Kickstarter Brings in Funding for Small Game Projects
Launched in late April, Kickstarter is a neat site that allows creative types -- artists, musicians, bloggers, journalists, game developers, etc. -- raise money for their projects by offering multiple tiers of incentives to patrons.
Creators set a fundraising, deadline, and rewards depending on the pledge amount, and if backers front enough cash before the deadline, the money goes towards the project's execution. If the fundraising goal isn't met, those who pledged a donation aren't charged anything. (GSW conducted an interview with Kickstarter's Perry Chen last month.)
Kind of Bloop, a project (started by Waxy.org's Andy Baio) looking to bring together notable chiptune artists and recreate Miles Davis's "Kind of Blue" album with an 8-bit sound, is a great example of a Kickstarter success story, raising its goal amount of $2,000 in a single day. After less than a month, Kind of Bloop raised over $5,700, with 60 days left until its fundraising deadline.
The project was able to attract backers not just based on its interesting premise, but because it offered advance access to the album, behind the scenes updates, limited edition CDs, and more to donators. Each project also has blog-like updates and a comment section, allowing patrons to leave feedback and potentially help guide the project's direction.
Actual game projects are beginning to appear on the site too, such as High Strangeness an action adventure title that its Portland-based three-man team hopes to release in 2010 for PC and Xbox Live Community Games.
The project is described as a 12-bit game, as its planned "visual aesthetics lie somewhere between that of 8-bit (Nintendo) and 16-bit (Super Nintendo)". You can read about its Mother-esque plot below:
"Our video game is about a boy living in current day middle America, who awakes in the middle of the night to find that his home has been intruded upon by shadowy villains. He soon finds himself on a quest to discover the secrets of a mysterious item, after unwittingly being dragged into a foreign world filled with the evil and mysterious Shadow Men. Hesitant at first, our hero eventually realizes his role in a cosmic battle for peace throughout all universes."
The group has already posted a video promoting the project and an excellent music track from the game (composed by chiptune artist Rich "Disasterpeace" Vreeland). As incentives, they are offering spots on the game's end credits, a limited edition version of the soundtrack, a High Strangeness T-shirt, a high quality print of game art, and a "highly limited, hand crafted, super-secret collectors' item inspired by the game's plot".
The team has raised $791 so far for High Strangeness, over half of its goal amount in two weeks, with 77 days left until its deadline.
Comments
Great writeup, I'm very excited to see indie game developers start using the site as an alternative to traditional publishers.
One correction -- I didn't start Kickstarter... I'm only a board member and advisor. It was started by cofounders Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler, and Charles Adler.
Posted by: Andy Baio | June 1, 2009 5:22 PM
This is a wonderful idea! People often talk about sponsorship as an "alternative" to copyright, and this is the beginning of exactly that.
Posted by: Archagon | June 2, 2009 11:29 AM
Kickstarter is gaining momentum and I think it has a lot to do with the simplicity of the experience from both sides; people looking to pledge even a small amount of money as well as the creatives promoting their projects. I have a friend who is a game developer (The Ion Adventures just finished debugging) and you can bet I'm gonna turn him on to Kickstarter.
I just posted my first digital arts project called "Organic Industry" and I am excited to watch it spark to life over the next couple of months.
Check it out: http://bit.ly/XOTSp
Posted by: Michael Gonyea | July 3, 2009 10:54 PM