Slashdot Mirror
Gaming Legends Discuss Using Kickstarter For Their Next Projects
Nerval's Lobster writes "Just as the Internet fundamentally altered the way games are distributed from publishers to players, crowdfunding has upended the traditional models of raising money for gaming development, and some of the most storied people in the industry are taking notice. Chris Roberts, who created the well-known Wing Commander series in 1990, managed to raise millions of dollars on Kickstarter last fall for his upcoming Star Citizen, eventually collecting so much money from individual backers that he could return the budget he'd taken from "formal" investment firms. "Even nice investors, they want a return at some point. They have a slightly diff agenda than I do," Roberts told Slashdot. "My agenda is to build the coolest game possible." He's not the only famed developer getting into the crowdfunding game: Wasteland director Brian Fargo spent years wanting to make a sequel to his popular role-playing game, eventually accomplishing that goal via Kickstarter. And for every famous game creator who uses the power of crowds to produce a new masterwork, dozens of talented amateurs are also financing their first games via Kickstarter and similar services. But that doesn't mean there are occasional high-profile implosions, like CLANG."
Getting money from a different source that leads to a more open development process=excessive greed?
Sometimes you should explain your opinions.
I think his point, and I don't know if I agree or disagree, is that more and more wealthy people are using kickstarter as a way of starting projects. These are people unwilling to risk their own fortunes and instead wish to use yours and mine. If they believed in their project so much they would use their own money to back it, but they don't.
I don't know if this is one of those situations but if these people are "gaming legends" as the article implies then one would assume, rightly or wrongly, that they are wealthy but unwilling to back their own project.
I believe kickstarter should be used for the up and comers, the idealists who are just getting started. When I see a wealthy person using kickstarter I just see greed and a complete lack of dedication to their own ideas and abilities.
Indeed, it is following the same path as Ebay, which was once an awesome place to find and sell older stuff, but these days it's populated at 98% by Ebay Stores with set prices, and lost it's usefullness as an auction site. Kickstarter is going that way too, it started as a great place for new, small projects, but is being overrun now by corps who uses it as a launch platform for their next product.
What you're complaining about is the inability to find the projects that are interesting to you and I have the same complaint about kickstarter. Several times I've heard about a project that didn't reach it's funding goal I would have loved to have backed but for whatever reason I didn't discover it until it was too late.
Every digital marketplace has this problem to some extent. The good ones seem to have a good recommendation engine like amazon and netflix or they're heavily curated like steam and Xbox Arcade. Then there are places like kickstarter and iOS where they highlight the best 40 or so and let the rest remain obscure.
Discover-ability is a real problem that is only going to get worse as digital markets get more popular and larger. And I'm guessing that any company that can solve that problem will be the next tech service monopoly.
Ergo, creative control. He never acted as if it was outrageous that investors want something for their money, that's an interesting bit of fantasy on your part. He merely noted that this does create constraints that can interfere with making a good game (there's a few dozen examples you can hear about if you actually follow the discussions among the game developers -- CR tends to be vague, but some of his employees that worked with him at Digital Anvil and other previous projects can be quite specific and biting at times about the interference they've gotten from publishers in the past).
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Umm, no. That's not his point at all. His point was this: he wants to make a video game. One that is well-made, fun, and follows his vision. The investors simply want money. The means of getting that money are irrelevant (so long as it's legal... well, most investors care about that. Well, the nice ones do, anyways). When you follow the former, you end up with games that are original, interesting, and usually quite fun (Braid, Bastion, Portal, etc.). Sometimes these make money, sometimes they don't. When you follow the latter, you end up with Call of Duty: 2013. This often makes you a lot of money, but it also makes for rather terrible games and stagnation in the industry. Hence, the massive amounts of re-hashed expensive shit that gets shoved out by most of the AAA studios while the actually interesting and novel ideas are relegated to being made on a shoe-string budget in someones garage (usually: not always).
Anyways, Roberts does give the community something, namely, the game. Not money, but what they (and he) actually want. When everyone involved in the project actually wants the same thing, you can focus on that. If he had investors, he'd need to focus at least somewhat on making a game that could earn money. As it stands, even if the game sells zero copies after release, it doesn't matter so long as the gameplay satisfies the crowdfunders.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
"Dude had the funding, but he didn't want to share his profits with the people that were giving him money. Ergo, excessive greed."
At this point, many of us old gamers could give less of a fuck. Publishers have single handledly:
-Dumbed down games
-Stopped making many genre's that used to exist in the past
Gamers are throwing money at projects because we know nothing will get made otherwise. We know some projects will fail, some will take our money, etc. But how's that different from publishers, DRM, Steam, etc? These people have taken our money and fucked us anyway with DRM and all sorts of onerous bullshit rules.
At this point we could care less, the whole gaming world is just once giant exploitation circle jerk with MMO's, F2P and DRM.
When games like wow and diablo 3 are selling virtual items, and Diablo 3 has single player lag... just how exactly are we not getting fucked six ways to sunday?
I didn't buy any of these games, but kids, illiterates and dumbasses who feed corporations aren't going to stop. So what choice to gamers who want games not being made have?