Thoughts on KickStarter and Crowd-Funded Gaming

Lately places like KickStarter are getting more media attention due to the increasing number of Games being placed up there. Games like "Wasteland 2" have garnered much attention, as they have raised over $2 Million so far for development of the game, which is amazing.

The way I see Crowd-Funded games is that I think it's a Double-Edged Sword. The great thing about it is that it lets the Developers make a game how they want and get support from the Gaming Community. The downside is that if thousands of people donate money, that means there are more people who you need to satisfy.

The idea behind it is actually pretty great though, because it means Corporations don't have their claws in it to force it to be a cookie-cut design just to make huge profits. The bad news, though, is distribution. It can be damn near impossible to get the right means of distributing your game to consumers when you're Crowd-Funded, as you have to develop contacts or pay companies to distribute your product to the market.

Wasteland 2 is a prime example. Wasteland 2 developers chose to go with EA to publish their game through their online Origins service. Electronic Arts is probably the worst Gaming company in the world, up there with Activision and CDProjekt RED, and EA is known quite well for their destruction of games and developers.

While I see the positives and negatives of this type of development, I still feel it's a great way to go. I feel it gives people more choice and more flexibility in developing games and choosing to support games that you want to be made that the big-wig corporate people just won't make for fear of it not making money.

I hope to see more Crowd-Funded games in the future.