Kreij
Senior Monkey Moderator
- Joined
- Feb 6, 2007
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Crowd Sourcing, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
The Good :
Kickstarter and other forms of “crowd sourcing” have been a huge plus to small indie developers trying to produce a product on a shoestring budget. It gives them the opportunity to produce a game that would be considered by traditional publishers as being too risky, or so niche they cannot find other sources of funding to make their goal a reality.
Developers have taken different approaches to crowd sourcing. Notch (Markus Peerson), the developer of Minecraft , gave people a pre-release (alpha or beta) version of the game to play with the promise of the full version to “investors” when the game was released. He followed through on his promise and his game has been a huge success. Others offer some kind of in-game perks, access to beta tests and other incentives to entice people to sign on to help them out.
The Bad :
When someone contributes to a crowd sourcing cause, they do so with the belief that they will be rewarded, in some manner, for their monetary investment. The problem is that there is no guarantee, whatsoever, that you will get anything from your investment. The rules (if you can call them that) state that if the game does not make it to release, the people who pitched in will get a refund of their donation. While on the surface this looks good, the reality is that if the company fails and goes into administration (ie. Bankruptcy) the crowd sourcing people will not see a dime. Even if the company does not fail, there is nothing stopping them from compensating investors with previous IP, which you may already own, and is worthless to you.
The Ugly:
We are now seeing larger companies, or prominent people in the industry, using crowd sourcing to fund their projects. These people have the resources and contacts, in place, to make the project a go already. They seem to simply be using crowd sourcing as method to get people to subsidize their future products, which are many times reboots of older IP. While this is fine for a new start up, who may have obtained or already owns a particular IP, having a large studio or already wealthy developer do it just wreaks of digital panhandling.
In no way am I against crowd sourcing, and in no way am I trying to say that people should not get involved in this manner. What I do want to convey to people is that they really should take a hard look at not only what is being made available in a crowd sourcing manner, but who is doing it. The veterans in the game industry are taking notice, and you should too.
As always, any comments on the things I write are appreciated.
Thanks for reading,
Kreij
The Good :
Kickstarter and other forms of “crowd sourcing” have been a huge plus to small indie developers trying to produce a product on a shoestring budget. It gives them the opportunity to produce a game that would be considered by traditional publishers as being too risky, or so niche they cannot find other sources of funding to make their goal a reality.
Developers have taken different approaches to crowd sourcing. Notch (Markus Peerson), the developer of Minecraft , gave people a pre-release (alpha or beta) version of the game to play with the promise of the full version to “investors” when the game was released. He followed through on his promise and his game has been a huge success. Others offer some kind of in-game perks, access to beta tests and other incentives to entice people to sign on to help them out.
The Bad :
When someone contributes to a crowd sourcing cause, they do so with the belief that they will be rewarded, in some manner, for their monetary investment. The problem is that there is no guarantee, whatsoever, that you will get anything from your investment. The rules (if you can call them that) state that if the game does not make it to release, the people who pitched in will get a refund of their donation. While on the surface this looks good, the reality is that if the company fails and goes into administration (ie. Bankruptcy) the crowd sourcing people will not see a dime. Even if the company does not fail, there is nothing stopping them from compensating investors with previous IP, which you may already own, and is worthless to you.
The Ugly:
We are now seeing larger companies, or prominent people in the industry, using crowd sourcing to fund their projects. These people have the resources and contacts, in place, to make the project a go already. They seem to simply be using crowd sourcing as method to get people to subsidize their future products, which are many times reboots of older IP. While this is fine for a new start up, who may have obtained or already owns a particular IP, having a large studio or already wealthy developer do it just wreaks of digital panhandling.
In no way am I against crowd sourcing, and in no way am I trying to say that people should not get involved in this manner. What I do want to convey to people is that they really should take a hard look at not only what is being made available in a crowd sourcing manner, but who is doing it. The veterans in the game industry are taking notice, and you should too.
As always, any comments on the things I write are appreciated.
Thanks for reading,
Kreij