Kickstarter has become a common method for small developers to try and fund their projects, but now such projects are reaching saturation. Of course, with few of these projects having put out any product yet, a long term concern is whether some of these projects will fail before they put out a game, or if they simply put out a bad product, which might be just as damaging.
“At the moment, there’s no guarantee of delivery,” says Stainless Games’ Patrick Buckland. “Now, with a company like ours, we’re going to deliver because we’ve got a huge track record and lots of other blue-chip clients – Hasbro, EA, Microsoft – who expect that from us. But there will be smaller companies out there who go over budget, get things wrong, and, y’know, generally fail, and the people who pledge aren’t going to get anything for their money. It needs to mature to a more eBay-like system, where if you pledge your money you’re entering into a two-way legal contract. If you pay that money, they have to deliver you something for that money.”
“The general public may fund four games and only one of them will turn out to be any good, if they’re lucky,” he added. “Not only will some of these games never come out, some of them will come out and they’ll be crap, because some games are. You can’t get it right all the time. That’s any developer, and I’m including ourselves here. You can’t get it right all the time.”
Source: GamesIndustry International
