Information The rising success of KickStarter

[DarkUnderlord]

Tags: Kickstarter

Given the huge success - and number - of KickStarter projects of late, I thought we'd take a break from our regular programming and take a look to see how KickStarter is affecting other industries. Starting with a band:

Palmer, 36, one half of punk-cabaret act The Dresden Dolls, is funding her latest solo album using the crowd-funding website Kickstarter. One offering is a USD5,000 package that will bring Amanda Palmer to your town to play a house party. Some 35 of these gigs were available for purchase, and all have been snapped up. Palmer's new album is truly, completely, fan-funded. That raises unique challenges.

"We're going to South Africa, Israel, and possibly Puerto Rico," Palmer, says, admitting that so far, it sounds pretty romantic. "But … today I had an agonising conversation with my manager about how the fuck we're going to get to the middle of nowhere in Germany. "[It's] four hours from the closest airport [and the gig has to be during] this upcoming tour because the guys who bought the package are going overseas for a year and begged us — begged us — to try and make it before they moved. So we're sitting there looking at a map going, 'Is it possible?'"​

Makes you wonder whether some people are just promising too much, for too little. How many projects are going to struggle to deliver because they promised everything for $1.50?

Kickstarter, set up in 2009, is an online tool used to fundraise for creative projects. Since launching, the website has successfully funded 20,000 projects, with total donations topping USD200 million. Some 1.8 million people have become backers [some 44% of all projects on KickStarter have been successfully funded, with the average project hovering around the $5,000 mark].
[...]
On Twitter, Palmer has over 550,000 followers. She's constantly blogging and tweeting about the minutiae of her life. ("Here I am, decorating the Christmas tree in my bra," that sort of thing.) Something she believes helped enable the Kickstarter to succeed.​

Hmmmm... Chris Avellone + bra + Christmas tree = KickStarter success???

And some more about shunning the evils of publishers:

"[Recording] labels are becoming more and more unnecessary," she says. "You can go directly to your fans, whether you've got a couple of dozen of them or a hundred million, it doesn't matter, you can now reach them."
[...]
While Palmer has been drumming up support for her album, Kickstarter has been gaining attention for a different reason. A watch that connects to your smartphone has raised over USD10 million from almost 69,000 backers. That's a lot of cash (or a lot of watches).​

And from the watch story, talk of how KickStarter may open a whole new realm of venture capital:

“This year marks the year that we’ve seen Kickstarter enter the real world in a number of ways,” said Perry Chen, one of its founders. “At Tribeca Film Fest, there are a dozen different Kickstarter-backed films, there’s an installation at the Whitney Biennial that was a Kickstarter project and we just had our birthday party at a Kickstarter-funded restaurant.”

Much as the introduction of cheap Web services lowered the barrier to entry for people seeking to create a start-up, and as offshore manufacturing gave entrepreneurs a chance to make products without having to build a factory, Kickstarter offers budding entrepreneurs a way to float ideas and see if there’s a market for them before they trade ownership of their company for money from venture capitalists.
[...]
“The terms on Kickstarter are more attractive than any bank loan or venture capital amount,” Mr. Polyakov said. “If you can get funding through Kickstarter, there is no reason not to.”​

So is KickStarter just the current fad that, much like Kony 2012, will be forgotten in a month? Or are we really witnessing the death of the middle-man and the publishing industry? No doubt coming up sometime in the near future: Stories of how successful KickStarter projects turned into abject miserable failures that went broke and never delivered.

 

[RK47]

It's not gonna be industry standard. It's an alternative though. I kinda like it, but felt a bit wary buying some game with just 'ideas floating around' big names might alleviate those fears, I'm neither positive nor negative about it. Just apathetic. Didn't stop me from funding two games, but I wouldn't claim this is the best model ever.

 

[Executer]

Kickstarter is still a middle man, and my guess is they'll try and up their cut with not much competition around.

That said producers of content are going to try and find different ways to source funding direct from consumers, Kickstarter may go away but I think the general concept will keep getting traction, and new models besides Kickstarter will become more common. I think people who make the content find the potential to have greater creative freedom attractive as well.

 

[RK47]

Would also clarify that I never monitored Kickstarter for any new ventures. I merely read what this prestigious magazine news posts or other posters thread. So far it's pretty ok.

 

[Forest Dweller]

If backers are promised something how do the developers make money?

Or is the market price of that wristwatch gonna be less than $99?

 

[Davaris]

DarkUnderlord

Makes you wonder whether some people are just promising too much, for too little. How many projects are going to struggle to deliver because they promised everything for $1.50?

I saw an article that came out during the Wasteland Kickstarter and it mentioned one game maker, that did not properly account for all costs and he ended up with nothing at the end.

 

[Dexter]

It's not gonna be industry standard. It's an alternative though. I kinda like it, but felt a bit wary buying some game with just 'ideas floating around' big names might alleviate those fears, I'm neither positive nor negative about it. Just apathetic. Didn't stop me from funding two games, but I wouldn't claim this is the best model ever.

You should realize that it's not really restricted to gaming though, and it's just generally a way of funding stuff and as such won't die, there isn't a "bubble". Their biggest field so far has apparently been movies and there's some great projects and even bigger names being drawn to KickStarter, like the writers behind Taxi Driver and American Psycho, because they wanted more creative freedom: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/turnstyle/american-psycho-taxi-driv_b_1501411.html
At the last Sundance Film Festival there has been 17 movies that got "Kickstarted", a few of them even nominated for Academy Awards: http://www.toronto.com/article/712440
It's not only KickStarter though, but just in general through the power of the Internet, people getting together to make things happen. One of the latest films I've seen in cinema for instance was "Iron Sky", which was another movie made because of the crowd, although they called it "crowd investing": http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/05/play/iron-clad-investment
And yesterday I Pre-Ordered "Indie Game: The Movie", the first movie I know of commercially available through Steam at 1080p, and again, KickStarted: http://www.indiegamemag.com/indie-g...ers-available-on-steam-for-june-12th-release/

This is much more than "funding two games" and I'm surprised people don't seem to see it :p

 

[RK47]

And yesterday I Pre-Ordered "Indie Game: The Movie", the first movie I know of commercially available through Steam at 1080p, and again, KickStarted: http://www.indiegamemag.com/indie-g...ers-available-on-steam-for-june-12th-release/

Are you out of your damn mind? Why would you even pay to download a making of game movie? I know supporting indie is some noble cause in others, but I fail to see the point in buying that. I rather spend the money on Civ V sales or something.

 

[Dexter]

Are you out of your damn mind? Why would you even pay to download a making of game movie? I know supporting indie is some noble cause in others, but I fail to see the point in buying that. I rather spend the money on Civ V sales or something.

Because I May, also because I wanna see how Steam handles it, how the movie is and I really really want a Steam for movies, where even niche movies and shit can get their audience and make lots of money without going through studios, but it should be without DRM, have sales and variable prices, be worldwide and in good quality and especially not cunt-heaven where only big studios can put up their movies and get most of the profits like iTunes or whatnot, I'd sink money into that... a lot more than by mainly going to the cinema every now and then.

Also it's been largely well received, apparently been picked up by HBO, who want to turn it into a TV series: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-01-23-hbo-options-tv-rights-to-indie-game-the-movie
Even won the Documentary price at Sundance this year: http://www.cbc.ca/manitoba/scene/other/2012/01/30/indie-game-the-movie-wins-in-sundance/

 

[RK47]

u have a point there, anime on steam. Hmmmmm.

 

[Captain Shrek]

Although as someone pointed out, Kickstarster is STILL the middleman, is it not worth noting that it is LESS of a middle man than middle men used to be? I think the only thing remains to be seen is that it does not become the evil it replaced. If you think it through, middlemen are essential: They fill the skill gap that the developer has, for marketing. The problems occur when all they specialize in is marketing and they also try to take over the development, cmp. EA. As long as they two functions are kept away from each other Kickstarter is the ideal way of reaching to the public. It functions just like a stock market, where you have the freedom to fund a project which you think is worth the returns. I would be a cautious investor and only fund games that have demos or devs I trust, but you could be a speculator throwing money off to indie devs you never heard of before. This is what they meant by voting through the wallet anyway. So much fun.

This is how changes in history happen, not digitally, but slowly in analogue fashion before some ritual/custom is changed or made absent.

 

[Kz3r0]

About Amanda Palmer and the whole delivering what has been promised, canceled concerts or defective products always existed, the real test is in which percentage this will happen not that all will be perfect.
Without mentioning that other projects expressly state that before claiming some of the upper tiers accommodations should be made.


That said, Kickstarter will replace publishers as Amazon replaced retail stores.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Stinger]

What's the joke?

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

What joke?

 

[felipepepe]

It's all love and flowers now, but soon enough projects are going to fail, or simply deliver shit, and the audience will be more weary of kickstarter.... It will be an alternative for famous people, or those that biulded a community, but the rest will just have to face an insane competition and get lost in the middle of countless projects that promises everything but have nothing to show...

But I like the freedom that it brought to developers. Fargo can make W2, use the profit to make his next game, and if he needs and extra $, he knows he can turn to kickstarter instead of selling his soul to publishers.

 

[DragoFireheart]

The wonderful thing about kickstarter is that if it doesn't encourage publishers to step up their game and stop being crap, it will at the very least kill off and/or weaken the terrible ones.

I doubt all the kickstarters are going to be like Wasteland 2, but having an alternative to publishers will make for a healthier game industry. More competition = better companies fighting for customers = better games.

 

[Johannes]

One thing I've wondered about Kickstarter is how it fails to acknowledge the differing costs of different rewards - take a game for example, if you have a box (or shirt, poster, whatever) you have to print and ship out, that costs, say, 60$, and a digital download of the game for 15$, in the end the gross profit between those two pledges might not be that much. But the fancy expensive thing counts much more towards the funding goal.
I wonder if that'll ever be available to tweak for the projects...

 

[Untermensch]

Like felipepepe said, inevitably some projects will turn out shit, run out of money, .... and people will be more cautious where they put their money.
Only devs with an established reputation will be able to use them, which is fine by me.
Too many indies have jumped on the bandwagon, so it will become oversaturated, like the shooter genre, soon.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

Amanda Palmer is an incredibly narcissistic and attention-whoring cunt. I knew her personally when I lived in Boston.

 

[Mozgoëbstvo]

Kickstarter is still a middle man, and my guess is they'll try and up their cut with not much competition around.

Yes, let's cut the middle man and return to the oh-so-successful "donate" button in the top corner of obscure game websites. I'm sure that'll get the cash rollin'.

 

[Mother Russia]

Kickstarter is fantastic, it's a great idea. I wish I had thought of it, you can be sure.

BUT...

It is a fucking GOLDMINE for scammers. I assure you, there have alrady been a number of scams. They will never be found, because as of yet the amount is too small for it to be worth the trouble.

But just wait...as soon as donations start topping scores of millions, then Kickstarter will start making headlines for scams.

I would not be surprised at all for 'terrorist' attacks to be funded via Kickstarter.

 

[Executer]

Kickstarter is still a middle man, and my guess is they'll try and up their cut with not much competition around.

Yes, let's cut the middle man and return to the oh-so-successful "donate" button in the top corner of obscure game websites. I'm sure that'll get the cash rollin'.

Maybe in the future a developer will give you a direct mail out (you signed up when you bought their game) directing you to their Website, from which they'll run an actual Kickstarter campaign running totals and all. I'm not saying Kickstarter isn't an improvement , I'm just saying new crowd funding models won't show up. Don't see why you feel/reacted the way you did.

 

[Executer]

Sorry, meant to say new models will show up (can't edit original post atm).

 

[Country_Gravy]

Amanda Palmer is an incredibly narcissistic and attention-whoring cunt. I knew her personally when I lived in Boston.

She can suck a mean dick, though, and that counts for something.

Also: snug balls