Belghast had an interesting post up last week about backing games on Kickstarter. That’s quite a list of games.
I’ve had a kickstarter account for at least 11-12 years now and I backed 6 projects, despite being a huge fan of the idea initially – and none of them were games. Maybe it’s because I develop software for a living (and despite all outcries from game developers that it’s different and that they’re such special snowflakes) I am wary of release dates and have a healthy dose of paranoia towards things and their funding (same with startups, really – and what is a fresh game company with no history of delivering but a sort of startup?) – and there are so many games already that I hardly play, except for my few favorites. (Right now I have a little craving for EVE for example, but I’m waiting).
So, my 6 projects. One (the first I think) was a comic, from Kingdom of Loathing, which I had been playing at the time, 2011 or so. Two were CDs (Amanda Palmer and Jeph Jacques, of Questionable Content fame), one was basically a GoFundMe, maybe before GoFundMe was a thing. One was hardware that actually got delivered (I think on time) and I am happy with it, but still some remote personal ties and not a random “Oh shiny!” and the last one was actually software. And I’m not even sure if it shipped in the final form, but I pitched in because I liked the idea and also because I had interacted with the main developer in the past. So this was a bit of a “thanks for doing good” and I didn’t care that much about the software itself. Overall I spent 212$ and I don’t regret a single cent. Well, the comic was kinda not needed but I was happy at the time, at least.
Not really sure what to make of it, I guess me being not big into consumerism and mostly deliberating every purchase that’s more than a beer or an ice cream (yes, even single months of MMO subs or a book are usually not purchased on a whim) doesn’t make myself an avid backer of things that might not show up. Then again it’s been a while since I saw a thing on Kickstarter that was actually awesome and at the same time not completely ridiculously expensive – which means definitely not the “I WANT THAT” range. Still glad that Kickstarter exists for the people that like the experience, but I guess I’m not backing anything soon, although statistically 2022 or 2023 would be due another expense…
Crowdsourcing is basically taking a gamble that someone’s vision will come to fruition. As long as the group requesting the crowdsourcing is solid enough –and more importantly, the business plan sound enough– that makes the risk acceptable.
That being said, I’ve funded mostly some (less than 15) small projects over the past decade or so. Most of those were for pencil and paper RPGs, such as the next edition of The Fantasy Companion for the current edition of Savage Worlds, or the biggest one which was the funding for Evil Hat’s edition of FATE, but there has been a boardgame or two in there. I did contribute a few dollars to help a new local opera company –designed to help recent university music graduates get some notches under their repertoire belts so they could then land with a more established company– and that company continues to this day. Things like that make me proud to have contributed in a small way to a successful organization’s launch like that. (No, I’m not an opera fan, but I wanted to help new Bachelor of Music grads get their start.)
But boy is the slush pile of crowdsourcing huge. It can be practically a full time job figuring out which are good projects to back.