Kick it, start it.

www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/08/21/when-kickstarting-fails/

This particular article reminded me of this post that I have been meaning to write.

Games have moved into Kickstarter territory. For independent developers, Kickstarter gives them a chance at creating and publishing their games without having to submit to the whims of publishers like EA or Activision, and yet still be able to get the funds for game development.

It does come with it's flaws of course. Kickstarter isn't exactly built for advertising games development. For starters, other projects tend to take precedence on the main page; and even when you go into the games sub-category, it doesn't differentiate well between computer games, mobile phones, board and card games and so on. There's also a noticeable lack of differentiation into genres, making hard to look for the kind of games you might be interested in inside the haystack.

Funding in itself is a risk. There's no guarantee you'll get the product eventually. Like the article I posted stated, sometimes it's not because of the person who started the project, but many other things can and will affect the success though the project in question wasn't a game development and that In facts shows how much uncertainty there is as game development is a much more complicated process.

There are projects though, where the games are pretty much in the alpha stage and where the makers actually have something to show people who are willing to help out. The money basically is for the final stages of the project and a form of support to let the developers know that people are willing to buy their game and that encouragement can sometimes be worth more than monetary support.

All in all, it is a good platform for the development of games and also a good way for gamers to show support for indie devs. Kickstarter needs to work on the games section though, and indie devs should try to make sure the influence of big name publishers doesn't contaminate their projects (EA is eyeing crowd funded games). Devs need to have more to show before setting up their project on Kickstarter and supporters need to remember their donations will not necessarily give a return. As long as these risks are taken into account, crowd-funded games have a potential to compete in the gaming market.

Edit: Kickstarter actually allows you to seperate board and card games from video games, but that's about it.