{"id":46374,"date":"2019-03-27T06:00:12","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T10:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=46374"},"modified":"2019-03-27T05:39:04","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T09:39:04","slug":"experienced-points-why-too-much-success-is-bad-for-crowdfunding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=46374","title":{"rendered":"Experienced Points: Why Too Much Success Is Bad for Crowdfunding"},"content":{"rendered":"

My column this week is a bit on the Phoenix Point<\/em> controversy and why it’s destructive to the crowdfunding scene<\/a>. I talked about it on the podcast this week<\/a>, but this column is a text version of that rant for those of you who aren’t into the whole multimedia thing.<\/p>\n

The problem is that developers are using crowd money to make demos so they can shop their project around and secure more traditional funding. I don’t have a solution for this. Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe this is an inherent flaw in the crowdfunding scene. Backers wind up being investors with no ability to hold the studio accountable, and that makes them vulnerable.<\/p>\n

Lots of game projects die \/ get canceled before they reach release. Most of them vanish without us ever knowing they existed. Unless the project was based on established IP or the team featured a famous industry name, we don’t usually care. If the investors lose their money, nobody really sheds a tear for them because:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. If you’re personally backing a multi-million dollar game, then you’re clearly independently wealthy. Presumably you’re risking money you can afford to lose.<\/li>\n
  2. If you’re an investor, then you’re probably investing with a hope of getting a cut of the profits. You were risking money in the hopes of making more. If there was no risk, then everyone would want to invest in games. The reward and the risk of this exchange are inextricably bound.\u00a0I’m not one of those people that enjoys a smug feeling of schadenfreude when rich people lose money, but I understand it comes with the territory.<\/li>\n
  3. One would hope that you know what you’re doing. I assume you did your homework? You learned about the team, the proposed design, and the specific market niche the game is aimed at. If you did, then you knew the risks going in. If you didn’t, then you were reckless. Either way, that’s just business.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In crowdfunding, the whole system works sideways. Backers are technically investors, but they bear a similar risk without any of the benefits. Backers can still lose everything they put in, but no matter how successful the game is, none of the money makes it back to the investors. They each get a copy of the game, and that’s it. An investor might risk ten million in the hopes of making twenty million, but a backer risks the price of a game in the hopes of getting… a game. Kind of a crappy deal.<\/p>\n

    On the other hand, crowdfunding has been a huge boon for those of us who are into niche genres. There are beloved games that exist now that wouldn’t exist at all if not for crowdfunding.<\/p>\n

    In the comments at the Escapist, someone wondered why I didn’t bring up Star Citizen<\/a>. Honestly, I didn’t talk about it because I don’t know what to make of it. It’s a complete anomaly among crowdfunded games. It’s massively behind schedule, plagued by rumors of mismanagement, and staggering under the most epic case of scope creep I’ve ever seen. On the other hand, it’s massively over-funded and still pulling in money.<\/p>\n

    The Star Citizen Kickstarter was seven years ago, and we’re now five years past the original ship date. For the last four years I’ve been expecting the project to either stabilize or collapse, but it hasn’t happened yet. The game is forever hovering on the edge between “troubled but successful project” and “massive boondoggle”. I find the whole thing to be an amusing curiosity, but I suppose I’d feel different if I’d backed the project myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    My column this week is a bit on the Phoenix Point controversy and why it’s destructive to the crowdfunding scene. I talked about it on the podcast this week, but this column is a text version of that rant for those of you who aren’t into the whole multimedia thing. The problem is that developers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-column"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46374"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46378,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46374\/revisions\/46378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}