freewheel Posted January 19, 2015 Share Posted January 19, 2015 Maybe this is a more general question, but this community seems to be much more connected between gamers and developers so I'm curious about people's thoughts here. Has anyone ever used something like Kickstarter or Patreon to fund homebrew development? Has it worked out? What's the general consensus around it? Is it off-putting to some people? The idea started bouncing around in my head when I saw enough people again asking for ROM releases. And I know a lot of developers/publishers are reluctant to go down this path due to the potential impact on sales. It got me thinking - what about a Patreon-type model, with regular ROMs being produced and released? These would likely be simpler, shorter games - the kind of thing that can be put together in a few weeks at most. Nothing like Kroz or Ms. Pac-Man which I'm sure saw hundreds of hours of development work, QA, etc. The benefit of a Patreon model is that it would be possible to release games frequently, but also keep them updated - if someone had "subscribers" in a sense, bug fixes and easy/quick feature additions would be a lot more feasible. And with 2 multicarts about to hit the market, it strikes me that there's room for a lot more content (if you guys aren't excited about just how many ROMs you can store on one of these yet - start getting excited). Anyway, just more random speculation on my part. I thought I had read about someone doing a Kickstarter a while back (maybe in the Atari scene) that didn't go over very well, but for the life of me I can't remember. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pimpmaul69 Posted January 19, 2015 Share Posted January 19, 2015 I think there was something about a defender of the crown kickstarter. I forget what became of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+JasonlikesINTV Posted January 19, 2015 Share Posted January 19, 2015 We've never had a successful Intellivision Kickstarter. DOTC was supposed to be one. At least some people would be put off by a Kickstarter, pre-order, or similar. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freewheel Posted January 19, 2015 Author Share Posted January 19, 2015 (edited) At least some people would be put off by a Kickstarter, pre-order, or similar. Yeah, that's why my brain gravitated towards Patreon. I believe it can be set up so that people only pay when something is actually released. So you pledge $X for every ROM release, and when one happens, you get charged that amount. A monthly pledge would take some serious trust of the creator, at least until a track record is established. It also lends itself to the gimmicky "bonuses" that people do. In the realm of Intellivision games, I could see it being "pledge $X+Y and get your name in a credits screen (ie: personalized ROM)" or even something crazy like "pledge $100 and I'll digitize a photo of you and insert it into a title screen, to the best of the Intellivision's abilities". Edited January 19, 2015 by freeweed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+JasonlikesINTV Posted January 19, 2015 Share Posted January 19, 2015 I may have to read up on Patreon. Never heard of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freewheel Posted January 19, 2015 Author Share Posted January 19, 2015 I may have to read up on Patreon. Never heard of it. In a nutshell, you sign up for an ongoing contribution - either monthly, or per creation. In this scene I'd have to think the latter makes more sense unless someone was VERY active producing content. I don't see people willing to pay monthly and waiting several months for a game that may never come, until someone proves themselves reliable. The only issue I see at the moment (beyond general acceptance questions) is that it seems really aimed at low amounts - pledges start at $1 per. I'm not sure if you can set the minimum to say $5 or $10, which is a bit more feasible I think. If I could get even 50 people committed to a $5 pledge for every ROM, I'd happily bang out quick and fun games every couple of weeks for fun. And the more pledges, the more time could be spent making better and more complicated games. And it certainly doesn't preclude later CIB releases, for those of us who like to collect cardboard But it does cut out the one-time purchase market (technically it's possible to pledge once and then cancel, but that's only good for whatever the next release is). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IntellivisionDude Posted January 19, 2015 Share Posted January 19, 2015 I think Kickstarter is great. I have wasted my money on quite a few. You will be surprised how much money can be raised. I bet lot more people than you realize would help fund a game to be made. And i bet the publicity of being on Kickstarter would help get it out to more people than usual. There are more people than just us on Atariage and still some to this day who have no idea new games are made for this system. But i also know that not everybody who makes games is looking for money. Some already have money and are just doing it because they love Intellivision and just want to make a fun game to share. I'm for both sides. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Special Teams Posted January 19, 2015 Share Posted January 19, 2015 Our friends at CollectorVision (Sydney Hunter, Space Raid) are currently using Indiegogo to crowd fund a SNES game: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/justice-beaver-new-super-nintendo-game Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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