It's been an interesting couple of months in the games industry. Besides UK retailer GAME going down poop creek and UK government finally giving the industry tax relief (see that swinging Stable door guys?), the really big piece of news that everyone is talking about is the possible revolution that Kickstarter is bringing to the industry.
Unless you've been living under a rock you'll have heard about Double Fine's marginal success at getting funding - and by marginal I mean 834% of what they originally asked for (p.s. I punted $15 on it, thought it was worth a stab!). So that's a cool $3,336,371, and that's not including some $110,000 from other premium backers. Not bad, not bad at all.
But surely that's just because it's Tim Schafer (and Ron Gilbert) right? A one off. Pure nostalgia? Well - maybe, but Wasteland 2 has also got backing. So maybe it's just people with industry clout and the sequel to a major franchise? It seems not - just look at projects like The Banner Saga, and any number of iOS projects on there. In fact, according to Kickstarter themselves, something like 45% of games are receiving funding.
That's some exciting future prospects right there! An industry that can fund itself!? No more need for publishers?!
Well that's when things start getting a bit tricky. There's a couple of big, unanswered questions about these projects, with some potentially disastrous consequences.
WHAT WORKS?
Some pretty ambitious projects are being touted in the wake of double fine. Take for example Hardcore Tactical Shooter (catchy name btw). They're asking for only $200,000 to make a full fps game. How? Well they'll crowd source it of course!
So they're not only asking for money, but also help making it? Aren't your funders giving you money for you to make it?
It seems so far that only certain types of project are realistically going to get enough traction, and be able to ask a certain price. Will we ever manage to get to a situation where the next GTA or CoD could be crowd-sourced? Highly unlikely. Publishers aren't going anywhere quite yet.
TAX
Oh boy. The Tax man. Let's be honest, the IRS is gonna want a slice of this pie. How the hell are they going to do that though? The tax implications are extremely complex - and potentially even more complex depending on the type of reward that is being offered through the funding. Are these classed as retail sales? Does every sale of the game to a funder therefore need to be taxed according to the state / federal tax laws? And which state laws do you use? The funder's or the developer's?
I'm sure most of the bigger studios are likely to have access to decent legal advice, but I fear some of the smaller concerns may end up getting a rather large, and rather unexpected tax liability.
One thing you can be sure of, the larger the sums of money exchanging via crowdsourcing, the more interest government is going to show, and the larger the slice of pie they are likely to feel entitled to.
FAILURE
This for me is the biggest question. What happens when a team fails? Having your game funded by fans means you are going to have to deliver a product that they are happy with, it's not just good enough to get any old shit out there. They are putting faith in the developer and will be mighty pissed if the results aren't to their liking.
But worse than this, what happens if the project never comes together? Not only will the fans be disappointed in the lack of a game, but they will have lost money - there's nothing to fuel anyone's ire than being out of pocket with nothing to show for it. And once these fans have been burnt, are they likely to shell out for any future projects?
Only time will tell I guess.
FRAUD
So there's now a lot of money available to fund people. Where there's money there's greed, and where there's greed there's criminality.
How long before fraudulent projects appear, which are little more than scams to alleviate us of our money? I sure hope Kickstarter has got some good safety measures in place to prevent such issues.
CONCLUSION
Well it's all very exciting, and bodes well for many indie teams, finally there is a method of securing finance that doesn't require selling your soul. Finally there is a route to market for games that won't sell 10 million copies, but will have a small and loyal fan base and produce enough profit to keep the developers in pizza and beer.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves though, this may be a new business model, but it's unlikely to be the silver bullet.
Links:
Double Fine Adventure
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure?ref=live
Wasteland 2
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2?ref=live
The Banner Saga
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stoic/the-banner-saga?ref=live
Tactical Shooter
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/355932838/crowdsourced-hardcore-tactical-shooter?ref=live
1 comment:
Mark, just wanted to leave a note to tell you how much I appreciate your game design posts on this blog. When I found out that the lead designer from Enslaved (the best game I played in 2010 by far) was working on another post apocalyptic story based game, and it was coming from Naughty Dog of all places, I admit I got a little giddy :)
When I discovered your blog I devoured all your game design posts that day, so keep 'em coming. You've inspired me to really get down to business and do some serious game design work in my free time in hopes of making my way to a Naughty Dog or Irrational or Bethesda or other top notch studio.
If you've got any additional advice for a guy who's a programmer at a casual/social games company that wants to play with the big boys, I'd sure love to hear from you.
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