"Ripple" effect in crowdfunding

[Veeno]

So I came upon this.

 

While some info is a bit outdated ("Double Fine Adventure is the largest project in Kickstarter history by pretty much every metric, including dollars pledged and number of backers."), it's impossible to deny the incredible "ripple" effect DFA had on Kickstarter:

 

 

(The green line marks the beginning of DFA Kickstarter campaign.)

 

I was thinking, it would be interesting to see the same graph done for Project Eternity. It must've brought some new gamer crowd to Kickstarter, but what I'm more curious about is how Project Eternity's "ripple" would compare with DFA's. Because, let's be honest, shooting the pledges from what appears to be less than thousand per week up into tens of thousands is quite a colossal success for just a single Kickstarter campaign.

Edited October 22, 2012 by Veeno

[QuartzEye]

I hope it continues. Might well mark a permanent change in the game industry.

[C2B]

Because, let's be honest, shooting the pledges from what appears to be less than thousand per week up into tens of thousands is quite a colossal success for just a single Kickstarter campaign.

 

That happened in W2's and DFA's campagin as well. It's the spike at the end of the kickstarter.

 

The thing Eternity did better isn't that. Eternity was the most stable Kickstarter, keeping pledges up during it's entire run.

[Veeno]

That happened in W2's and DFA's campagin as well. It's the spike at the end of the kickstarter.

 

Uh, you clearly didn't read this very carefully.

 

That graph shows pledges per week to all other video game projects, not to DFA.

[C2B]

Quite visible on this chart

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjRsTwF0aHv6dFVwaTF1WTI5b24tbGxpQUdQNU1TSHc&pli=1#gid=18

[C2B]

That happened in W2's and DFA's campagin as well. It's the spike at the end of the kickstarter.

 

Uh, you clearly didn't read this very carefully.

 

That graph shows pledges per week to all other video game projects, not to DFA.

 

Ah, ok. I understood that sentence wrong. Sorry.

Edited October 22, 2012 by C2B

[Veeno]

Ah, ok. I understood that sentence wrong

 

Yeah, the point is that DFA didn't just gather a lot of money from the fans for itself, it also caused a huge influx of gamers to Kickstarter, which resulted in all other video game projects getting much more pledges per week. Hence, "ripple effect".

[DocDoomII]

Guys, his point is that the global number of backers on the site grew exponentially because of the big visibility the site gained after those particularly successful campaigns.

In general, not only to WL2, PE or DFA.

 

Is that clear now? :V

[Veeno]

Guys, his point is that the global number of backers on the site grew exponentially because of the big visibility the site gained after those particularly successful campaigns.

In general, not only to WL2, PE or DFA.

 

Is that clear now? :V

 

No I don't get it what was I trying to say... D:

 

Is purple orange...?

[Arhiippa]

I'd wager, that the effect of the later large successes has been much smaller than what DFA had, but they may have helped stabilize the situation. One big hit is nice, but having multiple big examples within quite a short timeframe has probably changed how people perceive crowdfunding in this field for good. If that hasn't happened already, it will for sure when these games come out. Assuming of course, that they get finished. But I would be pretty interested in seeing the stats around other big projects too.

 

EDIT: Oh, and Kicking It Forward has the potential to cause another huge shift.

Edited October 22, 2012 by Arhiippa

[Monte Carlo]

I found out about this game from Gfted1 in Diablo 3 chat.

 

Darn, I've outed both of us there. And he's much better than me.

[chisled2bone]

yea it will be interesting the kicking it forward initiative once it has time to actually be realized and implemented (ie. after these games have garnered funds after being released to be given back to other projects)

[Veeno]

I'd wager, that the effect of the later large successes has been much smaller than what DFA had, but they may have helped stabilize the situation. One big hit is nice, but having multiple big examples within quite a short timeframe has probably changed how people perceive crowdfunding in this field for good. If that hasn't happened already, it will for sure when these games come out. Assuming of course, that they get finished. But I would be pretty interested in seeing the stats around other big projects too.

 

EDIT: Oh, and Kicking It Forward has the potential to cause another huge shift.

 

Very wisely spoken. And I really like the Kicking It Forward idea. Its impact, though, depends greatly on how much pure profit these games manage to achieve. But regardless of that, I think it's a great way of... "recycling" the Kickstarter energy, for lack of a better wording.

[Frisk]

It is impossible to tell, but I suspect that the success of Project Eternity on Kickstarter might indeed be drawing more attention to other games currently being funded there - Star Citizen for example.

[Zeckul]

Project Eternity owns a lot of its success to an amazing marketing campaign, and I'm not talking about paid ads. The excellent trailer, daily updates, great reward tiers, graphical representation of where we were, amazing environmental screenshot near the end, etc., they really made the most out of the means they had at their disposal.

 

Of course, the premise of a new PC-exclusive, single-player isometric party-based RPG by PS:T and MotB's designers was pretty sweet in the first place.

Edited October 22, 2012 by Zeckul

[Veeno]

Now that I think about it, a better title for this thread would be "The feedback loop of crowdfunding". Because that's what it is - there's a very successful project, it draws more people to crowdfunding which enables more projects to be successful which draws more people into it, etc.

[Arhiippa]

Now that I think about it, a better title for this thread would be "The feedback loop of crowdfunding". Because that's what it is - there's a very successful project, it draws more people to crowdfunding which enables more projects to be successful which draws more people into it, etc.

 

True. If and when Kicking It Forward starts to kick in, the effect will be even bigger, but I do see a slight risk there. If Kicking It Forward will increase the chance of projects getting funded in a big way, it might start to draw in more of questionable projects.

[Frisk]

Then there is another side...when the first spectacular big Kickstarter failure appears (that is, some project that gets funded, but fails to deliver), it may scare people away from Kickstarter.

[Joukehainen]

I really think devs need to space out the projects a bit, because as it is right now, I think a lot of the same people have been funding the same projects on Kickstarter the past year, and well, our wallets are getting a bit empty.

 

Also, Frisk's point has certainly occurred to me, but it's nothing I think is too likely to happen with, say, PE.

 

One thing I'm worried about, though, is how the industry will respond to this. I'm concerned they might try to destroy the process of crowdfunding, just like they're trying to destroy filesharing, since it eliminates the need for publishers altogether. I'm worried WB or something might buy out Kickstarter -.- and then shut it down or the like. Of course, a new platform could just spring up (see the analogy with filesharing) but still, it's something I worry about.

[rjshae]

One thing I'm worried about, though, is how the industry will respond to this. I'm concerned they might try to destroy the process of crowdfunding, just like they're trying to destroy filesharing, since it eliminates the need for publishers altogether. I'm worried WB or something might buy out Kickstarter -.- and then shut it down or the like. Of course, a new platform could just spring up (see the analogy with filesharing) but still, it's something I worry about.

I doubt it since this is mostly a niche market . But it's possible the industry may view this as a way to find new talent (or promising ideas) and go poaching.

[Gatt9]

I'd wager, that the effect of the later large successes has been much smaller than what DFA had, but they may have helped stabilize the situation. One big hit is nice, but having multiple big examples within quite a short timeframe has probably changed how people perceive crowdfunding in this field for good. If that hasn't happened already, it will for sure when these games come out. Assuming of course, that they get finished. But I would be pretty interested in seeing the stats around other big projects too.

 

EDIT: Oh, and Kicking It Forward has the potential to cause another huge shift.

 

Actually, I think it's changed alot of things. Aside from the Ouya example...

 

Look at the Reaper Bones campaign and the Center Stage campaign. Both of those guys just wanted to fund adding some new minature models to their store, and in the end, ended up raking in a ton of cash. Backers got a whole bunch of minatures at incredible prices as a result, probably at cost, and over time the companies will profit hugely. It's a great example of a win-win situation.

 

Look at ADOM, that probably never would've been updated were it not for the DFA effect. Plus there's a bunch of board game conversions, and old PnP RPG's being revived. One kickstarter offered cabinet plans for MAME cabinets as a reward. Another saw a new version of Arcade History get printed. Yet another saw new articles of Tom vs Bruce commissioned. Or how about the successfull efforts to crowd fund saving artifacts from Tesla that were going to be destroyed?

 

Even more interesting, there's a group of major hollywood guys turning to kickstarter to fund a adult animated film of the comic book Goon going on right now. (Though I still pray Joss kickstarts Firefly and breaks every record!)

 

DFA changed a fantastic amount of stuff, and IMO we haven't even began to see the effects yet. We have incredible potential for art, and theoretically even science to advance and flourish by putting the power into distributed funding.

Edited October 23, 2012 by Gatt9

[Merin]

Because, let's be honest, shooting the pledges from what appears to be less than thousand per week up into tens of thousands is quite a colossal success for just a single Kickstarter campaign.

 

That happened in W2's and DFA's campagin as well. It's the spike at the end of the kickstarter.

 

The thing Eternity did better isn't that. Eternity was the most stable Kickstarter, keeping pledges up during it's entire run.

 

I don't disagree with that ... but I think, overall, Reaper and especially Order of the Stick were more impressive (not end amount, sure, but overall growth.) OotS was an amazingly steady incline. Reaper had a phenomenal boost at it's end.

[LadyCrimson]

Then there is another side...when the first spectacular big Kickstarter failure appears (that is, some project that gets funded, but fails to deliver), it may scare people away from Kickstarter.

And the other other side ... just plain ol' "Kickstarter burnout."

...the notion of Kickstarter being bought out and then altered in some way by some huge corp. isn't a nice thought, either. GoogleKick! ....

 

I hope none of the possible negatives happen to KS (or crowdfunding in general), or at least, don't happen for a good long while. I want to see where it'll go, and if it really can change things in some way, long term.

[Gatt9]

Then there is another side...when the first spectacular big Kickstarter failure appears (that is, some project that gets funded, but fails to deliver), it may scare people away from Kickstarter.

And the other other side ... just plain ol' "Kickstarter burnout."

...the notion of Kickstarter being bought out and then altered in some way by some huge corp. isn't a nice thought, either. GoogleKick! ....

 

I hope none of the possible negatives happen to KS (or crowdfunding in general), or at least, don't happen for a good long while. I want to see where it'll go, and if it really can change things in some way, long term.

 

A big kickstarter failure is unlikely. A big kickstarter tends to have a strong deliverable, and could easily be funded by some form of private equity against a portion of the revenues if it were to get into trouble.

 

Kickstarter burnout is likely in the short term, until the big projects deliver. Once this "First generation" delivers it should become unstoppable.

 

I'd imagine though that it'll end up getting eclipsed by the Gambitious model, where there's more liability and there's a return on investment. That's a much stronger model for many projects, and will likely pull in major players with major investments. It could end up revolutionizing investments in many forms of markets by letting people invest in a idea instead of a company.

 

Regardless, crowd funding is not only here to stay, but IMO is going to change the world...

 

...and it's all because of a couple video game companies that wanted to make an Adventure Game, an RTS, and a couple RPG's. In 5 years, we'll all be able to laugh hysterically at all of those people who claimed video games were pointless, and now have to deal with the fact that video games changed the world.

[rjshae]

Regardless, crowd funding is not only here to stay, but IMO is going to change the world...

Given the difficulty of securing digital creations and the impact of piracy upon all of the traditional media industries, you're probably right. It's going to be an interesting world.