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It turns out that pledges for games on Kickstarter are on the decline as new statistics are suggesting that crowd funded games are making half as much as they did in 2013. Based on data from the first half of this year, analyst firm, ICO, is expecting to see $27,023,480 poured in to gaming projects this year.
$27 million sounds pretty good but its actually pretty low compared to last year's $57,934,417. There are multiple reasons for the supposed Kickstarter gaming decline, we've seen some very high profile projects canned, such as the Yogsventures project. Another reason could be the rise of Steam Early Access, which allows developers to release very early concept and prototype versions of a game for whatever price they think people will pay.
Additionally, we've seen around a 20 per cent drop in gaming projects on Kickstarter, last year, 446 games were successfully funded, while this year we're only expected to see 350. ICO analyst, Thomas Bidaux, explained why he thinks Steam Early Access has had an impact on crowd funding:
“The vast majority of the Kickstarter video game projects are PC-based and when you consider the amount of work required to get a project funded on Kickstarter, compare it to the relative ease to go to Early Access in comparison, and add to that the fact that on Early Access the funding doesn't stop after one month, I suspect a lot of Early Access successes skipped the crowd funding phase to go directly to alpha funding.”
“I cannot fault them – Early Access is a great opportunity for developers as well. Not entirely incompatible with a crowd funding campaign, it can still prevail because the amount required is not as important.”
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KitGuru Says: Early Access does seem to be much easier than a crowd funding campaign and consumers get something to play immediately rather than having to wait so it makes sense that more developers are going down that route. Do you guys think Kickstarter gaming projects will continue to decline? Have you ever backed anything or brought an early access title?
Anyone even surprised? After all those failures where some devs made some promises and delivered something else..
It makes sense… these ‘developers’ who have almost no experience are suddenly handed a shit ton of money. They have no sense to deliver these promises that are made and come up short-handed. There should have been more structure and pressure to deliver. Kickstarter should have hired professional game developers to oversee projects funded by kickstarter. Not to change the direction of their vision, but to facilitate actual progress. Keep schedules, streamline development processes, keep the PR up to date. This was the stepping stone for better projects, but I feel that the large amount of failures that have happened might have soured peoples tastes for the project. We will move on, but something that could have allowed great games to be made is going to die off and the next ‘big’ thing will step up to the plate. Goodbye Kickstarter, it’s been interesting.
Early access is a long scam. Kickstarter is a short scam. 🙂
Early Access should be revamped so that developers don’t get any of the money raised through it at all until the game is shipped within the timeframe provided with allowances for delays (set by Steam – perhaps a voting system for EA purchasers to demand their money back if the game is not delivering or development dries up), forcing them to secure bank loans with it. The idea being that they can say “look at all these purchases we have secured if we can ship v1.0”.
This gives the developers two lots of stakeholders. 1. The gamers who have bought and paid for your game. 2. A bank, who can call their loan if you’re doing a shitty job, or taking too long. The bank now takes the place of the publisher, but without taking all the profits, because once you repay the bank loan, any profits are your own.
I know someone is going to say “but how do you expect developers to work on a game without the early access money?” and my reply is “how did it work before Early Access was a thing?”.
This model protects gamers, and that’s all that should be done. Currently gamers shoulder ALL the risk. It allows shady developers to publish on EA, take some money, spend it and give nothing back, and move on. My suggestions (with refinement) would force those people out and make sure only dedicated legitimate people move to Early Access.