Crowd Funded Games -- Kickstarter

Kickstarter.com is a new way to encourage and support creative art on the internet.

I found this website while looking up stuff for Wasteland 2, being developped by our beloved Brian Fargo.

It's quite amazing. Basically a place where you can Crowd Fund your game if your concept is good and gamers want to buy it. There are all kinds of different sections, but I"ll focus on the Video Games section.

Take Wasteland 2 for example. They set an original budget of 1 million.

They are currently sitting at $1,824,780 pledged of $900,000 goal. Brian was going to foot the other 100K, hence the 900 listed.

In any case, as these projects evolve, they can involved more people. Notably if they reach 2.1 millino, Obsidian will go create the game with Chris Avellone and any RPG gamer who knows his game devs will know who he is.

This platform truly changes game development because it takes the publisher out of the equation. No more will games be denied because they aren't a Billion Dollar franchise. No more can publishers try and push developpers for early release dates and screw up the content and pacing of the game for profit.

This is games by gamers, for gamers, developped by some of the best in the business.

What do you guys think?

(In no way is this an endorsement for you to support any particular cause on Kickstarter.)

~Tenth

Good topic. I agree with the concept and actually crowd funding is increasingly used as a means for start up businesses because of banks not wanting to lend and because investors are looking for the opportunity for higher profits.

In this case its great, but I worry about brilliant games being produced which won't sell. How will investors get their money back. The fact is the most profitable games have massive advertising budgets and are for mainstream gamers (who wouldn't know a good game if it hit them on the head).

reply to post by freethinker123


This isn't investing in a game. There's no expected return from these "investments". This is fans literally paying for development and receiving their game free in the end.

It cuts out of the publisher, which is the reason why great games don't get made anymore. Publishers only care about their bottom line, gamers care about great games.

~Tenth