In March of 2009, Josh Freese (a session drummer who's played with every band you've ever heard of) combined preorder-funding, tiered pricing, and a huge dollop of punk rock ridiculousness to finance his second album, "Since 1972." For $7, you could download the album. For $50, you would get a signed CD, a T-shirt, and a personal thank-you phone call from Freese.
For $1,000, Freese would wash your car, take you out drinking, and then you'd give each other haircuts in the parking lot of the Long Beach courthouse. For $20,000, Freese, Tool's Maynard James Keenan, and Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh would take you mini-golfing, and then drop you off on the side of the freeway.
The publicity stunt was a huge success, getting write-ups everywhere from Wired to NPR, and "crowdfunding" took off. This was a huge boon to Kickstarter, a crowdfunding service that launched a month after the release of "Since 1972", and quickly established itself as the market leader.
Crowdfunding services-web sites that act as both a social network to connect projects with backers and as a marketplace or escrow house for project funding-have become a popular business model in the last two years, and several more have sprung up alongside Kickstarter, each with their own perks, quirks, and twists on the basic model.
Crowdfunding is a natural fit for an independent game developer who needs to connect with an audience and secure funding at the same time. Rather than having to "prove" your game to a publisher, you're "proving" it directly to your customers, and you don't have to go out on a limb funding it yourself with no idea of whether you'll sell enough copies to recoup your investment.
Whichfunding!?
While Kickstarter is the most well-known crowdfunding service, it may not be the best fit for every video game project, so we're taking a look at five different crowdfunding services for video game projects to help you decide which will work best for your needs.
Kickstarter, the leader of the pack, has successfully funded over 6,500 projects since launching in April of 2009, 67 of which have been video games. IndieGoGo actually launched over a year before Kickstarter, but limited its funding to film projects until 2010.
RocketHub and ulule are two young up-and-comers that launched last year, and are taking the basic crowdfunding model in interesting new directions; RocketHub is building gamification and an incubator of sorts on top of the basic model, while ulule is coupling its crowdfunding service with a message board and keeping costs to a bare minimum to create a very friendly and inviting space. Finally, 8-Bit Funding is the underdog of the bunch, launched at the beginning of this year as a crowdfunding service exclusively for video games.
The biggest core difference that separates these crowdfunding services is the funding model. Kickstarter and ulule both use an "all or nothing" funding model, meaning that no money exchanges hands until a project's deadline is reached, and only if the project has also reached or exceeded its funding goal. IndieGoGo and 8-Bit Funding both use a "keep it all" model where funding is paid immediately to the project, regardless of whether the project reaches its funding goal by the deadline.
RocketHub has a model it calls "All & More," which is a "keep it all" model that further rewards creators that reach their funding goals with tickets to its incubator-like "Launchpad Opportunities" service. (Both IndieGoGo and RocketHub also release half of their service fee to projects that successfully meet their funding goals as an added incentive.) So, although only 400 IndieGoGo projects have successfully reached their funding goals, over 22,000 IndieGoGo projects have at least gotten some funding through the service. Likewise, RocketHub counts 94 projects that have reached their funding goals, but has distributed "over half a million dollars" across all its projects.
Brian Meece, CEO of RocketHub, points out that a "keep it all" method means that "a creative can aim high with the confidence of a supportive safety net." Creators can rest assured that every dollar their project has raised is money in the bank, and don't have to worry about not getting anything if they're just a few dollars short when the deadline strikes.
