In a “State of Industry Panel” discussion at QuoVadis 2016, Jason Della Rocca, co-founder of Execution Labs, an early stage investor in game studios observed that “The barrier to entry is lower than ever, but the barrier to success is higher than ever before.”
Many indie game developers are driven by their creative flow and passion; hence, they are not naturally inclined to follow the marketing plan that is required activate the business side of a game development project. Their disinterest in marketing their projects however limits the development of their games to the amount of money, time, and resources they could afford to invest in it.
Game developers also tend to develop understandably sentimental attractions to their game development projects; hence, they tend to avoid actions that could cause them to lose their artistic and creative autonomy over development. Getting funding from traditional early-stage investors or VC firms to develop a game often means that the developer dilutes some of their autonomy to make major decisions. Hence, most developers will rather opt to build a “small” game that they own completely instead of a investor-backed “big” game that ends up being different from their original plan.
This piece looks at how crowdfunding has tried and ‘mostly’ failed to solve the funding challenge for game developers. Later, we’ll see how insights from a blockchain startup are poised to provide a more reliable process for crowdfunding game development.
Crowdfunding didn’t quite fix the funding problem for game developers
Crowdfunding is designed to be a fundraising solution that provides financial backing to entrepreneurs and causes with different financial needs across a wide range of industries. However, the reality is that the crowdfunding market is gradually tending towards cliqued industries and causes. For …
Read the full story at Benzinga.
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