what they want, which is the purpose regardless of its production, backers should be thinking about these things when they decide to pledge money.

If we are going to act like publishers, we must think like one. Ask yourself questions like;

Does this project need my money? Do I care?

Do they deserve my money?

Am I gaining more than if I just waited for this to come out either through traditional means or after the funding ends?

Yes.

It’s not the obvious manipulation of fans despite his already having funding, it’s that by Braff’s presence on Kickstarter he is robbing indies of their last bastion of support.

Backers have a duty to elevate the future of crowd-funding and indies above their own fleeting desire to see their favourite celebrity or show back for more.

The independence of crowdfunding allows for unique products to come into the market, leading to widespread innovation and new, more interesting products on a market for a more diverse range of people.

Basically it’s the guilty carnivore effect. You think that in general people should eat less meat so we don’t have to kill millions of cute lambs every year, then five minutes later you eat a kebab.

Thus what we did with indie record stores, then comic book stores and now the indies themselves with crowdfunding.

If you don’t crowdfund this lamb, we will slaughter and eat it. Whole.

This isn’t the only problem concerning these “big fish” entering the pond, they could easily shoot themselves in the foot. Being totally dependable on fans, in the rare case the fans grow a conscience and the funding doesn’t go through, it would become even more difficult to get greenlit by publishers, possibly resulting in them not succeeding in getting their project made.

Who would want to put their money behind a project that not even these backers funded?

When corporations take over, which they eventually will at this rate, what then?

Using the same surgical skill as they do everything else, the large businesses will trampede all over crowdfunding, further exploiting backers and nostalgia fans, and instead of leading to an inevitable downfall like you might expect, they’ll also do what they usually do in other areas of commerce and resuscitate the flat-lining corpse of crowd-funding, keeping it in a perpetual status quo of shit.

But there’s hope on the horizon. I hope.

While surfing Kickstarter, I noticed a trend of backers pledging for lots of projects, like some kind of compulsive crowd-funders. The blossom of a culture that is.

If crowd-funding spawns a community, the love that drove backers to pledge for their dream board game or videogame could easily be directed at a love for crowdfunding in general, garnering a kind of “Crowd-funding spirit” where indies can still thrive and backers can still own their souls.

Sir You Are Being Hunted was my first backing on Kickstarter.

Widespread crowd-funding might be able to bring some of the passion for the funding of projects to mainstream business practices, influencing the way AAA films and games of the future are developed. This also can work the other way, some of the better features of conventional business might be able to rub off on crowd-funding, starting with true accountability and quality control.

Crowd-funding is still beneficial for the modern business environment, it offers direct access to the end users, the size of the market and how much money the demographic is willing to spend.

Which is a lot better than a bloody voxpop.

Far from a big-wig company, Double Fine still haven’t reaped the sales rewards from their first Kickstarter campaign, they are still a small company with turn-around rotas leaving some staff with no work to do. I can’t honestly fault them for still not having the means to get a game funded elsewhere?

Can I condemn a company that has decided it prefers to work closer with its fans and wants to reward their loyalty?

Well no, but after Broken Age comes out they WILL be a bigger and more influential company (if not arguably so at the moment) and I’m still not certain that the success of the Kickstarter alone hasn’t made them bankable to publishers. Despite the (ahem!) financial based rewards for their fans loyalty, this is still shouldering responsibility onto their fans for their project. Also with Broken Age not finished we can’t fully appraise the success and viability of such big-name, big-fund projects to start backing this one.

But I guess that’s for bigger fans than I to decide.

Massive Chalice and the future of Crowdfunding