This article was written by Tomas Rawlings, Design & Production Director for Auroch Digital.
Crowdfunding has shaken-up the games industry. Before its attendance, the main way to get the funds to make your idea was either via investors or a publisher – and both often had strong ideas about what would and would not work. Then crowdfunding burst onto the scene, with notable projects such as Double Fine Adventure and Star Citizen generating well over their asking amounts to spotlight the increasingly exciting role the player is now playing in game development. What the players are willing to fund has often turned out to be different from what publishers and investors are looking for. However, this is no route to easy money – setting up and running a successful crowdfunding operation is a major undertaking and the more being asked, the more work needs to be done to convince people to back you. In this session recorded at the Nine Worlds Geekfest 2013 in the UK, two successful Kickstarter veterans Jan Wagner (who raised over $500,000 for Shadowrun Online) and Alex Harvey (who raised over $40,000 for Tangiers, the surrealist stealth game) talk about the methods, approaches and more of their experience of crowdfunding their games.
The above video was a session at Nine Worlds Geekfest 2013. The session was supported by The Wellcome Trust as part of their engagement with the games, broadcast and film industries and commitment to gaming as a form of public engagement with science. They are on Twitter at: @WellcomeTrust.
The session was moderated by @TomasRawlings.
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