Kickstarter, The Future Of Distributors And Publishers.

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Kickstarter, the future of distributors and publishers.



If you want to develop a game, cd music or other product, you need a company that pays the salaries of the workers, the costs of production, and others expenses until the product goes on sale and do benefits to payback. It’s really difficult to finance a “big” project without a company that puts the required money (that youneed). If finally you find a publisher, this company will demand a lot of requirements that they “believe” necessary for the success of the product that you develop (and recoup their investment).The problem is that the requirements not always are finally the best for the end user or the requirement end up destroying your idea. Other problem is, that publishers only accept a concept that is invogue. Like in the case of a generic shooter game. This cause that developers can’t produce a brilliant or innovative idea (or games, music) and for that, nobody want to finance. The solution about this, is a new website called Kickstarter where developers show an idea with a minimum price to finance it. After that, an user finance the development of that idea with the agreement that they willreceive it when the product will be finished. And if the minimum price is reached, the project starts. Thanks to this website, a lot of fantastics games and projects have been financed.


I. Introduction

Actually if you are a developer, for example a mobile application programmer you will have a big competence. It’s difficult to have a revolutionary idea, with a market that have about 700.000apps(Android Market). But if one day you wake up with fantastic concept the biggest difficult will be find a person that invest in your project and pays salaries during the development time.
A lot of companies called Publishers are dedicate to this, like Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Activision... Some time ago they are famous to launch a lot of innovating game that now are popular and bestseller. Butnowadays they only finance a products that already established in the market. For example, the most recently release games are sequels(Call Of Duty 9, Fifa 2013, Assassins Creed 3...). The explanation for this is that in the first years of gaming, these companies were founded for people who loved the games. This old-school geeks when they saw an innovative idea did not doubt to put money and risksto starts. But now these company are in stock exchange, and these investors want minimum risk and maximum benefit. They will only want a project with success guaranties and the others will be abandoned.

One solution about this was to create small publishers that are dedicate to finance little projects or indie games. But they are a few publishers but a lot of developers and many of ideas willbe outside. They needed other solution and the name is Kickstarter.

II. The website

This website was launch in 2009, but the idea of this website is not new. It belongs a old concept called crowdfunding . Is the cooperative collaboration of consumers to pool money or others resources to finance an idea or project, then when the idea is finalize they will receive it. The idea not will benecessary a game, can be a music CD, film, art comic[1]... The first crowdfunding was in 1997. The british rock band Marillion wanted to make a tour, but didn’t found a record company that finance it. The American fans collect 60.000$ and finance the tour thanks to the donations and a campaign of the group in Internet[2]. The band will use the same strategy to finance her future albums.
Since thenother music group use this method like Extremoduro [3] or a lot of indies or not commercial music bands. But until 2004 only music groups use crowdfunding. The first film to use this idea was Demain la Veille. In just three weeks they reach 60000€ of a lot of small donations. In Spain the first film was “El Cosmonauta” where the reward to finance it was appear in the credits. Since this other...