Crowdfunding for Dummies
Crowdfunding in the video game industry has only been mainstream for about three or four years now since it exploded onto the scene with the Kickstarter campaign for Double Fine Adventure in 2012, which would eventually be released as Broken Age. Since 2012, the system has had its ups and downs as some games got delayed, failed to deliver everything that was promised or just plain failed to release altogether. Ironically, one of the first major negative stories to come out of crowdfunding was the same one that popularised it: Broken Age. Although the game reached its funding goal eight times over, due to feature creep and bad money management, Double Fine ran out of funds to finish the game with and ended up releasing the game in two parts with the first releasing in January 2014 and the second finally releasing over a year later.
Massive Chalice
Double Fine again dipped into the Kickstarter pool when they launched the campaign for Massive Chalice. This game was seemingly managed much better with only one minor delay until eventually being released from its beta in Steam Early Access to generally favourable reviews. Another Double Fine game that was put in the Early Access programme was SpaceBase DF-9. However, this game would again sour the public's view of Double Fine when it was announced in September of 2014 that the game would exit Early Access the next month with all support for the game stopping at that point. This was seen as a slap in the face by some as the game was missing many features that had been promised during development.
Psychonauts 2
Recently Double Fine launched a crowdfunding campaign for the long awaited Psychonauts 2. While many rejoiced at the revival of a beloved franchise, it's not all sunshine and roses. The company that's hosting the campaign, Fig, was founded by the former COO of Double Fine. In addition to that, Tim Schafer, the founder of Double Fine, is on the advisory board of Fig. All of this serves to make the situation very muddled, to say the least. On top of all of that, there's some very confusing wording in the terms of service which make it seem like any money donated doesn't actually have to be used to make Psychonauts 2. It's a strange situation all around but only time will tell whether or not Double Fine will deliver the game on time and as promised.
Mighty No. 9
Another game that raised a lot of money on Kickstarter is the Mega Man spiritual successor Mighty No. 9. Spearheaded by former Mega Man developer Keiji Inafune, the campaign launched in late August of 2013 and, like Broken Age, shot past its original goal. With the pedigree of Inafune attached to the project, people were extremely confident that the project was a slam dunk. However, as of this writing the final quality of the game is unknown and the development has been anything but smooth. The game was originally scheduled to release in April of 2015, but this was pushed back at the last second to September later that same year. In August of 2015 the game was delayed again to early February 2016. Again, however, just a few weeks before the expected release, the game has been pushed back once again to a nebulous Spring 2016 release window. The delays alone would be cause for concern, but there have been more worrying signs. Since the original Kickstarter campaign, Comcept, Inafune's development studio, have launched several others. They launched one campaign to fund DLC for the game, one for a new game called Red Ash and another for an anime series based on the same game. Although the campaign for the anime series succeeded, the campaign for the game itself fell far short of its goal. On top of this, just a few days before the campaign deadline, Comcept announced that the game would be funded in full by a company called Fuze, regardless of the success of the Kickstarter campaign. This left many fans with a sour taste in their mouths as this announcement made it fairly evident that the game could have been funded through traditional means without money being taken from fans. Again, only time will tell if things turn out for the best with these games.
Darkest Dungeon
One game took a different path through development, and it's been an unqualified success. The small team behind Darkest Dungeon set up a Kickstarter campaign and, like others, blew past their original goal. Approximately one year after the end of the campaign, the game was put on Steam Early Access. Throughout the next year the game was consistently updated using feedback from the community to help steer the path of development. The game finally had its full release on Steam on the 19th of January 2016 to very favourable reviews. The developers have since stated that the game has already sold 650,000 copies including backer rewards. A release on PlayStation 4 and Vita is expected sometime in early 2016. While most of these stories have left people angry at some point, nothing can be as bad as the recent story that broke of the developer of Ant Simulator having all the money raised through crowd funding spent on booze and strippers by his (now former) friends and business partners. Let that be a lesson to everyone: be careful who you give your money to.