Kickstarter games losing their appeal

2013 was one of the biggest years for video games in the recent decade. Kickstarter, the crowd-sourcing website, had many successful projects that were backed by thousands of users. A wide spectrum of games, ranging from small indie games like Shovel Knight, to big studio releases like Broken Knight , were all completed and received positive criticism. With many good title attributed to it, its a weird phenomenon to think that Kickstarter games are starting to lose their appeal. The proof is in the money, as this article from Gamespot explains.


With over $53 million raised for Kickstarter games last year, and only $15 million raised in the first half of 2014, there is an obvious decrease in popularity for these types of games. The article gives multiple reasons for this steep decline.

"Bidaux theorizes that the decline is in part because all the big name Kickstarter projects were already funded"

This may be true to a certain extent, but doesn't take into account that even small unknowns still get discovered and funded if the idea is creative enough. A prime example of this is Monsters ate my Birthday Cake.

"Bidaux says that some priojects might be going directly to Steam Early Access instead of Kickstarter, which might be better for many developers with playable builds since there's no end date for the funding campaign."

Again, this seems like a plausible reason, but it also misses that Steam Greenlight isn't for funding. it's a voting platform where user's can decide and discuss what type of games they want in the steam store. So, in essence, it's comparing apples and oranges. The final reason the article gave, however, was very intriguing to me.

"Another reason for the decline, Bidaux thinks, is that people are more aware that Kickstarter projects can fail. "

With the high profile failures of games such as Yogsventures, Clang, and dozens of other smaller projects, investors are getting more skeptical of Kickstarter projects. I believe that many people used to have an idealized vision of the Kickstarter mission, which was to help aspiring game developers achieve their dream and receiving compensation in return. With a few sore thumbs in Kickstarter's history, there is a more overall negative perception of the Kickstarter process. Most of that hate is focused on Kickstarter's policy about returning money on failed projects (Hint: they don't), and its understandable. The allure of the Kickstarter campaign has started to wane, and it is no longer the preferred method for marketing. We may instead see the rise of competitors to Kickstarter with better return policies that may restore the confidence of the online community.  

Maiberg, E. (2014, October 5). Funding for Kickstarter Games in 2014 Drops by More Than Half. Retrieved December 12, 2014.

Artsy Video Games: Is it sacrificing game play?

Videogame developers and players have long struggled for their passion to be validated as an acceptable art form. Roger Ebert is credited for saying that he didn't believe games to be on par with movies, simply because there has never been a game that was on par with the greats in music, theater, poetry etc. In my opinion, Roger forgets that the definition of art is personal to the viewer; nothing is imbued with the inherent status of art. We, as a society, have standardized the definition of art to mean many different things, and it seems that video games just barely miss the quota according to general opinion. Games, however, have taken strides to reverse this and be respected as a true art form. There is a new trend of artsy games being created with wonderful creative direction and bold experimentation. In this article by CNET, the rise of the indie developer is displayed with such hit titles such as Monument Valley and Journey.

"The game has to work as a puzzle, but it also has to work as piece of graphic design." This was dilemma for Monument Valley: How was it possible for the art itself to be as big of a gameplay mechanic as the puzzles in the game. Looking at the still from the article, its clear that they intended for level to be art. Taking influences from Escher, the world inside the puzzle is splashed with a pallet of color, and the puzzles are designed around the world itself. In essence, the art becomes the puzzle, and a good example of using of art being used. The article, however, delves deeper into the problems of being an indie developer: the lack of funding and attention. In order to survive in the rapidly changing market, indie developers need to find their niche and get their name out there. It just so happens that their method of getting noticed is by emphasizing on their artistic styles. As the article claims, "Getting noticed is the most important step to long-term survival in the gaming industry."

At what point, however, does focusing on the art of the game impede on developing the gameplay? Does focusing on the artistic side of the game too much distort the overall goal a game is trying to achieve (that is, an interactive experience for the user)? At what cost are we willing to sacrifice in order to achieve the allusive classification of art? Recent controversy came out of the game Gone Home, when gaming journalists and gamers had two very polarizing opinions of Gone Home's ''classification." In Gone Home, the plot revolves around a girl who has, fittingly, come home and explores her house. Along the way, the player can unfold the story through various clues around the house. Critics praised it for its artistic take on telling a story in the first person. Players, however, believed that there was little to no substance to the game, and it did not warrant a 20$ price tag. Sure, it told a great story against a great soundtrack, but there was barely any player input. If anything, the "game" was closer to a movie where you could control the pace. Can Gone Home really be classified as a game then? In an effort to produce a video game that could be considered art, Gone Home created something entirely different, almost akin to a new medium of interactive storytelling. It is not a game by any conventional definition; this is why that there is a threshold between complimenting a game with art and complimenting art with an interactive medium. Creating the latter only hinders games from ever being classified as art, because it sets a standard that an actual game can't achieve, and it doesn't showcase the mechanics of that a game should have. 

Source: Statt, N. (2014, November 23). Video games aren't all guns and gore; artistic titles are on the rise. Retrieved December 5, 2014.