Hi,
I was wondering how the unity forum users think about crowd funding. Does anyone have experience with this financing model?
Could a game be build with crowd funding?
Yeah! Give it a try!
Interstellar Marines use that sort of funding. They sell game preorders and “support medals” to fund their development but because of their expensive form of development (AAA quality) they’ve spent years on it already and only recently released a demo with walking in it.
So the question is, how much money will you need?
Is there enough community support for your game to gather any money?
What can you offer to supporters? (in-game mentions, wall papers, forum titles etc)
What you’ve got to show right now?
How long are you going to spend on it?
You might try something like http://www.kongregate.com/, there is an option where people could give “kreds” but I suppose it would have to be already pretty good.
If you look at the various crowdfunding sites, there are quite a few game projects that have received considerable funding. It can’t hurt to submit a proposal. Just have an interesting project and a non-crazy funding goal so you’re likely to convert the escrow account.
No one ever gets rich off of kong. Also it’s for finished games rather than funding development.
I am curious about this also. I had a look at a few sites but the ones I was on didn’t have too great success with games. Could you share some links to sites that have had some success for games?
I realize that the success of the campaign relies on the project you are offering, and not on the website you are using to host the campaign, but being on a site populated by people who like funding games is a definite plus…
I realize that if you go to a site and say you want to recreate PacMan but have him be a clown instead and instead of having ghosts you have fans that clap their hands so there is no challenge but lots of juggling of pixels… then any site is going to result in a failure but if you are the creators of WorldOfWarcraft and seeking funding for the as yet unbuilt WOW and all the people who support game development is on site WeLoveGames.com then advertising WoW on WorkersAgainstLoafers.com is not going to help your case either… Thus, if your idea is sound, which sites would be a good place to visit?
Also, what kind of rewards would you like to see/ would entice you to participate?
I am trying to setup an actual studio. I have various kits at various stages of completion already, all being placed into a single online multiplayer game at the end of it all. I figure I would need about 3 months of full time development to get all the various kits done and then another 6+ to get the game itself out there. My little studio would thus have 3 ‘departments’
- Game kit development
- Game development
- Short term contract work
I am basically looking for funding to pay for rent and myself and a 3D artist a salary. Being in this country where the currency is basically worthless, forming a company, paying the rent, the electric and a salary for a year comes in at less than the budget I have seen some of the people on this forum posting for some of their games.
One of my products took just over a year the raise the kind of money I am looking for for a 6 month funding. One kit alone has earned enough to fund a company for 6 months… Nice. But that was over the course of a year… so ‘nice’ but not ‘good enough’. I am planning on releasing the various kits I have been working on as and when they are done, as standalone products to continue funding the company while I work towards releasing the game.
Rewards I was planning on offering contributors start at a free kit of their choice and then each upgraded option adds to the one before it and goes right up to a free copy of everything up to actual stock in the actual registered company (just over 40% up for grabs)
This is what I had in mind. What kind of rewards would you like to see in such a program? How temping IS “Have your name in the credits?”, really? I didn’t even bother adding that one as I didn’t find it worth any interest… How interested would you be in being a silent partner/ having stock in a game company?
To summarize: Crown funding sounds like a cool idea, but what reward would tempt YOU to participate and how much would you contribute FOR that reward?
Ever hear of Kickstarter.com? Sounds like the same thing to me. I’ve seen some games funded, but most games are like D&D/boardgames. It’s all about how you present yourself there. You have to sell not only your idea, but you have to sell your own personality as well. People aren’t going to effectively donate to the cause if they don’t like you.
Seems to use the Unity engine 
Then I am in trouble because nobody likes me apart from one or two people on THIS forum 
Kickstarter was actually the first site I found and was where I first heard of crowd funding. The problem with them, though, is that you need someone in the US to accept the money for you. As they said, anyone in the world can open an account, but (was it they need a US address or a US bank account)? I forget which, but that basically renders them useless to any non-US resident.
I am now considering just doing my own fundraising on my own website. List the benefits and have a PayPal button beside each. This means I get the funding in bits rather than everything at the end but it cuts out the risk of “I need $10,000” , being followed by “sorry, you only raised $9,500 so no money for you”. More like what they did for Interstellar Marines. Selling pre-orders one at a time rather than gathering a list of future investors and collecting all at once… I think doing it this way also saves on the stress factor as you see you deadline approaching…
What ya reckon?
Check out http://8bitfunding.com its geared towards games and has slightly more flexible terms, ie only need to reach 50% of the funding before the money is payed out and works across more countries.
If you raise funds for your game by crowd funding and you put the game on the app Store for free would that then be legal. I mean then you automatically avoid paying the 30% cut you would have to pay though traditional means.
@Simon, haha, that’s sneaky! My guess is that any money you make with your game outside the appstore has nothing to do with appstore, right? Even if it’s a free game, but I guess the thing to do is read the small print with apple!
Apple takes a cut from sales, that’s it. What you do before you give the game to them is none of their business. What if your family is rich and your mother gives you a $10000 birthday present? Or perhaps you inherit some money or win the lotto… If you spend that money and make a game, then giving the game to Apple doesn’t entitle them to your inheritance or the lotto winnings… That’s your business…
What is going to be tricky is getting people to give you money for a game you intend to release for free… What would be their motivation for sponsoring you?
@MrDude
if you crowdfund the game with 1 dollar you get a key to unlock the HD mode
if you fund 10 dollars you will be listed als contributor aswell
if you fund a 100$ you get a texture to advertise in the game
etc etc
Something like that I guess
after looking at the 8bitfunding site, it seems clear that projects get better responses when they are looking for polish money, not start funding.
as for motivators, seems like a broad spectrum, from merchandise based on the game to “get your likeness(or voice, or whatever) in the game”.
It may be possible to “work the system” as suggested. Certainly a guarenteed $500 is better than the empty Apple -$100, but I’d be careful about circumventing Apple’s model too much. Technically providing “unlock” functionality would be outside the Apple agreement (that’s why you have to release lite and HD/regular versions.) In-game purchases are also limited. There’s nothing in the rules about how the free game was funded. there’s also nothing that says a free game can’t advertise non-free games (be they iOS or not). But the free game has to be free and complete.
Looks interesting as a funding model. If anyone takes the plunge, I’d love to hear your experiences.
Cheers,
Galen
Galent, did you read the FAQ on that site?
People pay you directly via PayPal. As soon as they ‘pledge’, the money goes to your PayPal account immediately and is non refundable. So I go back to my previous statement of just hosting the ‘benefits’ on your own site and just having ‘donate’ buttons beside it and I look at what they do and it seems identical to my proposal with the exception that if you do it on your site, you get the money but if you do it through them you get the money - their cut and - paypal’s cut… they don’t really seem to offer anything except the number of people who go to the site…
I think I am going to do this but I am going to host it on my site directly. First I want to use a “certain product” by a “certain guy” to lay out the business plan 100% so I can offer up the info to people who ask (You know who I mean :P). Since part of what I am going to do is releasing kits, instead of saying: “I have various kits at various levels of completeness”, I will list all the kits i have in the works and make the entire process a lot more open to newcomers. There is no more pressure to gather the funds in a specific time frame or else and I am free to add/ remove/ modify benefits as I see fit. I am reel keen on the idea of creating a widget and/or standalone app to promote the whole thing and releasing it as a free product on the AppStore. Have tens of thousands of people download a free app to point them to my campaign so what is the benefit of the crowd funding websites now?
imagine releasing a widget that does nothing but load webpages FROM your site… People don’t even have to go to your site to see what you have on offer or to contribute… Nah, I am still a fan of crowd funding, but not the websites… Hell, I saw one yesterday that requires a $750 up front registration fee or if you pledge $100 to 3 campaigns then you only have to pay $99 for a total of $399 to just start your campaign… Real effective for people who only want to raise $500…
yeah, I read the FAQ. I thought they gather the money, then once you break the 50% mark they forward the funds. The only things they would seem to offer (if true) is:
- volumes of potential investors/donators
- a small volume of people who always invest in indie games (less likely)
- creditability - ie. they aren’t trying to sell anything, so trust them more than the indie
Interesting … I believe the “free product” / widget you are wanting to create is a Facebook widget/app not iTunes hint hint
I know nothing of what you speak, but I’m sure this product is fantastic, and this “certain guy” is an upstanding business man, and generally just a swell guy 
Cheers,
Galen
I released a widget on the Mac Store before it was the Mac store and it had 120000 downloads. That would do me fine
What would make YOU donate to a crowd sourcing game? Would you pay $1 for the HD key? Would you pay $10 to be listed as a sponsor? Would you pay $100 to get a custom texture with your advertising? Because I’m sure someone can crank out a dozen crapware titles a week and give them away for free on an app store, if a couple of people will each pay $100 for in-game advertising.
Personally, I’d invest a given amount of money to fund the completion of a novel, well thought out game that was going to be made available on a well-known app store, with money budgeted for modest advertising, knowing that for every X dollars that I invested I would get y% of the profits, and if a certain necessary dollar value wasn’t reached then the monies would be returned and the project canceled. (I.e. if you need $10,000 to finish/launch a game, and I give you $1,000 but you only raise $9,000 total I get my $1,000 back - you don’t spend my $1,000 until you get the $10,000 that you need)
In other words, what the other guys posted.