As crowdfunding has become more and more prevalent in the gaming world, developers have been able to pursue projects that they would never have had a chance to take on with traditional VCs.
Fairfax-based gaming studio City State Entertainment is one business that has used crowdfunding to work on its Alpha project, Camelot Unchained. Unchained is a PC only MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role-playing game). It is a “niche product,” made for “just a segment of the population that’s really interested in playing that kind of a game,” City State founder Mark Jacobs told DC Inno.
“Crowdfunding has given us, and many other project creators, the chance to create something which would have been difficult, if not impossible, to get backing from traditional VCs and game publishers,” he added. 
- Credit: camelotunchained.com
Jacobs is not the first to successfully crowd fund a video game.
Developer Yu Suzuki made headlines on Sony’s stage at E3 when he announced a Kickstarter for Shenmue 3 and the campaign has already raised over $4.6 million. Other prominent games to receive crowdfunding include Star Citizen, which holds the record for video game crowdfunding with $85 million raised, Shroud of the Avatar, and Torment: Tides of Numera.
Jacobs and City State have already raised $3.5 million in crowdfunding and $2.2 million of it came from Kickstarter, putting it on the high end of the video game crowdfunding spectrum.
Crowdfunding platforms are the epitome of a democratic, consumer-funded, development process
This money, 100% of which goes to development, is helping Jacobs develop an engine that can handle a massive RvR MMO like Camelot Unchained. The company hopes that the game will be ready in time for its summer 2016 release date.
With crowdfunding, developers like Jacobs no longer need to sell investors or execs on a game’s marketability, but need only find a group of fans who want to play the game and are willing to back it. This is exactly what happened with Camelot Unchained, as Jacobs says that a lot of his backers had played his games in the past, and that the “game concept resonated with a lot of people.”
However, not working with VCs also has its drawbacks, as crowdfunded projects can’t fall back on the means of their investors if they encounter difficulties along the way. As Jacobs put it, such projects can’t “‘run back to mommy or daddy for more money.”
For video game consumers though, the crowdfunding trend could be a big win, as it’s an opportunity for consumers to directly influence the development process. Individualized and personal funding of this sort, via the game’s players, will mean further control of which games make it to market and what they look like when they get there.
“We ask our backers formally (surveys) and informally (posting on the forums, chatting via XMPP) for their thoughts on a wide range of subjects,” said Jacobs,”We’ll also do things like creating topics on the forums to hear their feedback, participating in their discussions, etc.”
So if gamers want what Jacobs calls “an ‘old school’ niche MMORPG,” they can get it by funding a project like Camelot Unchained. If they’re craving a sequel to an established series, they can come together and fund something like Shenmue 3.
Crowdfunding platforms are “the epitome of a democratic, consumer-funded, development process,” Jacobs told DC Inno,”I think it is a fantastic trend and I hope it continues forever.”
