How would you feel if a group of people just gave you four hundred thousand dollars in about eight hours? What if people like the first ones continued to give you money until you had about three million by the end of the month? Would you feel obliged to them somehow? What would you do in return? This is what acclaimed game designer Tim Shaffer is looking at with his newest adventure game. He and his team raised three million dollars on the website Kickstarter. Shaffer, and others like him, have been using this website to fund various projects, from book publishing, to game design, to technological innovations. The success of these creators and this kind of business deal shows us something amazing.
If we want it, we can fund it.
Adventure games are pretty old hat. They had their time in the early years of gaming, and games like Sam and Max did their best to bring them around again, but they were never a big enough hit to warrant major publishers investing the money needed into them. The genre pretty much died out. Independent studios tried to revitalize them, but none of these were ever major successes. It seemed like it was the end for adventure games.
And then Tim Shaffer, god father of adventure games, decided to try out Kickstarter. He would appeal to a niche audience and see if you couldn't get some minimal funding to do a game he would enjoy making and he hoped people would enjoy playing. He as asking for four hundred thousand dollars at the start, more than had ever been raised on Kickstarter. It was a pipe dream, but he and Double Fine Productions had nothing to lose. In the first eight hours, when fans and professional sites saw what he was doing, they raised their goal. For the next month, the money kept pouring in. People were excited for his project and willing to throw a few dollars his way to make it happen.
Tim Shaffer isn't the only one out there. Familiar classics are coming back. Cult Classic "Leisure Suit Larry" is making a return, Wasteland 2 is being developed, Shadowrun is getting and update, and many more. Popular material thought dead is getting a second wind. And new material is also being added. People with a passion for their work and their niche are turning to the consumer to help them make their dream real. Whether it is a school project about social groups, an online role-playing game, or a bands first CD, creators are asking the consumer what they want to see, and the consumer is backing them with their dollars.
This may be one of the first times that consumers have had direct say in what gets made and what doesn't. Have you ever wondered how crappy movies keep getting made? Or how so many trash, boring novels keep getting publish? Or how the same grey and brown shooting games keep getting pushed into gamers' hands? If you keep seeing pointless wastes of material that you hate, this kind of marketing is your chance to support that which you really care about. Don't buy what the faceless publishers throw at you, choose what you want to support.
I hope that this kind of method catches on, or at least draw the attention of bigger publishers. If they realize that people are willing to support smaller ideas, ideas that innovate, or ideas that aren't "mainstream" then they might realize that if they support these small projects with their large wallets, they could turn a profit. We might see a rebirth of innovation and creativity. We'd stop having Micheal Bay action movies with nothing but explosions, we'd stop having pop music that just repeats the word "baby" a thousand times, we'd stop having games that have you shooting Nazis in WW2. A bold, fresh, new landscape would open up to creators everywhere.
Great, another site I have to resist spending money on.
Just something to chew on.
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