Trust in Crowd Funding

[Reposted from Sugar Pill Studios.]

Enthusiastic game developers are understandably embracing the crowd funding dream.  Who wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to make big money building the game of your dreams with complete ownership and control over the process, product, and intellectual property?  Kickstarter and its competitors promise to replace the money of those short-sighted and meddlesome extortionists known as publishers, with the heartfelt contributions of loving fans.  And there are increasingly more of those contributions to go around; first-time backers of last month’s Double Fine Adventure have already dropped around a million dollars on other projects (in addition to Double Fine’s $3,336,371 take).  And all of this goodness is now available at the low-low price of a compelling web pitch.

But like the Deathstar and Achilles before it, crowd funding as we know it is vulnerable.  Crowd funding depends on the trust of its funders, and I fear that many campaigns are abusing that trust.  Three of the most concerning and common abuses involve trust that 1) an advertised game will be fun, 2) an advertising developer is capable of making said game, and 3) the developer actually intends to make the game instead of disappearing with the money.

Trusting that a game will be fun.

One of the ways that publishers help developers (collectively) is by using the profits of a few hit games to help subsidize the development of many others.  They would prefer only publishing hits, but distinguishing hits from failures is extremely difficult.  So what happens to all of the supporters who back lack-luster games?  This could be the majority of backers, if traditional success rates prevail in the crowd funded space.  Disappointed funders are likely to become much stingier.

So how do you earn and keep a pledge’s trust that a game will be fun?  The best way to communicate the concept of your game is through playable prototypes and demos.  Put something in your potential backers’ hands, and explain the specific ways that their contributions will help you refine that experience.

Trusting that a developer is capable.

“Kickstarter does not investigate a creator’s ability to complete their project”, as is clearly stated in their FAQ.  This is not surprising, since the complexity of game development makes estimating a project’s required and available resources very difficult.  And beyond the few big names that have proven to carry their weight in Kickstarter-gold, most developers’ are not well known.  In fact, many developers’ contributions have gone unsung or been grossly exaggerated (despite the efforts of the IGDA’s Credit Standards Committee).  For these reasons, it is understandable when consumers confuse poorly conceived game design with incompetent execution.  This is one more reason to deploy playable prototypes to the hands of potential backers.  A prototype serves both as proof of your concept, and proof of your ability to deliver on that concept.  And you should explain the value of that to your audience.

Trusting that a campaign is not actually a confidence game.

The most successful Kickstarters and major publishers have both invested heavily in building their names as reputable brands.  Building this kind of trust takes time; which is in short supply on many Kickstarter campaigns.  Once a Kickstarter project is successfully funded, “… all backers’ credit cards are instantly charged and funds go directly to the project creator.”  We are now starting to see some project creators fail to fulfill their responsibilities to backers.  This appears to be an incredible minority of funded projects on Kickstarter.  However, when a single campaign appears to go AWOL with several hundreds of thousands of dollars, people rightly become upset.

Unfortunately, anything that you could say to convince people that you’re not a conman is probably being said by several conmen.  So dig in, and start establishing yourself slowly over time.  Don’t treat crowd funding like a quick-fix lottery.  Set modest funding-goals and plan to over-deliver on all of your promises.  Instead of approaching funders with sensational advertising, help educate them about how their pledge is different than a purchase.

The future of crowd funding

Kickstarter’s director of communications, Justin Kazmark has expressed that, “One of the bedrock beliefs behind Kickstarter is a trust in the crowd.”  There is undeniable utility in crowds’ pooled resources, but crowds can also be lead astray.  The sustainability of crowd funding depends on the funders’ trust in developers.  When this fragile trust is broken, it’s difficult to repair.  So developers should proactively work to build all three of these trusts in their funding community.  If you agree, please share this message.  

“Trust opens up new and unimagined possibilities.” -Robert C. Solomon.

Sources:

http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/blockbuster-effects

http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/creating%20a%20project#Acco

http://www.igda.org/credit-standards

http://www.betabeat.com/2011/09/15/when-kickstarter-goes-wrong-were-419-backers-almost-taken-for-a-27637-ride/

http://ask.slashdot.org/story/12/04/11/0231254/ask-slashdot-at-what-point-has-a-kickstarter-project-failed

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zioneyez/eyeztm-by-zioneyez-hd-video-recording-glasses-for/comments