Fig - Crowd funding with equity for backers...
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Interesting... Definintely hasnt been done before. It's probably not a whole lot. But still. Pretty nice to see the direction it's going.
http://venturebeat.com/2015/08/18/bailey-schafer-fargo-and-urquhart-create-a-kickstarter-competitor-built-for-games-and-equity/
Justin Bailey has launched Fig, a new crowdfunding site built specifically for games. The former chief operating officer of developer Double Fine partnered with some big names and studios who previously had success on Kickstarter, specifically his old colleague, Tim Schafer (The Broken Age), Brian Fargo of InXile (Wasteland 2), and Feargus Urquhart of Obsidian (Pillars of Eternity). Each has pledged to launch campaigns for new games on Fig.
Fig also stands out from other crowdfunding sites in that you buy equity in a game or developer, meaning you can actually make money from a successful project.
http://venturebeat.com/2015/08/18/bailey-schafer-fargo-and-urquhart-create-a-kickstarter-competitor-built-for-games-and-equity/
Replies
I think laws were recently passed in the US allowing this
Never been done before? You do realize the original purpose of the stock market was exactly this. Crowd funding! Yay... Now we have a new system to corrupt and abuse. But maybe before it is corrupted we will see some interesting things happen
I agree with this
The scale of it seems alot larger, in the gamasutra piece they said minimum investments would be in the thousands. So its much less crowd funding and more upper class circle-jerking.
New platform Fig adds investing to video game crowdfunding
Its interesting that there seems to be more protections (and returns) offered to investors because of the scale. Alot of people have been burned by shitty kickstarters and are just expected to cop it. Should be neat to see where it goes.
If thats what you think I would strongly advise you to watch the doc about the development of Broken Age. The whole series is on Youtube.
Having said that, this whole thing sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.
Investment shouldn't be done on a whim and the number of people who will automatically claim fraud if they dont see a return on thier investment will most likely be high considering how often that happens on kickstarters.
Also considering how hard it was for the Double Fine team to stay financially stable during Broken Age, I cant imagine how this will financially work out well for devs if they are paying out royalties to a large number of people that dont actually do any work.
I am hoping there is a much more detailed plan for how this all works that will be shared later.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/09/how-hollywood-accounting-can-make-a-450-million-movie-unprofitable/245134/
This will not end well.
Note that there are now crowd-funding advisory services that are paid services :poly122: while 80% to 90% of crowd-funding projects fail.
Honestly the house always wins and money makes the world go around :thumbup:
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Oh god, that would be so fucked up.
The problem with this in a crowdfunding way is that there could be massive uproar and the only way you could pull this off is by having a game that does not require online and delaying this payment as long as you can because when the backers find out you will sell little to no copies of that game or any future titles you or your studio wants to put out after.