Since the mid 2000’s the indie gaming scene has grown exponentially. Many amazing indie games were released that challenged the big studios and offered a new and fresh sake on what video games should be. Some notable indie games include Minecraft, Shovel Knight and Braid amongst many others.
The rise of indie games as a strong force in the gaming world could be attributed to several factors. Some believe that there was stagnation, lack of creativity and over-serialization in big studios was to blame. Another factor was the rise of crowdfunding websites.
Indiegogo launched in 2007 and quickly became popular. It was the first reward-based crowd funding crowd funding platform. Kickstarter was released shortly afterwards, in 2009. Kickstarter quickly overcame Indiegogo in terms of popularity and became the go-to source of funding for many indie game developers.
Since Kickstarter’s initial launch many have claimed that it has been corrupted. According to Huffington Post ‘s Nathan Resnik, there is a rise of paid advertising, investor backed campaigns and agencies that coach and help organize crowd funding projects. Kickstarter has another big problem for game developers. It does not allow projects to be listed from many countries outside the USA.
Indiegogo is considered as many developers second choice after Kickstarter. They offer more relaxed rules on posting a project. This has spawned many projects that were considered lacklustre by their backers and it has hurt Indiegogo’s reputation as result. Out of the 142,301 projects that were hosted on Indiegogo only 9.3% were fully funded. Indiegogo charges a much higher rate from developers on projects that were not fully funded. Fully funded projects get charged 4% projects that were not fully funded get charged 9%. One of the differences between Indiegogo and Kickstarter is that there is an option to keep the funds even if a project is not fully funded. Some might say it is more profitable for Indiegogo for a project to not reach its funding mark.
Even though Indiegogo and Kickstarter were both great innovators, there is still much which can be improved. By using blockchain technologies, greater transparency can greatly benefit the industry.
GameStarter will be a reward based crowd funding project built specifically for indie video games. By using blockchain technologies, GameStarter will both improve client security by solely accepting Game Protocol Tokens and increase transparency.
GameStarter imagines a future where backers can choose a multitude of rewards for contributing Game Protocol Tokens towards a project. Imagine contributing to Clash of Clans while it was in development and receiving tons of gems or in-game currency as a reward. Other options might include full versions of games, access to DLC’s and many other perks.
Crowdfunding has greatly aided the indie gaming world but it is time to improve it and raise the standard higher with GameStarter.
