Kick Starting

Tim Schafer  is a game designer that gained a lot of notoriety throughout the 90’s creating computer adventure games (The Secret of Monkey Island, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango). Overtime, however, the popularity of this genre waned and essentially died by 2000. 12 years later Schafer decided that it was time to return to his creative roots and make a new adventure game. Lacking the necessary funding to carry out his goal himself, Schafer contacted every big time game publisher he could. The results were less than successful; every company emphatically rejected his offer, stating that there was not profitability in his idea. A few years ago this would have been the end, a brilliant idea snuffed out before its time, but now there is an alternative.

Using the fund raising website Kickstarter, Schafer was able to market his game idea directly to consumers, asking them to pay for a game that Schafer and his team would then make. The original production goal was 400,000 dollars, that goal was reached in 8 hours. As of May 07, the project has raised 3.3 million dollars. The game hasn’t been made and it’s already profitable! 

The basic way the Kickstarter works is that someone presents an outline of the idea they’re wishing to fund. The idea can be practically anything, from a quirky invention to a post-apocalyptic web-series. To incentivize investment each projects offer special perks and access at different investment levels. Sometime this includes special art or meeting the creators but almost always includes the product being developed. The real beauty of Kickstarter is that is circumvents the traditional development model. The usual product development model is idea is hatched, it’s moved on to management, fiddled with by marketing, put into production, and then finally (and hopefully) bought by consumers. In this model, the consumer is the last (and sometimes least important) element in the chain. Frankly I think this is a stupid and outdated model in some markets.

I love Kickstarter. It’s a new digital voice of the market, if people like an idea they can choose to support it. There isn’t some executive enforcing their own arbitrary views with a militant marketing team, shoving it down consumer’s throats. It’s democracy by wallet. While I don’t think Kickstarter will replace the traditional model, it will compete with it; which in a vibrate economy is always a good thing.