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How Long Before the Kickstarter Bubble Bursts?
An opinion piece at Gamasutra takes a look at the recent success of Kickstarter campaigns for video game projects — Double Fine's adventure game and a sequel to Wasteland each raised around $3 million. Hundreds of other projects have sprung up, hoping to replicate that success — but will it last? From the article:
"I am convinced that Tim Schafer and his team at Double Fine know how to deliver a game (mostly) on time and (mostly) on budget. Brian Fargo too. Is that true for all 314 of the current Kickstarter projects? What about the projects which get started but never finished? If publishers like LucasArts can cancel games that are almost finished or like Codemasters can pay for a game it never saw, what certainty do pledgers have that the game that they have paid for will ever see the light of day? We are still in the early days of our Kickstarter relationship, the early days of falling in love. Everything our partner does is wonderful. We gloss over the risks, we ignore the downsides, because the glory of falling in love is everything. I think we have about six months left of that period. Towards the end of this year, some Kickstarter projects are going to start slipping. Some will see their teams collapse amidst bicker recriminations. Some pledgers are going to start getting very angry."
Might see a drop off, and a leveling off, but a bubble burst?
That implies there's a bubble. Direct financing of projects is the future, not a fad.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
One of the things that makes this sort of funding different is that a vast majority of pledgers are contributing very modest sums of money. Can you really get pissed off if you lose $50 in a venture? For a lot of people this sort of funding gives them the chance to participate in something they would otherwise have never got an opportunity to be involved in. I think that what we will see is a refinement of the system and people maybe being a little more selective and those who are seeking funding becoming more professional. I do believe that in some form or another it is here to stay.
right now kickstarter is in the idealistic phase. you give money to people you don't know with great expectations. it doesn't take many silver tongued con artists to put a dent in those expectations. then the cynicism kicks in (no pun intended)
don't get me wrong, i love kickstarter, but this is the romance period, and after awhile people might become more jaded
i hope not, really, i hope not. and maybe eventually we can invent extra trust building methodologies to give people more confidence when they give
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
A while ago I started developing an indie Elite-like game (yes, it runs on Linux...). I'm funding it out of my personal savings (scary...) but I've had Kickstarter recommended to me by a number of people as a funding alternative. I know very little about it. The indie oriented spirit of the place looked nice enough. I've seen other projects in the genre I'm developing that aren't as far along as mine raise significant funding on Kickstarter, but I've held off because of a few things that are unclear to me. For one, if I funded the development of my project in this way, what happens if something prevents the project from being completed? The Kickstarter info says there is no guarantee that a finished product will be produced, so nominally "nothing happens", but there are large risks involved with developing an indie game with its own custom engine from scratch. Many start, few succeed. I think I would find it quite ethically difficult to live with if I accepted people's money to make something, and for whatever reason wasn't able to complete the project to my or their satisfaction. Even if it is only a small amount from each person, I'd end up feeling pretty miserable if they paid it expecting a finished project which never came to pass. I was never able to find any info about whether a mechanism exists to return funding if projects cannot be completed.
... projects were successful to begin with. There is a lot of negative gamer sentiment that many beloved older games and genre's stopped being produced by big publishers because the publishers deemed they were 'dead' or they just wouldn't yield the kinds of profits they want to keep shareholders happy.
It doesn't help that many modern games have been butchered (in terms of functionality, LAN, etc) or chained to DRM and always online connections.
Future vs. fad is irrelevant. You can't have a bubble burst because Kickstarter sponsorships aren't a tradeable commodity, so people turning off of the Kickstarter model won't burst anything. There's no market for there to be a bubble in.
If people stop sponsoring through Kickstarter, you'll just have a reversion to people actually having to take a business plan to people who will most likely demand debt or equity stakes in the business to raise capital to launch a new consumer product business (or to expand an existing business to a new consumer product using funds other than the profit of the existing business.)
I hope it doesn't go anywhere because it is a great idea.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/847271320/ogre-designers-edition
Kickstarter allows the developer to get in direct contact with the people who are willing to commit to his/her project. Which is GREAT in cases like the above example. Things that were abandoned long ago can be revived without having to secure millions of dollars of investment cash.
Some people do not ascribe a monetary value to every action they make. For instance, the other day I gave money to a charity. My ROI is 0%, but I still enjoyed doing it.
I got my game initially crowd funded. If you are worried about something happening to you and being unable to finish a project, that just says to me: "I am not really committed". If this game is your love and your passion, the money is to help you concentrate on this passion, and you will finish it. If it is just something you like doing, it is not really enough. If your worry is about being hit by a bus, shit happens, deal with it.
Next up, if you are serious about crowd funding, and want to get a large amount of money (i.e enough to live on for a year or 2, hire some contractors for work outside your skill set). My 2 bits of simple advice are, build a community. Crowd funding is about getting the community to help you make a game that they want (both you and your community should be wanting the same game). Don't just put it on kickstarter I hope they come. You need a community first. My second bit of advice, is if you are an unproven games developer, build some sort of vertical slice of the game, to a high standard. (E.g. a demo of just ship to ship combat, nothing more.). This is to show case you and your team (if applicable) skills, to help build trust that you can produce this game.
Automation - The Car Company Tycoon Game
I think this is the model that will survive: folks with a track record of delivering good stuff looking for funding to do something new. This gives funders both an expectation of quality, and of the history of making it on scedule (in Rich's case, well, let's just say no one will be too surprised or upset if it's very late - but that expetcation was set going in).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Bottom line is, Kickstarter isn't a storefront. If you're going to pledge money to a project, don't drop more on it than you're comfortable giving away to a school fundraiser, or a local charity.
Well, for one thing? I think most big investors are more demanding and meticulous with their spending/investing. They're not interested in making a big cash outlay into a Kickstarter project - because they're already funding similar things using a more time-tested, traditional model; venture capital firms. They want you to come to THEM with a solid business plan in hand, and sell them on it. They don't want to spend time on a web page, poring over all the little projects people proposed to work on.
Kickstarter is to VC what Prosper.com is to traditional bank loans. It's an alternative way to try to round up some money.
As for lawyers? This may upset/insult some of them to say it, but basically? Lawyers are parasites -- a necessary evil in a dishonest world, perhaps. But parasites nonetheless. Eventually, they get involved in pretty much *every* business or legal transaction individuals in society can conduct. So sure, there will be lawsuits someday related to Kickstarter projects. Will it destroy the whole concept though? I don't see why it should, any more than personal injury law destroyed businesses hiring workers to perform physical labor, or any more than divorce lawyers destroyed the concept of marriage?