More to the point, though, this is why I'm finding big-name game publishers less appealing and more frustrating. They make games with questionable features, little/no community involvement, and architectures that seem blatantly aimed at making profit at the expense of the community rather than in collusion with it. When did the industry become so... Hostile? Has it always been this way, and we've just never seen it? Is there such an enormous disconnect between executives and their customers, or is it really just the niche view of a small crowd? Facebook games have become big, the "freemium revolution". Play Farmville, and make money off of people putting in voluntary payments towards some in-game gems or coins. Or if not Farmville, then maybe Hay Day. Or if not that, then City Folk. The same thing has become big on mobile devices - look at Pixel People, or Pocket Planes, because Chillingo is a master of this. Free games where the only profit is from microtransactions. Even much bigger games are going this way now - look at how many MMOs are free-to-play, either entirely, or up to a level limit. Look at MechWarrior Online and Planetside 2. Games which are good - which are great! Games which are some of the best ones out there right now.
Piranha Games Interactive (PGI, the people making MWO) is an interesting, almost transitional company, in my mind. It's a smallish team, working with a traditional production stack and funding, putting out MechWarrior Online as a "big-name" game. It's free-to-play and supported by pre-orders (the "founders") and microtransactions, but also, they're doing one of the best jobs I've ever seen or heard of of getting the community involved. They (devs as well as designers and community managers) monitor the forums closely, and are actively involved in discussions. They get on podcasts, talk with people - live - and answer questions. They listen to feedback. They discuss things, and explain the reasons why things happen. They don't give excuses, they explain the decision-making process. Not everything they've done is something I necessarily approve of or agree with, but at least I don't think I'm being ignored - they just don't agree with my reasoning. I find myself supporting them more than I otherwise would purely because of their attitude. This is a game company I want to survive, and I'm willing to vote with my dollars to make my contribution to that end.
But look at some of the Kickstarted games. Watch the original video for Wasteland 2. This is a game with a big fan following and rabid supporters; a game that's been pitched so many times; but a game that no big publishing house would touch. They refused to accept the designer's vision, saying it was old-fashioned and going to be a failure. It wasn't going to sell a million copies on pre-orders, so they ignored it. It made it on Kickstarter. It only got 61,290 backers... But it got 61,290 backers. It got almost $3,000,000 in fundings. The fans stood up at the campaign and said "Yes, this is a game we will pay for. This is a game we will put money into, knowing we won't see it for a year. This is a game we want to exist, and we'll vote for it with our wallets."
Amanda Palmer's TED talk is an interesting one. Anyone who knows me well knows I'm more than a little bit of a Kickstarter junkie; I've supported more games than I'll ever be able to play, and other projects to boot. But one quote summarizes my feelings perfectly:
And the media asked, "Amanda, the music business is tanking and you encourage piracy. How did you make all these people pay for music?" And the real answer is, I didn't make them; I asked them. And through the very act of asking people, I'd connected with them; and when you connect with them, people want to help you.
Her record label, on her first album with the Grand Theft Orchestra, declared it a failure because it only had 25,000 sales; but then 25,000 backers put up $1.3 million for her second album and tour.
I love crowd-funding. Kickstarter will, itself, eventually die off; but this - letting fans pick their own projects - to me, is the future... And SimCity is a shining example of why it's so much harder than ever before to support the big publishing houses.
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* The list of Kickstarter projects I've supported so far, in the order I've funded them:
HexBright (the "open source", programmable flashlight)
The Silk Road in Stereo (supporting a road-trip across Asia with musical rewards)
Mystic Empyrean (a player-driven role-playing game)
Creatures (one of the most adorable card games I've ever seen)
Biochemies (DNA molecule plush dolls)
Lance T. Miller's Steampunk Playing Cards
Sentinels of the Multiverse: Rook City (expansion to SotM, a card game)
Velociraptor! Cannibalism! (a silly board game)
Double Fine Adventure (a new take on an old computer adventure game genre)
FTL (an awesome, sci-fi, vaguely rogue-like adventure PC game)
Wasteland 2 (post-apocalyptic PC roleplaying, and sequel to the founder of the genre)
Mobile Frame Zero: Rapid Assault (a lego-based wargame)
Dinocalypse Now (a role-playing expansion and fiction-writing project)
Shadowrun Returns (a new game set in my favourite setting ever)
Sentinels of the Multiverse: Infernal Relics (another expansion to SotM)
Carmageddon: Reincarnation (a re-boot of the original gratuitous car-crushing pedestrian-killing video game)
HAND Stylus (a pretty good stylus for tablets)
Dead State: The Zombie Survival RPG (yay zombie apocalypse computer RPG!)
Zombie Playground - 3D Action, Online Battle RPG (computer game)
Solforge (electronic CCG focusing on iOS)
Castle Story (computer strategy/survival game with strong Minecraft influences)
Project Eternity (an old-school fantasy CRPG of grand scale)
Strike Suit Zero (transforming mecha space shooter)
Sentinels of the Multiverse: Shattered Timelines (yet another expansion!)
1 Second Everyday (an awesome art project and iOS app)
Aero 3D Bird Flight Game (supported by Bill Nye, of all people. This one failed...)
Forsaken Fortress (post-apocalyptic survival CRPG)
Girl Genius and the Rats of Mechanicsburg (video game based on a popular web comic)
Claymation "Mourning Riturals" (a musical album)
Elite: Dangerous (massively multiplayer re-boot of the founding member of the space sim genre - and a huge source of nostalgia for me)
Antharion ("old-school" CRPG)
Galcon 2: Galactic Conquest (a sequel to one of the first iOS games I ever bought)
Smallworld 2 (cancelled, but an updated version of the iOS port of the Smallworld board game)
Monster of the Sky (a claymation/puppet movie I found through a band I've recently fallen in love with)
Ledo and Ix: Season 2 (web comic/video series)
Ascension Online (a PC and Android implementation of an awesome deck-building card game which is already on iOS)
Torment: Tides of Numenera (spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment by one of my favourite computer game designer/producers)
Dungeon Roll (cute- and silly-looking dice game)
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