Thanks to an article by Cracked staff member, Robert Brockway; I have discovered this wonderful website called Kickstarter. I recently pledged $25 to The Banner Saga, a turn-based roleplaying and adventure game about vikings; my pledge enabled me to:
“get the AWESOME SPECIAL EDITION of The Banner Saga. The single player game as described above plus the digital art book including production art and design sketches, the original soundtrack and desktop wallpaper. On top of all that, as a special thanks we’ll include your name in the OFFICIAL CREDITS for the game.”
Totally worth it!
The Stoic Studio basically wanted to create an awesome game with no middle-man (a publisher) to be involved. Kickstarter is basically an alternative avenue for budding artists to receive community funding rather than corporate funds from publishers. In addition, artists have complete freedom to do whatever they want on their project, versus accepting every demand that publishers ask of them. The great thing about Kickstarter is that it’s huge, a lot of people are already a part of it, and every project gets some kind of money as artists probably appeal to some group of people.
I think this website is a win-win for both pledgers and artists! If you want to donate to a great cause or company, you can totally support them; and most of those video game projects will put your name in the credits for a reasonable amount! And if you would like some more funding on a great project you came up with, the Kickstarter community is very supportive of that! So if you have time to surf through the projects on the site, have at ‘er!