More Games Should Be Backed On Kickstarter

Ever since I've heard of the now-popular crowd-funding site, Kickstarter, that lets almost anyone back a project that they think would be successful, I thought about the possibilities that could arise from this. Games, Movies, Short Films, they were now a very real possibility for average joes like you and me. Because of crowd-funding sites like Kickstarter, content creators - be it games or movies or books - don't need the approval (and sometimes, scrutiny) that usually come with big-time producers.


 Sure, partnering up with a major publisher or producer like Paramount Pictures or Electronic Arts could significantly help with the funding of your project but we shouldn't forget that when the publishers help fund your projects to a certain extent, Their essentially becoming a shareholder in your "business" which means, you have to do things that will make THEM happy and many things that you want to try for your project has to go through the publishers and producers first to see if they approve. I haven't had any first-hand experience but through some general research I'm pretty sure that's how partnering up with a major publisher works. 

Sometimes you might wonder why a game from big companies like EA or 2K (just to name a few) might suck. Well you can and at the same time, can't blame the big companies who just publish the game. After all, those companies are just providing funding and publishing the games. So is it the developer that's just not good enough? off the top of my head, one of the most obvious answers is that the publishers set a deadline that's so close, be it 5 or 7 months (which is very little for making a triple A game) that hope for making an even decent triple A title is gone. 




Take Singularity for example. Developed by Raven Software (never heard of them) BUT, published by Activision (everyone's heard of them). It's a FPS shooter which had a cool time-traveling concept where you travel back in time using your special gauntlet. That's one of the  VERY FEW game mechanics that actually made it through to the finished product. Raven Software were given 10 months, not to complete the game... 10 months to ship the game. 10. Months. Ridiculous. What started as a promising and new take on the FPS genre with new unique mechanics ended up being a very mediocre success with many of the initial ideas scrapped. Kudos to Raven Software for still making a decent game though. Now, we can only imagine what Singularity would've looked like had the developers got more freedom and more importantly, more time, to experiment and complete the game. 


That freedom and time is what Kickstarter offers developers. Not just legit game companies like Raven Software but just about anyone could do it. Doesn't mean that everyone should start making games themselves though. True that the whole kickstarter concept is definitely similar in that people can basically become shareholders of the game but the difference is that they won't really have to be approving anything. Basically, if you like the project, you can back the project with how much ever you want. 1$ or 100$, doesn't matter. 

Where I come from, the gaming industry is LITERALLY non-existent, there are zero companies that are making video games. The closest thing we have to that are some hardcore gaming enthusiasts who're willing to put in time, money and hard work to make a game for kicks. And a lot of these projects by these - I'm assuming - enthusiasts are funded through kickstarter. It's cool to see that there are ordinary people who're actually trying to make things happen like that.

The Ouya, the so called "indie game console" that runs android games on the big screen and Soul Saga, A Vita game that focuses on core RPG mechanics are all coming from kickstarter. The Ouya alone has gotten $8 million for funding (their original goal was $900,000). Youtuber, freddiew's hugely successful web-series "Video Game High School" was also funded by kickstarter.

Soul Saga Screenshot, Love the art style.

If more small developers are opting to get their funding from kickstarter and if their games are marketed properly, I believe that - with a proper time frame given to them - we'll be seeing many high quality games coming out of kickstarter. Triple A visuals like Killzone or Uncharted are unlikely to rise from kickstarter but more indie-like and artsy games like Thomas Was Alone or the likes of Pixeljunk Monsters. They're both by no means, triple A but they bring unique gameplay to the table. This is not to say that we should just start voting for ALL the kick starter projects and hope they become successful. Vote for the ones you like, and the ones you think will be good! If many others vote for the same project, it's more likely going to succeed. 




To be up to date with GamerTrust, Like our Facebook page and follow us on Google+