供起一个游戏不容易，对那些资本力量薄弱的独立开发者来说更是难上加难。除非他们正好手头上有一笔储备金，或者成功吸引到发行商，或者受到幸运之神的眷顾，得到当地政府的资助扶持，否则这些小型独立开发商只能继续挣扎求生。其中一条出路就是，在Kickstarter和8-Bit Funding这类大众融资服务网站上寻求资助。

这种服务让形形色色的创业者和游戏开发者列出他们的项目、筹款数目和截止日期。资助人可以浏览这些项目，然后决定资助哪个，资助多少等等。如果寻求资助的项目在截止日前实现筹资目标，该项目的创立者就能得到这些资金。

尽管这个办法免费又可行，但却并非所有项目都能成功拉到足够的资金。为什么资助者决定资助这款游戏而不是那款游戏？这其中有几个不同的影响因素在发挥作用。

举个例子，开发者是否已有群众基础可能成为一个决定性的因素；或者项目本身就是个决定因素——人们对不同类型的游戏给予的关注也会有所差别。

Kickstarter大众融资渠道

Zeboyd游戏工作室近日在Kickstarter上成功为一个游戏项目拉到了资助。继同人RPG游戏《Cthulhu Saves the World》在Xbox Live Indie Games平台上发布并受到好评后，该工作室决定把这个游戏移植到PC平台上。问题是，微软是按季度标准付款给XBLIG开发者，由于Cthulhu是在2010年底发布，所以他们在五月以前无望获得任何版税。

所以，接受一个朋友的建议后，Zeboyd决定借助Kickstarter筹得项目资金。

启运资金是3000美元，但仅在两天以内，这个项目就吸金超过2500美元上。过了两周多的时间，这个数字超过之前的两倍，达到5300多美元。

Zeboyd成员Robert Boyd表示，“在我们自己看来，要是能一个多月里搞到3000美元的资金就已经了不起了。但我没有料到仅在短短几天里就弄到这个数目的资金。”

Boyd把Cthulhu的成功归结为不同原因，包括游戏人物在网络上的人气以及工作室已有的粉丝基础；还有一个重要的原因是，他们有能力让别人相信自己做的游戏值得资助。

Boyd表示：“你真的需要证明给别人看，你值得拥有，你不是那些自吹自擂却一事无成的游戏开发者。之前的项目积累下来的好名气发挥了重要作用，但就算这是你的第一个游戏项目，你也仍然有可能让追随者和玩家前来捧场。”

Kickstarter还设置了一个奖励制度，让那些寻求资金的人给资助者分红，给多大支持就分多少红。至于Cthulhu，Zeboyd献出的是游戏的复本和一张游戏作者写的小故事签名海报。

但无论此次筹资的经历多么成功，Boyd不希望工作室再涉足大众融资这个领域。然而，虽然工作室已不缺乏资金，但他确实看到未来还是有踏进同一条河流的可能。

“通过Kickstarter来评估项目的市场需求也许有些用处：这就像一个订单系统，如果获得足够多的订单，那就可以启动这个游戏项目。”

学习经验

并非所有的游戏项目都能得到Cthulhu那样的好结局。去年，前索尼全球业务发展经理Brandon Wu热切地投身于独立游戏开发事业之中——决定尝试为其工作室的处女作《Megan and the Giant》筹资。可惜的是，原来需要3456美元的启动资金，最后却只收获931美元。

Wu认为靠Kickstarter集资成功的游戏项目，有两个决定性因素：已有一定的群众基础和大规模的市场营销活动。

Wu 解释道：“尽管这个项目在Kickstarter算是很体面，也在媒体上露了几回脸，但这两个因素我一个都没有。Pepwuper工作室还在蹒跚学步，而我也刚实现团队的转型，仍然在独立游戏开发领域摸索，确实没有粉丝基础可挖掘。”

Wu所计划的筹资时间为三周，这与项目的英国之行时间一致，但就项目的市场营销来看，这个安排并不理想。另外，筹资周期也才四周，还不够项目造势。

虽然他在Kickstarter上首战未捷，但Wu看起来还是没对大众融资灰心。他反而认为这是一次宝贵的学习经验，未来的项目还可能考虑再次动用大众融资。

但还是有些工作需要他另辟蹊径。

“如果我可以再做这个项目，我肯定会投入足够多的时间并且更给力地宣传这个项目。我还会借助博客和在线社区的力量，积极地与对这个项目有兴趣的人交流沟通。总而言之，在Kickstarter上寻求资助就和在其他地方筹款一样，是卖创意的全职工作。”

说到资助独立游戏，Kickstarter有一个缺点，那就是游戏开发者不仅要与其他游戏竞争，还要与其他类型的项目角力，从自行出版的漫画书到野心勃勃的新发明，无论是资助新项目还是酷玩意，资助者掌握了最大的选择权。

8-Bit Funding希望通过为游戏提供类似的专项服务来克服这个缺点。

针对游戏项目的专属大众融资渠道

Geoff Gibson创立了这项资助服务，他还创建了独立游戏博客DIYgamer。8-Bit Funding萌此想法是因为注意到普通游戏项目与非游戏项目之间的矛盾。Geoff Gibson 称：“电影和设计项目经常能够吸金5万美元以上，而游戏项目甚至难以获得这十分之一的零头。”

所以他决定做一项类似的服务，完全锁定游戏项目。Gibson解释道，专业化路线并非其考虑的关键因素——这很大程度上是因游戏行业本身的宿命所致。

Gibson表示：“游戏开发向来难容于其他媒体类型。我的意思是，作为游戏玩家，我们通常以IGN、Kotaku、和Gamasutra这类网站作为信息渠道，而不是看《纽约时报》、《华盛顿邮报》或者《华尔街日报》。游戏领域总是难以进入主流用户的视线。”

除了它对游戏的专属服务，8-Bit至少还有另外一个优点盖过Kickstarter：那就是国际化。因为这项服务用的是PayPal而不是亚马逊支付，这更容易被非美国游戏开发者所接受，而Kickstarter则不然。

根据Gibson的说法，它另一个优势在于市场营销。虽然与Kickstarter相同，开发者在这里需自己负责8-Bit上的项目市场营销活动，但游戏资助专属服务大大减轻了这个压力。

Gibson表示，“据我所知，大部分开发者都不懂生意经，只有一小撮人知道如何接触普通玩家，而大部分与我共事过的人都对此一窍不通。求助于Kickstarter这类网站，就是把开发者置身于一个棘手的境地——不仅要向其他玩家宣传他们的游戏，还要向那些从来没碰过游戏的人亮嗓子。”

“有多少游戏社区之外的人真的知道什么是RTS（即时战略游戏）？又有多少知道RPG（角色扮演游戏）的准确定义？在8-Bit Funding上启动游戏项目为开发者解决了难题，开发者只需吸引他们所能联系到、接触到的玩家，这比之前的市场营销标准要简单多了。”

截止本文撰稿，只有《Expedition: The New World》这一款游戏（游戏邦注：这是一款关于15世纪西班牙流浪探险家的游戏）在8-Bit上成功筹资，仅10天就筹资超过它的保守目标700美元。

前路漫漫

更早之前，Cardinal Quest已在大众融资服务上唱响另一首凯歌。Tametick开发的这款以地下城爬行者为主角的Flash游戏创下了目前为止最高资助款的纪录，并且是目前唯一一个集资达到4000美元的游戏。当然，这离该游戏的终标目标6000美元还有一段距离。开发这个项目的二人组希望筹得足够多的资金以便他们投入全职开发工作。

他们和Gibson一样，看好8-Bit的游戏开发资助专属服务。

游戏开发者Ido Yehieli 叹言：“这些为了游戏事业而涌向8-Bit Funding的人，正是亟需资助的游戏开发者的衣食父母。”

除了开发《Cardinal Quest》， Yehieli及其合作伙伴Corey Martin都有全职工作。他们的最终目标是挣足钱，好从本职工作中腾出两个月时间，全身心投入开发这款游戏，而不是零零碎碎地花一年或一年多的晚上和周末时间来赶工。

一旦完工，他们打算把这个Flash项目卖掉，以便投入开发这款游戏的桌面版本和手机版本。

虽然当初开始向8-Bit寻求帮助时只是抱着试试看的态度，但这次经验却使Yehieli坚信这项服务有大有前途。

Yehieli表示：“8-Bit来得正是时候，如果成功了，我相信它会改变游戏对全世界独立开发者的意义。我觉得拥有自己的专属独立游戏开发网站太重要了。在一般的融资网站上，其他工作和群体总是更占优势，而游戏往往被晾到一边。”

“我本人就是定居在欧洲，所以8-Bit向非美国人士开放服务，当然也是它的一个重要吸引力，这与Kickstarter又明显不同。”

虽然早期有些游戏已通过这项服务获得成功，但Yehieli并不认为8-Bit Funding或者其他类似的服务适用于所有类型的游戏。《Cardinal Quest》和《Expedition: The New World》都是网页游戏，而非大型游戏，它们的成功不是偶然。他解释道，有两种类型的游戏未必适合大众融资模式。

他认为，“第一种是，项目开发者没有完整的游戏开发记录，也没有忠实的玩家基础，玩家不相信他们有能力把游戏做起来。我认为在这种情况下，玩家大概不会愿意资助这样的开发者吧，因为他们害怕游戏夭折。第二种是，需要一大笔钱来启动的大型游戏，而8-Bit Funding的资助者却不太乐意负担这么一大笔钱。在8-Bit Funding上求资最大的项目往往也是刚从上一条战线上凯旋归来的团队开发出来的。

总结

大众融资为独立开发者铺就了一条前所未有的通向资助游戏开发的康庄大道。对于小型开发商而言，大众融资服务对独立游戏开发确实有帮助，但显然这项服务并非适合所有人。

地开销巨大的大型项目来说，它们靠大众融资筹款可能比较困难。就和做任何其他项目一样，那些已经小有名气而且具有群众基础的开发者，比独立游戏开发新手更有优势。那么它可以通过自我推销来宣传造势。

但试水大众融资领域确实没有坏处，就算游戏项目筹款未能成功，这项千辛万苦的工作也足以让开发者受益匪浅。

Wu 表示：“即使《Megan and the Giant》未能达到我的资助目标，我也已经从这次经历中学到了很多关于市场营销的知识——先声夺人，自我定位。我后来的大部分设计和营销工作，都从之前备战Kickstarter的经历中汲取了养份。”

“大众融资是让你置身于真实世界，倾听玩家呼声的好途径。”（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

The Crowdfunding Revolution: Perspectives

[In this, the first part of a two-part series, Gamasutra takes a look at whether indie developers can get the money they need from crowdfunding, speaking to successful and unsuccessful developers, as well as investigating whether popular site Kickstarter is the only viable option.]

Funding a game isn’t easy. And that’s especially true for small, independent developers. Unless you happen to have a nest egg of savings laying around, manage to catch the eye of a publisher, or are lucky enough to live somewhere with readily available government funding, your choices are limited. And one of those choices is to ask for donations through crowd-sourced funding services like Kickstarter and 8-Bit Funding.

These services let creators of all stripes, including game developers, list their projects, a funding goal, and a deadline. Potential donators can browse these projects and decide which, if any, they want to donate to and how much they want to give. If a project manages to reach its goal by the deadline, the creators get to keep the funds.

But even though this option is freely available, not every project manages to successfully score enough funding. Different factors determine why people will decide to donate to one game, as opposed to another.

Whether or not a developer already has an audience, for example, can be a big determining factor. As can the project itself: different types of games attract different levels of interest

Crowdsourcing Saves the World

Zeboyd Games recently managed to successfully fund a project on Kickstarter. After releasing the parody RPG Cthulhu Saves the World on Xbox Live Indie Games to some acclaim, the small studio decided to get to work on a PC port of the game. Problem was, Microsoft pays XBLIG developers on a quarterly basis. And since Cthulhu was released at the end of 2010, that meant that Zeboyd wouldn’t see any royalties until May.

So, after a recommendation from a friend, the studio decided to try utilizing Kickstarter to fund the project.

The initial funding goal was $3,000, but in just two days the project managed to surpass the $2,500 plateau. And after a little over two weeks that number more than doubled, with over $5,300 raised.

“I thought $3,000 raised over a month was pretty ambitious on our part,” said Zeboyd’s Robert Boyd. “I had no idea that we would end up raising that amount in just a handful of days.”

Boyd puts the success of Cthulhu down to a variety of factors, including the popularity of the character in internet culture, as well as the studio’s already existing fan base. But it was also a matter of convincing people that what he was working on was something worthwhile.

“You really need to prove to people that you’re worth taking a chance on and not just another wannabe game developer that isn’t going to actually finish anything,” said Boyd. “A good reputation from past projects helps immensely, but even if it’s your first game, you can still make an impressive trailer and garner support that way.”

Kickstarter also features a reward system that lets those seeking funding offer special bonuses to potential supporters. Depending on how much a user contributes, the reward is more substantial. In the case of Cthulhu, Zeboyd offered everything from a copy of the game and a signed poster to a short story created by the game’s writer.

But in spite of how successful the funding experiment turned out to be, Boyd said that he hopes the studio won’t have to test the crowdsourced funding waters again. However, even if the studio isn’t in need of funding, he does see one potential application for the service in the future.

“It might be useful to use Kickstarter for gauging demand for a project: use it as a sort of preorder system where if you get enough preorders, you greenlight the project.”

A Learning Experience

Not every project ends up being the success story that Cthulhu turned out to be. Last year Brandon Wu — a former global business development manager at Sony who took the leap into indie development — decided to give the service a try to fund his studio’s debut game Megan and the Giant. But the game only managed to garner $931 of its $3,456 goal.

Wu believes that there are two deciding factors when it comes to the success of a project on Kickstarter: a pre-existing audience and substantial marketing.

“Even though the project was featured on Kickstarter and mentioned on a few media outlets, I failed to have either of these two factors,” he explained. “Studio Pepwuper was in its infancy and I was a recent corporate convert still learning the ropes in indie game development. There was no existing fan base to tap into.”

Wu also scheduled the funding period to coincide with a three week trip to England, which wasn’t ideal when it came to marketing his project. Additionally, the funding period was also just four weeks long, which he believes was not enough time to get the word out.

But even though his first encounter with Kickstarter wasn’t a success, Wu doesn’t seem to be discouraged about the potential of crowdfunding. Instead, he views it as a valuable learning experience and something he might consider using again for future projects.

Though there are a few things he would do differently.

“If I could do it again, I would make sure I allowed sufficient time to put more effort into getting publicity for the project. I would also reach out to more blogs and online communities, and actively manage the communication with people who are interested in the project. At the end of the day, raising funds on Kickstarter is like raising funds anywhere else, it is a full time job to sell your idea.”

One of the drawbacks for Kickstarter when it comes to funding indie games, is that the developers not only have to compete with other games, but also a wide range of other projects; everything from self-published comic books to ambitious new inventions. There are a lot of options for potential contributors looking to help fund something new and cool.

8-Bit Funding is hoping to solve this by offering a similar service that’s dedicated entirely to games.

A Place Just For Games

The service was founded by Geoff Gibson, who also created indie gaming blog DIYgamer. The idea for 8-Bit Funding sprang up when Gibson noticed a discrepancy between the amount of money that the average game project was able to earn on Kickstarter versus how much non-game projects were raising. “It got to the point where film and design projects were able to pull in upwards of $50,000 on a regular basis and game projects continued to struggle to acquire even a tenth of that amount,” he said.

So he decided to create something similar, but with a focus entirely on games. And Gibson explained that the specialization is not only key — it’s a fact of life for gaming.

“Gaming traditionally has never meshed well with other media types before,” he said. “I mean, as gamers we typically get our news from sites like IGN, Kotaku, and Gamasutra, not the New York Times, Washington Post, or Wall Street Journal. Gaming has always been segregated from the mainstream consumer.”

In addition to its focus, 8-Bit also has at least one other advantage over Kickstarter: it’s international. Because the service uses PayPal instead of Amazon Payments, it’s accessible to developers outside of the U.S, unlike Kickstarter.

The other benefit, according to Gibson, is marketing. While, like Kickstarter, the responsibility of marketing projects on 8-Bit is in the hands of the developer, Gibson explained that the sheer fact that the site is focused exclusively on games eases this burden quite a bit.

“It has been my experience that most developers are not great marketers,” he said. “A few are, but the overwhelming majority of the ones I’ve worked with just don’t really know how to reach the common gamer. Using a site like Kickstarter puts developers in the awkward position of going beyond trying to explain their game to other gamers, but also trying to explain their game to people who might have never even played a game before.”

“How many people outside the gaming community honestly know what an RTS is? Or even the high concept of a role playing game? Starting a project at 8-Bit Funding takes that equation out. Developers only have to worry about appealing to other gamers, people that they can relate to and communicate with on an easier marketing level.”

As of the time of this writing, only one game has successfully achieved its funding goal through 8-Bit. Expedition: The New World, a rouguelike about fifteenth century Spanish explorers, managed to surpass its modest goal of $700 in just 10 days.

Halfway there

One of the other early success stories for the service is Cardinal Quest. The Flash-based dungeon crawler developed by Tametick has the highest level of donations so far, and is currently the only game to have topped the $4,000 plateau, though it’s still a ways away from its ultimate goal of $6,000. The two-man development team behind the project is hoping to raise enough money to work on the game full time.

And like Gibson, they believe that the specialization of 8-Bit is a good thing.

“People coming to [8-Bit Funding] are coming specifically for games,” developer Ido Yehieli said. “That kind of targeted audience is worth a lot to game makers trying to finance their projects.”

Both Yehieli and co-developer Corey Martin work full time jobs in addition to developing Cardinal Quest, and their ultimate goal is to earn enough money to take some time off and complete the game in two months of working full time, as opposed to a year or more just working evenings and weekends.

Once complete, they hope to sell the Flash license and then use that money to fund both a desktop and mobile version of the game.

While he initially began using 8-Bit as little more than an experiment, his early experience has convinced Yehieli that the service has a lot of potential.

“8-Bit Funding came at just the right time and if successful I believe it could change the nature of the game for indie developers worldwide,” he said. “I think it is important for us to have our own site that focuses on indie gaming. In more general use sites games tend to be pushed to the side compared to other types of work and their community does not particularly care about indie games.”

“Of course being open to non-Americans, unlike Kickstarter, was also a significant draw, as I am located in Europe.”

But while a few early games have achieved success on the service, Yehieli doesn’t believe that 8-Bit Funding or other similar services are appropriate for every type of game. It’s not a coincidence that both Cardinal Quest and Expedition: The New World are both browser games, as opposed to something of a much larger scale. He explained that there are two types of developers that wouldn’t necessarily fit the crowd sourced model.

“The first are people without a track record of finished games and without a solid base of players who know what they are capable of and can get the ball rolling,” Yehieli said. “I think people might be reluctant to support such developers, fearing the games will never actually get made. The second group is people with very large scope projects who might require a lot more funds than [8-Bit Funding]‘s audience is willing to provide. We can see it now in the fact that the projects who requested the highest amounts on [8-Bit Funding] are the ones who are experiencing the least success.”

In Conclusion

Crowdfunding is opening up new opportunities for indie developers, giving them access to financial opportunities that previously didn’t exist. For small developers it can be the difference between whether or not a game gets made. But clearly these services aren’t suitable for everyone.

For expensive, large-scale projects, it can be difficult to raise the amount of money necessary. And, just like everything else, those creators who are already known and have an audience have an advantage over new up and comers. It can also take a lot of self-promotion to successfully get the word out.

But there isn’t really a drawback to testing the waters. It’s a lot of hard work, but even if your game doesn’t end up reaching its funding goal, the experience will likely be an educational one.

“Even though Megan and the Giant failed to raise the funding goal I was looking for, I learned a lot about my own project from the experience,” said Wu. “Through having to market it to people before it was done, I had to define clearly what the project is and who it is for. Most of the work I did during the preparation for Kickstarter has been used again in the design and marketing efforts post-Kickstarter.”

“Crowdsourcing is a good way to put you in the real world and it forces you to listen.”（source:gamasutra）