A fad? Yes, a “fad” borne out out of desperation. EA, Activision and the rest of the empty suits in the business are hellbent on turning every threadbare franchise into a subscription-based quagmire of DRM and DLC. Console kiddies still living at home with cash to burn might tolerate this, but older gamers – esp. PC gamers – are fed up with the direction the industry is headed. Its all eye candy and profanity-laden retreads of CoD or some other brain-dead franchise. What’s worse, most of the new PC games are little more than direct console ports. Where’s Master of Orion 4? Where’s a sequel to Total Annihilation? Where’s my high-res, party-based, 60-hrs of gameplay Might and Magic?? I doubt Tex Murphy could crack these cases. No, saving the game industry from itself has been left up to us – the mature game consumers and the talent that used to provide us with actual innovation on a regular basis. $2 million with change is NOT a fad: its a stark, unmistakable repudiation of the dumbing down of an electronic art form. Its a protest against every attempt to make a single player game into an always-connected, social storefront-powered, recurring fee money cow. When Wasteland II ships, and I’ve no reason to believe it won’t, I’m certain there will be fans who will feel it doesn’t live up to their expectations. I’m OK with that even if I myself am among those disgruntled few, because what’s important is that neither we or the developers will owe the big publishers a damn thing.

Very well put, psycros.

I welcome this direction, of community-funded projects. The cynical in me is pretty certain that large publishers will get their paws on this idea sooner or later, even more so that the titles you listed, and certainly, most of all game titles, belong to some publishing house or large game company. I’m quite a bit surprised that there haven’t been any attempts made yet (as far as i know).

I really hope it’s not going to be a fad, but the “New Way”(TM) and it stays free of large corporate involvement.

If you view Kickstarter as an investment that gives you no say in the development of the game, than there will be no problems. However, this is the internet and EVERYONE has a say. Make no mistake, nobody views these as investments, especially when almost everyone is given a copy of the game for chipping in. These are pre-orders, plain and simple. It’s work well so far, but it’s only a matter of time before a popular project bombs or turns out a turd. That could place a huge cooling effect over the entire community-funded model. Right now, devs can say “if you don’t like it, don’t buy it”, but if a few thousand people bought it before the first alpha, that’s a whole new pressure.

I’m pretty stoked for these new projects coming out, and I invested in almost all of them, but this is unchartered territory and all kinds of new/terrible/awesome things await us a few years in the future.

I think that’s a bit of an overstatement of the risks. I actually think this is a sound business model, built on much of what drives the industry already: brand name recognition.

The difference here is that we’re dealing with niche brands and developers who have no ability to break into the current market any other way. Have you noticed that all of the big-deal announcements have been about established, well regarded developers, especially those who were huge in the 90s (arguably PC gaming’s Golden Age)? It’s no coincidence that we’re seeing this. And it makes sense. Why shouldn’t a Tim Schafer or a Jordan Weisman or a Jane Jensen be able to appeal DIRECTLY to fans and self-produce?

Right now, as I see it, the real issue is that the industry lacks a business model that caters to hardcore fans of niche games/genres/developers. Personally, I would pay dearly for a true Star Control 3 as designed by Fred Ford and Paul Reich, III. I’d pay for Chris Roberts to do a true sequel to Privateer. I’d pay to get Larry Holland working on a Star Wars smuggler game. There’s lots of projects I’d LOVE to see but that will never come to fruition because larger developers don’t see HUGE markets to justify the development costs up front.

Personally, I recognize the risk going into a kickstarter project. But here’s the thing. Even if it is a glorified preorder, it’s a preorder for a product from someone who has delivered for me in the past. More than that, it’s a chance to get some bloody VARIETY in gaming. I mean, I love Call of Medal of Duty as much as the next gamer, but after a while it DOES get a bit tedious. I know the risks going in. Tim Schafer — whose project I already donated to — may well put out a lackluster game. Not everyone liked Brutal Legend. I loved it, personally, but I recognize it’s not everyone’s cuppa tea.

With these projects, though, it’s coming from the creators — the “original artists” as it were — of some games that I truly loved and still enjoy. It’s not coming from suits who want to pay developers to shaft me while cranking out eye candy and mild variations on the same gameplay I’ve been playing for the last 15 years. So, even if I end up disliking the product, at least I’m supporting the creative minds I’d like to see flourish.

I want riskier games. I want more Brutal Legends. I want more Star Control IIs. Games that defy genres, aren’t easily marketed, but are still AMAZING, creative, and fun. I want games that are different and aren’t stuck in some assembly-line design scheme. I know where I can get reliability. I don’t want reliability the way the suits think I do. I want risk from reliable names. I get that with Kickstarter projects.

Just a point of illustration: While Wasteland 2 sounds like an amazing game to fund, remember that it’s made by inXile Entertainment, the guys who did Hunted: The Demon Forge, and before that, the 2004 Bard’s Tale. Not exactly something to inspire confidence.