Tadhg Kelly writes about the recent funding of DoubleFine – getting over $400,000 (their target) in less than a day.
What’s also interesting is the spread of backers. Around half have donated the basic $15 pledge, which gets you a copy of the game plus video documentaries. A further 35% have gone for the $30 pledge, which gets you to the video in HD plus a soundtrack. 10% have pledged $100. 3% have pledged $250. 31 people have put up $1000 each, 5 people have put in $5000 a-piece and one intrepid soul has put $10,000 into the project.
Double Fine Productions previous had success with Psychonauts and Brutal Legend (among others) so this success is a little like the reported success of Radiohead and NIN in their independent efforts. It’s going to be a lot easier when everyone already knows you are awesome.
I’ve seen a lot of Kickstarter projects fail – both to get funding and also fail to deliver the end product. In many cases it’s because they are new to the market. I’ve considered using Kickstarter for my own games project but despite my background, I would be considered new to the market and I would need to collect a team of established professionals to my vision in order to be taken seriously.
So is success in Kickstarter going to require building a career first? Or tapping into a meme? Masterful use of social media and connections?
> this success is a little like the reported success of Radiohead and NIN in their independent efforts. It’s going to be a lot easier when everyone already knows you are awesome.
Yup. Had this exact same thought this morning when I read Tadhg’s post. I think he refers to using it to start new game franchises rather than starting game companies. This success is too much of an outlier to read much into it though.
I certainly hope it’s a masterful use of social media and connections…
Actually an interesting thing about this specific instance is that the 10000 section was CLOSED after that one bidder, so there could have been many more willing to pony up the cash.
If I were a cynical type, I’d say that there’s a correlation between the top level reward closing, the OTHER REWARDS and the fact you can’t legally sell equity via Kickstarter.
Or…there was a teensy weensy bit of astroturfing going on: i.e. It costs $500 to get a headline of “Wow, a $10000 donation”, a lot of coverage and the meme created that its okay to spend $5000 on this. That’s definitely worth $500.
I’d say the 10,000 donation probably came from @notch