The lure of crowd-funding for any developer is surely the lack of caveats against the money: with a publisher, investment is often a matter of handing over valuable IP rights and submitting to their demands; with the crowd, the developer is obliged only to deliver the product for which people have already paid, and the tiered rewards offered as an incentive for larger pledges. For the latter, particularly, the developer can make a substantial sum of money for relatively light work, like creating an NPC modelled on the backer.
In Fargo's view, this is the entire appeal of crowd-funding from the perspective of the crowd. It affords them an active role in fostering creativity, while presenting options to make their relationship to the product more personal. Rewards of this kind directly serve an audience need - something Fargo understands from personal experience.
"I've invested in a bunch of projects," Fargo says. "Frankly, I've invested in games that I probably would never have bought anyway: for their own cleverness, I was excited, I was helping a guy with a vision, whatever.
"Some of them I really do want to play, but it's a mix. If 25 to 30 per cent of those went sideways it wouldn't sour me - honestly. If every single one went sideways that would be a problem, but that's not going to happen."
