I had been a lurker on this site for a loooong time, on Aerodrome as well. I have seen many games announced and then not happen. There have been many dramas in the game world. Publishers have merged, gone out of business, reappeared with a reconfigured release schedules and so on. For small companies in a small industry that is often the way of it. Frankly until recently I would have bet even money that Sails of Glory would or would not ever be released. That is life in the game publishing world.

It kind of looks like Kickstarer is changing all that. An article was published on Kickstarter about 6 months ago called The Year of the Game http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/the-year-of-the-game. It detailed how games have, basically out of nowhere, become the number one backed project category on Kickstarter. At the time of the article, Video Games were collecting more cash but board games had a better project success rate. Things have actually gotten a bit more game-centric on Kickstarter since then (See here, Open the categories to see the details).

For someone wanting to publish a game, Kickstarter seems like an unbeatable deal. You need your concept, a pitch, some art work and/or mock-ups, and a reasonably accurate budget of what it will take to produce the game. That's about it. Once upon a time you would take that to a game publisher and hope. Then came Kickstarter (and others). Kickstarter publicizes the game. Collects the "venture capital" needed to produce the game for you in the form of presold orders, and at the end of a successfull campaing sends you the proceeds net of fees with a list of customer orders with shipping addresses. The fees collected for all this are between 7% and 8% split between Kickstarter and the funds collection mechanism. You are then off and going. No waiting for years for an approval from "The Committee" while your rights are tied up, no loss of equity to backers, no wondering what reaction your product will have in the market once all the cash has been invested and the game is finally produced. Some of the projects listed on Kickstarter are from established companies but many are from newcomers to their industries. I think that the initial concept for Kickstarter was just for, well, kickstarting new ventures. I think, however, that if you offered just about ANY established company, game company or any other, a deal like this for a new product roll out that they would jump at it. I certainly would.