Kickstarter and big name PC games

[Menegrothx]

We've argued on this forum if PC gaming is dead or not, but now that some really prominent PC game developers of the past have started their kickstarter projects one can't help noticing the fact that the amounts of money they're pledging for are really quite modest
Star Citizen (Chris Roberts): 2 million dollars
Double fine adventure (Tim Schafer): 400,000 dollars
Leisure Suit Larry project (Al Lowe): 500,000 dollars
Project Eternity (Feargus Urquhart, Chris Parker, Darren Monahan, Chris Avellone, and Chris Jones+it's by Obsidian Entertainment): 1,100 000 dollars (final goal is 3 million dollars)
Wasteland 2 (Chris Avellone, Brian Fargo): 900,000 dollars

When you look at those numbers, they're not very high compared to what it costs to produce an average non budget console game these days. Naturally all these games, except Star Citizen, haven't got as much content (that is expensive to produce) as fully 3D games with impressive cutscenes and all, so it doesn't cost as much to produce them. But are you seriously telling me that such legendary game developers cant get lousy 0,5-2 millions from real publishers these days? All of those guys are some of the best and most influental developers in their respective genres. Doesn't that tell quite a lot about the state of PC gaming when a mediocre FPS/TPS/action adventure console/multi plat game can have even a 20+ million dollar budget, but legends like that cant even get 5-10% of the same financing with out a site like kickstarter?

Now there are other reasons why they prefer this method (no need to censor or dumb down games like Al Lowe said, no deadline and so on), but I think that pretty much all of these guys have said that they are looking for money through kickstarter simply because it's hard/impossible to find funding for adventure games (and other "dead" genres) these days.


This is unrelated, but wouldn't it be cool if people could start kick starter projects to collect money to buy franchises/publishing rights like Crash Bandicoot and Ultima and give them back to their original developers so they could make new games?

[dogman91]

This is unrelated, but wouldn't it be cool if people could start kick starter projects to collect money to buy franchises/publishing rights like Crash Bandicoot and Ultima and give them back to their original developers so they could make new games?

I've thought about this a million times, specifically the idea of Banjo-Kazooie being taken away from Microsoft's death grip and into the ex-Rare devs' hands who worked on those games in the first place. In general it would be amazing if promising new 3D platformers on the same scale or greater as ones in the late 90's can get funded through Kickstarter.

Random rant: The problem with these publishers is that they're forgetting that new trends for success are built on risk and subsequently the amount of effort they put behind it: they have to believe in it. It's comfortable for people to stay in the present of what "works" now for sales, but when something becomes stale and outdated and stagnated they'll completely go under, no doubt about it. Look at the record industry and their tolerance for digital distribution of music; it really took them this long to even think about selling music on the internet and seem to rather cling on a format that's been around since the early 80's! (CD) Look at AOL as well... where are they now? That's what happens when you don't change. For gaming, I feel like the same happened with Nintendo and the Wii for motion controls and the family audience (in terms of Microsoft/Sony needing that tried and true "sales data" to put all their effort into copying it and putting their support behind it). Once Call of Duty and Halo becomes stagnated people will turn to the next big genre (yes I think it might even kill off the FPS genre for awhile; the same which happened to platformers). Basically, there's no eye for the future and it's a darn shame dangnamit.

[ATARI800XLfan]

can't wait for star citizen, too bad it recommends 12GB of system memory, a AMD 7970 and a six core AMD, it is crysis all over again.

[emwearz]

Broken Sword - the Serpent's Curse Adventure By Revolution Software.
$771,560 pledged.

[isiolia]

I guess one angle is, do we know that Kickstarter is the only source of funding that these projects have?

It seems more likely to me that a good Kickstarter campaign is a potential way to build hype, illustrate market interest, and add to the coffers during the production process. I'm sure there are some projects that have no other funding, but I doubt it's all of them.