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Analysts suggest video game Kickstarters are in decline
If you're still holding out hope for Kickstarter as the new face of funding video game development, you may want to revise that projection. Analyst group ICO Partners has been tracking Kickstarter through 2014 and has observed a marked drop in successful projects, funds pledged, and overall scale of projects on the site. Based on projections, the group expects a 20% drop in successful projects by the end of the year -- not a collapse, but a definite shrink. The downturn is attributed to a variety of factors, including the lack of several big-name projects to draw people to the service and a number of high-profile failures. ICO Partners analyst Thomas Bidaux also notes that the amount being received by successful projects is diminishing, which he attributes to fans being less willing to drop money on a potential game when some of their already funded games have yet to materialize. The full report has more data and is well worth a read for anyone interested in crowdfunding and its future.
Star Citizen hits $54 million with a letter from Chris Roberts
Star Citizen's ongoing funding drive has put the game up to $54 million now, and that means another feature off of the stretch goal page and into the full game. Chris Roberts addressed the community in a letter following this most recent landmark and explained that this level of funding will allow the game to launch with advanced AI behavior from NPCs in planetside environments. He also showed off a new video highlighting the Retaliator bomber, demonstrating the level of detail inside the ship that players can anticipate. Roberts went on to detail the cannon that will be awarded to every backer who joins before the game hits $55 million and offered another poll for players to determine what rewards they'd prefer for the next million-dollar increment. You can check out the Retaliator video just past the break. [Thanks to Oliver for the tip!]
Kickstarter changes terms regarding unfinished projects
Kickstarter updated its terms of use late last week, mostly cleaning up the site's fine-print language to better spell out the relationship between project creators and backers. It will remain hands-off while project leads enter agreements with their supporters, which worked well for the funding platform to this point, as it reached $1 billion in pledges in March. Those contracts are the focus of the revised terms, as Kickstarter is now emphasizing the actions creators must take if they fail to live up to their word as well as the potential consequences if they walk away. The boldest inclusion stressed that creators who are unable to satisfy the terms "may be subject to legal action by backers." While Kickstarter still won't involve itself in the proceedings, this opens a clearer lane for possible lawsuits from project backers should creators fail to live up to their agreement or offer alternative solutions.
Indiegogo's pilot program lets successful projects keep raising money
When it comes to the wild and woolly crowdfunding space, it's not hard to look at Kickstarter as the Goliath to Indiegogo's David -- that's why the latter keeps trying to change up how young companies get the cash to build their products. First came Flexible Funding (which let project creators keep whatever money they've raised even if they didn't hit their goal), and now the company is launching a pilot program to keep those campaigns open indefinitely. That's right: if your crowdfunding project hit its initial milestone, you won't ever have to stop taking money from the people waving their wallets at you. In a way, this new funding model could turn Indiegogo into the store that Kickstarter never wanted to be. Sounds great for all those upstart artists and hardware hackers out there, no? It can be, but it could also mean questionable products (like the much-maligned Healbe GoBe and the Ritot projection watch) maintain a stream of funding they may not actually be worthy of. Only a handful of projects have been given the so-called Forever Funding treatment so far, including runaway successes like the Tens tinted sunglasses and this tiny tracking device, but this particular privilege should go live for everyone "in the coming months."
NASA panel says Curiosity needs to drive less and drill more
NASA is not getting its money's worth of Curiosity, according to a review panel looking at seven planetary missions. The senior scientists criticized the nuclear-powered Mars rover, saying it needed to take more than the eight drill samples scheduled for the rest of its mission. It added that Curiosity has done too much driving (which has severely damaged the wheels) and peripheral activities like searching for clouds. As a result, it rated the rover lowest of the seven missions reviewed, despite the fact that it cost the most. Meanwhile, the Jupiter Cassini mission, which has produced a spectacular cache of images and scientific data, received the highest rating and will be extended at least three years. Despite the ranking, Curiosity was still graded "very good" and all seven missions will retain their funding. That includes the indefatigable Opportunity rover, still trucking after a decade.
Star Citizen reaches $50 million in space bucks
Star Citizen crossed $50 million in support following the launch of some pricey digital starships. The milestone was reached thanks to the docking of the "2945 RSI Constellation Lineup," a collection of four ships that went on sale over this past weekend. The game reached $48 million in mid-July, at which point Roberts Space Industries introduced the Retaliator ship. The 2945 RSI Constellation line of starships range in price from $150 to $350, the latter being the Constellation Phoenix, a luxury spacecraft in limited production: Just 5,000 of the ships will be made available. As of this writing, 628 of those ships were sold. Roberts Space Industries began its monstrous crowdfunding effort for Star Citizen with a Kickstarter project that hauled in a now-seemingly-puny $6 million in November 2012. One other PC game by its creator, Chris Roberts, is currently free on Origin until September 2: Wing Commander 3. [Image: Roberts Space Industries]
Is Snapchat really worth $10 billion?
While competitors are busy cloning Snapchat in an attempt to replicate its success, Evan Spiegel and co. have continued to forge their own path. The company is already experimenting with new features in an attempt to generate revenue, but it's also apparently talking to some big hitters to ensure it can keep growing until those profits come. According to Bloomberg, Snapchat is currently in talks over a new round of funding with investors, which include Yahoo-backed Alibaba, that if confirmed could value the company at an incredible $10 billion. It's a significant figure, not only because it puts it on par with both Dropbox and Airbnb, but it's around three times the amount Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook is rumored to have offered to acquire the company last year. Not bad for a service that's known mostly for evaporating text and photo messages. Snapchat is understandably keeping quiet about its latest round of talks, and the figures could well change before the funding closes. Regardless of what happens, it appears Snapchat's decision to hold out and grow the service was the right one.
Avalon Lords gears up for its Kickstarter campaign
How do you feel about the MMORTS genre? The folks behind Avalon Lords don't have many nice things to say about it, which is why they're making an MMORTS game that, in their own words, is meant to elevate the game beyond free-to-play titles with microtransactions. The game launches its Kickstarter today, and it's put a trailer into the wild so potential backers can get a sense for what the game will look like. Backers are being asked for $150,000 for the base game, a fairly humble sum considering other titles. The official support page for the game includes stretch goals starting at $250,000 and moving up, including fully customizable cities, NPC armies, and at the high end, a full-access mobile application. You can check the trailer out past the break, and if you like what you see and think the title will go all the way, you can toss in a few dollars.
Nexon, Wargaming, Zynga CEO back mobile startup fund
Venture capital firm London Venture Partners is offering initial funding for mobile game development startups. The firm plans to invest between $50,000 and $500,000 into developers that are primarily in Europe. LVP General Partner Paul Heydon told TechCrunch that the firm plans to invest in 20 to 25 projects "of up to half a million dollars each over the lifetime of the fund." The money is coming from Asian publisher Nexon, World of Tanks creator Wargaming and Zynga CEO Don Mattrick. London Venture Partners includes former Atari CEO David Gardner with Microsoft's Corporate VP Phil Harrison serving as a special advisor. Harrison joined Gardner's firm in May 2010. LVP's previous investments include Clash of Clans developer Supercell, the now-Zynga-owned Backbreaker studio NaturalMotion, as well as development platform Unity. [Image: London Venture Partners]
Elon Musk pledges $1 million to help build Nikola Tesla Museum
Nikola Tesla just scored a very generous birthday present. The "father of electricity" was born 158 years ago today, and several fans are trying to preserve his legacy with a museum, to be built on the site of his final laboratory in Shoreham, New York. A 2012 Indiegogo campaign helped raise more than enough to cover purchasing the land, but nowhere near the $8 million that's needed to refurbish the property and actually build a museum. Fortunately, Elon Musk, the father of the modern day Tesla, has pledged $1 million and has promised to install a supercharger in the parking lot. That's still not enough to complete the project, but you can help out by making your own contribution here. [Image credit: Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe]
Crowdfund Bookie: One year, $35 million
The Crowdfund Bookie crunches data from select successful Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns that ended during the month and produces pretty charts for you to look at. A total of 341 video game projects were funded on Kickstarter and Indiegogo in the past year. Those games earned $35,945,510 from June 2013 through May 2014 thanks to the generosity of 782,147 people. It was a year that saw games like Double Fine's Massive Chalice and Keiji Inafune's Mighty No. 9 pull in over $5 million alone. The crowdfunding year was marked by projects like these which, when measured over time, consistently tipped impressions of average Kickstarter and Indiegogo earnings to appear more favorable. The 341 projects in question earned a mean average of $105,412, though creators really earned closer to the median average of $25,457. Removing the more costly projects drags the mean average of money earned down towards that mark; it drops to $61,152 without the top ten projects for the year, $45,153 without the top 20 and $37,862 without the top 30. It was an ever-changing year, as well. Just glancing at the monthly comparison charts after the break shows a gradual decline in most categories, such as the average amount an individual project backer spent on a given project. The first three months of the year saw an average of $49.40 pledged per person, which dropped to $39.80 in the last quarter of the year. This reflects the averages for the entire year; the year showed a mean average of $45.96, though funders spent closer to the median amount of $36.10. By the end of the year, fewer projects earned far beyond their initial goals, potentially reaching fewer stretch goals as a result. The first quarter of the year averaged an earning rate of 211 percent, over double the amount of money projects set out to achieve. The final three months amounted to 166 percent of the combined goals, even after the average combined goals per month dropped $453,639. Relative to their ambitions, project creators earned more to start the year than those whose games were funded late in the year. The year also featured a number of fascinating stories in the crowdfunding space. It included the highly-questionable campaign for Gridiron Thunder and the related fallout of Ouya's Free the Games Fund program. More recently, it looked favorably on Harmonix's new Amplitude game, which was an anomaly among crowdfunded games. Head past the break for another look at the year in crowdfunding, including the top 20 projects and the year's breakdown by genre.
Teenager builds browser plugin to show you where politicians get their funding
The murky world of lobby groups bankrolling politicians is garnering more attention, but is there a way to find out which representatives are in the pocket without a lot of tedious research? A 16-year-old programmer has developed a browser plugin that, when you mouse-over the name of a US lawmaker, will serve up a list of which parties have donated to their campaign funds, and the quantities. Greenhouse (geddit?) is currently available for Chrome, Firefox and Safari -- although our lawyers have (probably) asked us to point out that the data is from the 2012 elections, so they may not be entirely up to date.
Shards Online opens website with 24 hours left on Kickstarter
As of this writing, Shards Online has 24 hours remaining on its Kickstarter program and has yet to break a quarter of its funding goal. Odds are that it's not going to hit that marker, although fans are encouraged to jump in and donate while the campaign is still running. But the team at Citadel Studios isn't giving up on the project and has launched a website for the game devoted to all things related to Shards Online. Despite what you may have suspected from the last paragraph, the page is not currently fishing for donations. The team will be holding the game's first community roundtable discussion on June 13th, starting at 8 p.m. EDT, when the developers will discuss what comes after Kickstarter and why there are no plans to ask for funding on the site directly. It'll be worth watching if you're a fan of the game -- and if you're a fan and still haven't donated, now is the time to do so. [Source: Citadel Studios press release]
Now you can fill your PS4 wallet with PayPal bucks
PS4 owners can now buy games like Towerfall and Octodad: Dadliest Catch by stuffing their wallets full of moola from their PayPal accounts. Those looking to fund their digital purchases in this manner can do so on their PS4 consoles during the checkout process by selecting "Add Funds," then the PayPal option and picking the amount of dough to add to their wallet. Alternatively, players will be able to access the chunk of change in their PayPal accounts via their Sony Entertainment Network accounts, which are tied to their PSN wallets. Similar to the console method, eager buyers simply need to log in, select the "Account" tab, then the "Wallet" section, click "Add funds to Wallet," then follow the instructions to use PayPal as their funding option. PayPal funding, which was added to PS3 in November, is available to PS4 owners in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Chile and Argentina. [Image: PayPal]
Amplitude clears funding goal, races toward finish line
Harmonix has successfully matched its $775,000 goal on Kickstarter for Amplitude with 21 hours remaining in the campaign. The Dance Central developer recently admitted that its crowdfunding goal amounted to "less than half of the project budget for the game," the rest of which will come from the studio's wallet. Harmonix held a telethon via Twitch to raise funds for the game, performing songs and playing the original Amplitude for viewers. The original Amplitude achieved cult-hit status after its 2003 release on PlayStation 2. The game was a follow-up to Harmonix's 2001 music game for PS2, Frequency. Harmonix's goal with the new version of Amplitude is to re-create the frenetic action of the rhythm games, where players guide a ship down a colorful highway and press buttons to match notes in line with the music being played at the time.
Australian government retracts game dev support, reassigns funding
The Australian government will shut down the Australian Interactive Games Fund on July 1, reassigning nearly $10 million it had previously earmarked for local game development studios. Media funding body Screen Australia has awarded $10 million of the government's promised $20 million stimulus to Australian studios in a bid to stem industry employment drop and promote business sustainability. Screen Australia dispersed a $6 million grant to game developers in June last year, followed by an additional $2.6 million in September. The Australian government notes in its recently published 2014-2015 budget proposal that it will use the shuttered project's remaining $10 million to "repair the Budget and fund policy priorities." [Image: Australian government]
Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen restarting with volunteer team
The last major update posted regarding Brad McQuaid's dream MMO, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, didn't leave a lot of ambiguity. The game had no prototypes to be shown off, it had failed at its Kickstarter campaign, and the funding raised by fans had completely worn out. So you'd think that would mean it was the end of the road, but instead McQuaid has posted an update on the state of the game's development, and according to the post, the team is being rebuilt and progress will be made. McQuaid explains that the new development team will be working as volunteers for three main reasons: There's no money to pay this new team, McQuaid doesn't want to go through the same stresses that were involved in putting together the last remote team, and as the team will also be remote, it will require a certain amount of adjustment and uncertainty. If you're still hoping for the game's eventual release, you should take a look at McQuaid's full update on the official site. [With thanks to Cederhill for the tip.]
Funcom nets additional $1.6 million to fund Lego Minifigures Online
Online game developer Funcom has received an additional 9.7 million Norwegian krone ($1.6 million) to continue developing its upcoming kid-friendly MMO Lego Minifigures Online, the company announced this week. The funding arrives as part of a standby equity facility agreement with Yorkville Advisors, a firm that agreed to provide Funcom with additional capital if requested within 36 months of the contract's signing. "We are very pleased to have increased the company's financial flexibility with funds that will be used in preparing for the launch of Lego Minifigures Online," Funcom CEO Ole Schreiner said. "We have several times expressed a need for additional equity and have considered different alternatives to secure this. This facility has been available to us since 2012, but the timing has not been right before." An open beta for Lego Minifigures Online is due to launch in June. [Image: Funcom]
Omni VR treadmill gets $3 million in seed funding
Following Virtuix's announcement earlier this month that its virtual reality treadmill will arrive in July for its early adopters, the company revealed this morning that it received seed funding. Virtuix received $3 million to "expand production and distribution of the Omni," the $500 platform that has players strapping in to a harness and wearing special shoes to run, walk and jump using their real-life legs in games. The seed investment round was led by Tekton Ventures and Maveron. One of the other investors onboard with the Omni is Radical Investments, a venture capital firm founded by Mark Cuban. Virtuix took a trip to the entrepreneurial ABC reality television series Shark Tank, which Cuban stars on, in an episode that aired in December. In it, Cuban pointed out that Virtuix's Omni is "pretty much based around Oculus Rift" and that "as Oculus Rift goes, you guys go." Virtuix valued its idea at $20 million, which Cuban and the rest of the cast didn't buy into. "I could see you creating 20 million in sales, 25 million in sales with this, but you're competing just like headsets are going to be competing," he said. "You haven't told me that there's a way to get to 50 million in sales." Given Facebook's recent acquisition of Oculus VR for $2 billion, which was cleared by the FTC this week, Cuban now appears to see more hope for the Omni. Aside from private investors, the other groups that funded Virtuix's efforts this week are Scentan Ventures, Scout Ventures and StartCaps Ventures. [Image: Virtuix]
Twitch funds chat-driven game Choice Chamber
Twitch matched funds pledged to Studio Bean's chat-driven Kickstarter project, Choice Chamber. The developer's crowdfunding campaign ends Sunday evening and raised nearly half of its $30,000 goal, and Twitch's contributions put it near the finish line. According to the project's reward tiers, the game is expected to launch in December. Following up the success of Twitch Plays Pokemon, Choice Chamber is a PC and Mac game that is designed to be played while streaming live on Twitch. Described as a "real-time, crowdsourced, procedurally generated game," it allows stream viewers to use Twitch's chat functionality to either aid or hinder the progress of the game's primary player by voting on game-changing polls. The player, who can choose to go the single-player-only route with offline mode, navigates an "endless series of dangerous chambers" while wielding a variety of weaponry with which to defeat enemies. In the prototype version of Choice Chamber, viewers vote on said weapons in addition to powerups, abilities and special maneuvers, though Studio Bean plans to add many more modifiable elements. [Image: Studio Bean]
