Another week, another crowdfunding project!
Ouya funding has slowed from its insanely high initial rate but it’s still going strong at $5.2 million despite recent article doubting its ability to deliver. The Penny Arcade kickstarter has passed its base goal of $250k and is up to $343k. The Defense Grid kickstarter has picked up some steam and is up to $132k ($250k goal) with 3+ weeks left to go; it’ll probably reach the base goal but it’s looking unlikely that it’ll reach any of its stretch goals. And 3D Dictionary is up to $19k ($12k goal) with 6 days left.
There was a very successful Shadowrun kickstarter earlier this year and now a different developer is trying out kickstarter with their own take on the franchise – Shadowrun Online. Too soon? They’re up to $84k after a couple days with 24 days left to reach their goal of $500k so this one could go either way.
Now it’s time to take a look at crowdfunding meets special editions! First up, Spacechem! SpaceChem is a popular indie puzzle game that’s been out for a while but the developer has started a kickstarter to release a special physical edition of the game. It’s up to $3k (past its goal which was only a few hundred dollars).
It’s not directly related to Kickstarter, but I think this is interesting enough to bring up anyway – Namco is running their own “Ninostarter.” Basically, fans can preorder the special edition of Ni no Kuni (the Level-5/Studio Ghibl RPG that is coming to the US early 2013) for $100 and the more people order the special edition, the more stuff they’ll pack into it. It hasn’t reached any of its goals yet but it’ll be interesting to see how it does and if other companies follow suit with their own similar preorder campaigns.
That’s it for this week!
It’s worth pointing out that as long as Hidden Path’s kickstarter for Defense Grid 2 is successful, everyone who pledged $15 and up WILL get Defense Grid 2, even if they can’t fund it directly from the kickstarter – it just means it might take an extra year or two (as opposed to being able to start on it directly). They will make note of who pledged and everyone will still get all the content developed, in time. Unfortunately this wasn’t immediately obvious and it’s probably hurt the pledge rate some – hopefully this clarifies it for others, too.