The Kickstarter craze is in full effect now with a variety of projects ready and waiting to accept your money to help people create video games, board games, photography, and even a webcomic. All of this is voluntary contributions with the underlying intiative behind this monetary benefaction being the rewards that are offered at each tier. But what does this all mean? If a project receives its funding, there are the aforementioned rewards for its backers and the obvious product release for the creative team behind the project; yet what does failure lead to? (Besides the obvious). Furthermore, what possibilities are there for this new source of “crowd funding?” Is the market already saturated with too many possibilities? And what does a creative team have to do to make their project stand out?
We spoke with Dylan Barker from Cadenza Interactive, the developers behind the six-degrees of freedom cooperative shooter Retrovirus, about their Kickstarter project, the challenges they faced in developing a new type of game for them, as well as reviving an old genre.
While this interview was recorded last week prior to the conclusion of their Kickstarter campaign (which did not reach its funding goal), there are quite a few insights about what this new funding source has in store for Indie developers, both good and bad.
Note: After this recording, and after the conclusion of their kickstarter campaign, Cadenza discussed some of the “Plan B” mentioned in the interview. Here’s what they had to say
...We're going to regroup and start a “slow burn”, offering incentives for fans who support us early and letting the community grow more organically. As the game itself is refined and polished, our reach should expand to include players that would rather pay for a much more complete product. Retrovirus is still going to be made. We’re going to have to postpone the release of our tools until the game itself has been released, but the plan is still to release them. Stick with us, and we’ll keep you posted!