Kickstarter

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Revision as of 18:32, 3 June 2018 by Robkelk (talk | contribs) (Useful Notes -> website)


Kickstarter is probably the most well known crowd-funding website in existence. Basically, here you can obtain money for any creative project[1] you have by submitting a description of your project (usually alongside a shot video) and promising rewards to people who "pledge" different amounts.

While the site has enjoyed a reasonable success beforehand, in February 2012 everything changed: not only did an iPhone dock become the first project to raise a million dollars, but legendary game developer Tim Schafer announced he was going to raise money for a new adventure game. Said project ended up raising over 3 million, with 1 million raised in a single day. The Order of the Stick Reprint Drive also joined the +1 million club the same month.

Schaefer's success then caused a large number of game developers to turn to Kickstarter and popularized the crowd-funding concept to a new height.

Notable Kickstarter projects include:
  • Successes
  • Failures (Either canceled or folded)
    • Ouya (The most successful project at the time. People were disappointed with the under-performing console and the lacking games. The company later went bankrupt, and its assets were sold off to Razer.)
    • Yogventures (Canceled after creatives troubles, budget issues and bankruptcy.)
    • Red Ash: The Indelible Legend (Will be published regardless)
    • RetroBlazer
    • Rampage 3 (After previous failed funding attempts on Indiegogo and Kickstarter, Uwe Boll posted an infamous video rant on YouTube insulting his non-backers.[2])
Kickstarter provides examples of the following tropes:
  • All or Nothing: If an "All or Nothing" project doesn't get the required funding, it gets nothing.
  • Follow the Leader: While Kickstarter had hosted hundreds of gaming projects before Tim Schafer, Double Fine Adventure caused several high profile developers to join in. It also paved the way for much more expensive projects: before DFA getting over 100k on Kickstarter was a bit of a stretch, now several projects have tried and succeeded getting money around and over the 500k range.
  • Sturgeon's Law: Most submissions are really bad and are typically not funded at all.
  1. ↑ stuff like founding businesses, charities, etc, are not allowed, but businesses can and do use Kickstarter to fund "limited edition" runs of creative works that they publish
  2. ↑ Bloody Disgusting article
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Kickstarter?oldid=1602320"