Kickstarted! | Jonathan Solton

Jonathan Solton discusses Kickstarter and what it means for the future of gaming.

 For a long time, the video industry functioned as such: a publisher gives a developer money to make a game and then the publisher releases the game, the game is then sold in a shop and most of the money goes to the shop and the publisher, with the developer getting very little of the profit. However, something happened last year that made everyone think differently. A developer named Double Fine raised $3,336,371 on a website called Kickstarter, with no publisher in sight. To get a proper grasp on the situation, let's take a step back and look at Kickstarter as a whole.Kickstarter is a crowd-funding website that was founded in 2009. People set up projects and set a funding goal e.g. $50,000. They then have one month to raise that amount of money, or else they get nothing. People are incentivised to donate with rewards set at different donation brackets. For example: if you're funding a movie, then donating $10 could get you a copy of the movie but donating $30 will get you a copy of the movie and a t-shirt. Projects can set their own donation brackets and rewards ranging from $1 to as high as $10,000. Kickstarter isn't just for games and movies though. Projects can range from someone wanting help to create a new type of shoe, to someone with an idea for a new watch, to someone who wants to write a comic book. Lately, though, the site has been flooded with various video game projects and it's all thanks to Double Fine.Back in early 2012 Double Fine wanted to make a traditional point and click adventure game, but they couldn't find a publisher to fund it. Normally, this would mean that the game wouldn't get made; instead Tim Schafer, founder of Double Fine and all round nice guy, decided to turn to Kickstarter. He set the modest goal of $400,000 for the creatively titled Double Fine Adventure, and then he watched it explode. The project reached $1,000,000 within twenty-four hours and became the most funded project on Kickstarter within forty-eight hours.Suddenly, people who previously couldn't find an audience for their game had somewhere to turn. Soon after Double Fine's success, the creator of Wasteland (the precursor to the hugely popular Fallout series) decided to try his luck. His Wasteland 2 project ended with almost $3,000,000 in donations. And it's not just software. Someone came up with the idea for a new home console, called OUYA, with an Android based OS that will provide a cheap and easier platform for developers. That project managed to raise a staggering $8,596,474. The people behind the project even managed to land a partnership with Namco, so the console is already guaranteed some games. With the first developer units shipping earlier this year, this is definitely something to keep an eye on.The hit indie game FTL: Faster Than Light is a perfect example of Kickstarter working the way it's supposed to. The developers set a goal of only $10,000 and went on to raise $200,000. Using this funding they then produced a game that went on to receive critical acclaim, earning numerous accolades along the way, including GOTY nominations and awards on IGN, PC Gamer and Polygon.It's not all sunshine and rainbows for Kickstarter though. Along with all these positive experiences are a number of negative ones. One of the major problems is that if you fail to reach the goal before the deadline, no matter how short (like the game Alien Colony which fell just $28 short), you get nothing. This is a regulation that's in place to make it harder for people to con backers out of money, but that fact is of little comfort to the people who fall just short of their goal.Kickstarter has other problems too. Once a project has been funded, Kickstarter can no longer intervene. Multiple projects have been late delivering their pledge rewards, much to anger of backers whose money has already been taken. Sometimes they must wait months for their reward to materialise. Although backers are well aware that they may see zero returns on their donation, it is a donation after all, they don’t expect to get nothing. Kickstarter even released a statement saying ‘Kickstarter is not a store’ in order to get creators and backers on level ground.However, there is another problem that's less black and white. Peter Molyneux is the world renowned UK game developer behind such series' as Populous, Theme Park and, more recently, Fable. As such, when he set up a Kickstarter project back in November asking people for £450,000, a bit of an argument took place on the internet, should the likes of Molyneux be allowed to use Kickstarter? What had happened was that, earlier in the year, Molyneux had left the Microsoft owned Lionhead Studios and set up his own studio, 22Cans. Now, despite his many years of experience in the industry, he was essentially an indie developer. Does that not entitle him to ask for a little help? I think it does. It's no different than Double Fine asking for money. In fact, I think it's a more legitimate project. Double Fine had the advantage of having been running for years beforehand, allowing them to build up a little nest egg. 22Cans was a brand new studio with nothing to their name. In any case, he achieved his goal and now all that's left to do is wait.Some people have hailed Kickstarter as a “revolution” and “the future of gaming”. While I certainly think that, on the whole, it's a positive thing for the industry, I don't think it's the future. I think the best strategy was hit upon by Mojang years ago. When they released Minecraft way back in 2009 it was only in alpha stage and, as such, didn't have many features. It was just good enough to hold people's attention though, and has since sold over nine million copies on PC and five million on Xbox 360.How did it gain such a massive following? Well, when it was in alpha stage it cost a paltry €10 to buy. The game was then yours forever, no matter how much new content was added. Mojang also used customer feedback to figure out which features to add. You were essentially paying €10 to help make the game and play it as it was developed. This eliminated many of the walls that had stood between developer and consumer for decades. By allowing the consumer to get their hands on the product right away, you eliminate a lot of the suspicion that would (rightly so) surround a Kickstarter project. While I think Kickstarter is definitely a step in the right direction, I personally prefer this method of release. Now with other developers, such as Introversion Software with Prison Architect (think Theme Park but with a prison), adopting the “Mojang model” of release, hopefully we'll see the industry as a whole move in this direction.