Kickstopper

It's becoming clear that websites like Kickstarter and Rockethub are going to have a large impact on the way we think about paying for games, as both developers and consumers. Crowdfunding gives developers the freedom to go after a much narrower demographic, and you don't have to prove that people will buy what you're selling once they already have.

A couple months back, Tim Schafer asked for $400,000 to make an adventure game, a genre long considered dead by mainstream publishers. In the end, he did not raise his goal amount. Instead he raised $3,336,371! If this doesn't prove that there's still a market for adventure games, it at least proves that there's a market for Tim Schafer games.

With all the great possibilities of crowdfunding, I'm sad to announce the first Kickstarter scam: a game titled Mythic: The Story Of Gods And Men. People started to get suspicious when they noticed that the concept art and CG animation (and office shots) had been stolen from other websites. Also the fact that they were promising to make a game with graphics "up there with Skyrim" with $80,000 in donations, in a year, might have been a clue.

The creator has since pulled the plug, but you can still watch the trailer and laugh at its ineptitude without feeling bad. Also I'm not sure it was wise for the "creator" to show his face in the video, maybe he's unfamiliar with how the internet works.