Hey, can you give us $15 million? Impudent as the question sounds, it’s precisely what Zero Point Software is asking of the general public. With said cash, sourced straight from the community’s pockets, the developer hopes to fund Interstellar Marines – a firstperson shooter intended to rival the likes of Halo and Killzone. That may seem like quite a long shot, but the idea of crowdfunding has been around for years, and its successes in other industries are well documented, even for budgets extending into the millions.
The concept turns the traditional transaction on its head: customers put their cash up front, and then the game gets made. In order to attract potential donors, developers post an early version of the game, or even just a video or screenshots, explaining their aims and laying out the required budget. If people donate, they get a ‘perk’ – anything from a thank-you call to an in-game appearance; the more cash, the better the perk. It’s common for beta access or at least frequent development updates to be part of the package.
It’s only recently, however, that game developers have begun boarding this bandwagon in great numbers; as with any new business model that boasts a few high-profile successes, there’s clearly a perception that crowdfunding is an easy way to get $5,000 for developing a side-scrolling Flash game. But what’s really going on isn’t nearly so clear. Has the internet created a new form of social patronage: meritocratic, transparent and accessible? Or are the cynics right when they talk of online begging bowls for con men and fantasists?
Cardinal Quest
While crowdfunding websites such as Kickstarter have existed for some time, it was only this year that 8-bit Funding, the first gaming-dedicated crowdfunding website, was launched.
“I started a small blog for indie games in 2009,” says founder Geoff Gibson. “Back then I would habitually send developers I was working with to Kickstarter to get extra money. Then in summer 2010 I stopped doing that because everyone I would send, their project would fail and I would feel bad – they were expecting something to happen, something better. And I realised that, as Kickstarter grew, the projects that were growing were music, movies and design projects – gaming projects still kind of languished. I started toying with the idea of a gaming-specific site back in October and threw something together as a proof of concept in December 2010.”
Budgets can range from a few hundred dollars into tens of millions, but by far the majority of crowdfunded games exist at the lower end of the scale.
“Right now it’s probably the smaller projects that seem to work best – $5,000 and below,” says Gibson. “We have Cardinal Quest, which is approaching $5,000, and they get a few hundred dollars every couple of days. There’s one project in waiting that wanted to ask for $250,000 and I had to say: ‘Look, we’re not at that stage yet’. Unless you have someone who’s going to come in on day one and drop $100,000 you’re better off trying somewhere else.”
Qualitatively speaking, the videogame projects soliciting money are a mixed bunch. Many bear retro stylings and fill out familiar genres. Others are plain batty. Among these are a scattering of gems, like Grandroids – the latest project from Steve Grand, creator of ’90s artificial life program Creatures – which has raised over $40,000 on Kickstarter at the time of writing. But if crowdfunding attracts a lot of overambitious and unrealistic dross, the same is true of any business model; the frequency of ‘$0 Donated’ banners on crowdfunding sites suggests that appealing to the masses finds no greater number of mugs ready to part with their money than in any other method of fundraising. Nonetheless, it is this direct dialogue with the public that is the core of crowdfunding, and the reason it’s an interesting option for games with an angle. You could crudely say it’s all about popularity, but really it’s about engagement.