Shut Up and Take Our Money
The last few weeks has taught gamers something interesting: with enough awareness, enough dedicated fans and enough cash to spare, a game can be made on demand. Legendary game designer Tim Schafer and his team at Double Fine are now hard at work having raised $3.45 million for the production of a new point-and-click adventure game, money pooled directly from charitable donors on Facebook, Twitter and beyond, keen to see the company?s next iteration, one that absolutely does not conform to the current industry standard of brown-palette first-person shooter.
The implications are staggering. ?An underrated classic or a long-forgotten retro gem can now, potentially, be revived with public support and funding; an indie studio can fund a start-up project with no capital. All of this is more or less free from the concerned gaze of a risk-averse mega-publisher; it?s another facet of the social media ?revolution?. But what of the downsides? What if the game fails to materialise? What if funding runs out? Can indie studios afford to donate time and resources to an idea dead in the water? You could say it?s all part of the adventure.
The discussion is brewing here at BNBGAMING; in this week?s Friday Roundtable, join Japanese affairs correspondent Isaac Hammer; North American Managing Editor Pascal Tekaia; Apple correspondent Tom Rippon; and PC correspondent Chad Morelock as they share their thoughts on the crowd funding phenomenon.
As always, we welcome your comments and discussion in the appropriate section below.
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Isaac:
Frankly, I?m all for crowd funding. What brought me to games and has kept me a gamer is innovation as much as anything else. ?Innovation is not just slapping a fresh coat of paint on the same old house you?ve been living in for the past decade, though.?Innovation comes from taking chances, going ahead with something a little crazy, and not fearing failure. ?However, to most designers and publishers, parts one and three are anathema. After all, one doesn?t keep their cozy corner office by returning a product with negative revenues.
SETI@home brings the search for E.T. to the living rooms of millions of users.
Since Steam popularized a more direct manufacturer-to-consumer model, other areas have latched on to the idea that while one customer isn?t much, the concept of the customer is. ?Double Fine showed this when one of the few creators with real name recognition raised more than ten times the budget they?d hoped for by asking the fans.?Tangentially related is crowdsourced computing, such as Seti@home and Folding@home, both of which have distributed needed processing power to tens or hundreds of thousands of machines, allowing for faster results and lower costs, not to mention involving gamers in something that feels as though we are actually giving back to society as a whole.
Pascal:
As much as I want to see developers taking an occasional chance and giving me an innovative product, I have to point out certain fears I have about going through fans? pocketbooks to fund your next game. You see, the downside to taking a risk on a developer is in the simple fact that the term ?risk? is defined by resulting in a negative outcome at least an equal share of the time. While a gamble that paid off is a great thing, I am a gamer on a budget, and I can?t afford a string of four or five investments that netted nothing.
There?s a reason why big-time publishers are loathe to take on a game deemed a ?risky business venture?. Sometimes there?s a fine line between a game that nailed it and a game that failed it. A developer?s influence holds a great amount of sway over the finished product, and this is all the more true in the indie market, where corporate ?meddling? is virtually non-existent. Honestly, I?d rather that Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Square Enix and the likes take on the burden of financing a risky game, which I can make an informed decision about based on an actual final product before I spend my money. Ultimately, the amount of money I spend on the game will likely be somewhere close to the same either way.
To preempt potential comebacks about how Kickstarter campaigns allow investors to donate as much money as they choose, the facts show that the monetary investment isn?t all that different from purchasing a finished game. Double Fine Adventure?s crowd funding reached an amount of $3.45 million donated by 87,000 donors ? that still averages out to $40 per donation. Sure, for every contribution over that amount, there was one under it?but I?d have a hard time seeing myself paying $40 for a point-and-click adventure in today?s market. And let?s be honest: how much did Tim Schafer?s name alone bring in to the campaign? By comparison, I?d like to see some data on how many games have been invested in by the public, only to be called off and cancelled midway through production ? and how much money was spent on non-existing games in this way.
With the traditional publisher/developer model, there?s the risk of ?will the game be a good one??. In a crowd-funded market, the extra worry of ?will there even be a game at all?? rears its ugly, unwanted head.
Some quite literally want Tim Schafer to take their money.
Tom:
Pascal has me totally torn. While I want to agree wholeheartedly with Isaac and proclaim that I do indeed love the idea of developers standing on our shoulders to create their next game, it?s just not something I can hold myself to.
In my entire life, I?ve only committed to one pledge in a Kickstarter campaign, and it was something I had complete faith in. After interviewing the developers of the game?Pota-Toss,?I felt it was safe for me to invest a small amount in their game ? I wanted to see it flourish, because I knew how hard the developers were working on it, and I knew that something would come of it. Of course, it?s still in production, but that doesn?t worry me, because I get regular emails confirming their progress, as do all the other backers.
Pota-Toss: crowd funding’s on iOS, too!
What I?m trying to say is that I will happily pledge a few quid to an indie developer if I believe I can trust them to deliver. It?s not always easy to judge somebody from behind a computer screen, but there?s nothing quite like the feeling of making something happen for somebody else, and getting to play with the finished product. And it?s great for the industry too, because it?s proving to the big publishers and developers that risks do pay off, and not only that, it?s giving them plenty of successful but outside-the-box ideas to steal, should they be so inclined.
Chad:
I?m one of those people that?s pretty prone to hero worship, so if someone I like is developing something and wants a helping hand to fund, I?m happy to contribute.? Tim Schafer is one of those people, and Brian Fargo (particularly since he?s bringing Michael Stackpole and Alan Pavlish back to work on Wasteland 2) is another. I like these guys? work, and have faith in their ability to execute the games they want to make. If it was anyone else (excepting some sort of comeback from Roberta Williams or Chris Roberts), I?d probably tell them to keep walking, and probably shout obscenities as they did so.
I think the success of these is also a good way to gauge interest in game styles (here point-and-click adventure games and traditional, turn-based RPGs) that have fallen out of favor in an industry driven by big franchises and endless sequels. Many of these games didn?t find any publishers willing to take a risk on them, but they can flourish with developer and consumer/financier. I have faith in the crowd funding movement. I hope it leads to some great games, and I will definitely be kicking in a few dollars here and there.
Pascal:
Chad, that?s actually a great point about long lost and forgotten genres being granted a reprieve through crowd funding. I, too, would love to see the point-and-click genre produce the occasional gem! And while I may also share your predilection toward hero worship, I find that, in the gaming industry, those bigger-than-life heroes of mine are few and far between. Besides, let?s not overlook that the individual developers worthy of name-dropping achieved that status because of traditional, publisher-funded games. Once again, the no-name indie designer is left out in the cold, and isn?t that what the whole issue of crowd funding is actually about?
Crowdsourcing may pave the way for a rejuvenation of “dead” genres, like the flight sim
?Isaac:
Chad and Pascal raise some good points, and I feel I should clarify about my unbridled support:?As far as gamers funding each game with no guarantees of actual production, no, I don?t see it becoming the main business model. ?However, as was pointed out, the stronger individual connection garnered by the direct relation leads to an increased communicative flow between the producers and the consumers.
It is true that I?m not lining up to throw my money at every last person with a grand idea for a game, especially if they have no track record, as many first time indie developers lack that record. ?But, for a larger or more features sequel, crowd funding is a real possibility, allowing us to enjoy a balance between creativity and the need for success.
Chad:
I don?t see it becoming a main business model either, but it seems like a great way for experimental games or those in ?brushed aside? genres to get off the ground, especially when they?ve got a great designer behind them. We?re likely to see at least a few more of these types of projects before the trend dies out.
I don?t think this is going to lead to some major funding paradigm shift, but I think it will lead to us seeing some games get made that wouldn?t otherwise. Hopefully, in some cases, enough for a minor comeback.
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Share Your Thoughts:?We?ve shared our thoughts and now it?s your turn. What do you make of the crowd funding phenomenon? A new hope for innovative gaming, or another social media fad?
Source: http://bnbgaming.com/2012/03/16/friday-roundtable-on-the-importance-of-crowd-funding/
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