The Wasteland 2 Kickstarter has managed to exceed more than its $1.5 million goal, meaning that a Linux and Mac version are coming. With over three weeks remaining on the Kickstarter, inXile CEO Brian Fargo is bowled over in the response.
“I continue to be overwhelmed by the positive feedback and enthusiasm from the support I have gotten from Kickstarter,” wrote Fargo. “The groundswell of people cheering us on and the evangelism – people spreading the word – is unlike anything I have experienced. In fact, I would say the last week was the high water mark of my career.”
While the whole project has been one big feel-good story, Fargo couldn’t help but relate a few of what he calls “human moments” that have come up. “We started off strong in the first 24 hours raising nearly 50 percent of our minimum need but still I was nervous,” said Fargo. “All the signs of success were there but we all wanted it to happen so badly that it seemed to good to be true. Around 6:00 that first night we received an email from a wealthy software industry individual who is a passionate fan of Wasteland and offered to help fund the game if Kickstarter came short! Talk about feeling good. Of course I thanked him and said I hoped we would not need his assistance but he made my whole day/week/month/year.”
“On the next day I get a short tweet from an individual that confesses he pirated Wasteland as a kid and was donating to help make up for it,” he added. “I of course forgave not knowing he had donated $10,000 dollars. An incredible gesture . . . now if we could get every pirate of Wasteland 1 to donate we could really beat the Kickstarter all time record.”
Kickstarter has been good to Brian Fargo, and he wants to help spread the love to other developers. “Speaking of goodwill it occurs to me that we can harness the power of Kickstarter in a more meaningful way,” said Fargo. “an funding is bigger than me or Wasteland 2 as I have remarked before. The development community has come together to support us in ways that I didn’t think possible and our power as developers will ultimately come from us sticking together. Both gamers and developers have so much more strength than they realize. But in order to help facilitate the power of crowd funding I am going to suggest that all of us that do utilize this form of financing agree to kickback 5 percent of our profits made from such projects to other Kickstarter developers. I am not suggesting taking a backers money and moving it to another project.. I mean once a game has shipped and created profit that we funnel that back into the community of developers to fund their dreams. I am tentatively calling this ‘Kick It Forward’ and I will be the first to agree to it. In fact, I will have our artists create a badge that goes on all Kickstarter projects that agree to support this initiative. Imagine the potential if another Minecraft comes along via Kickstarter and produces millions of dollars of investment into other developers. This economic payback will continue to grow the movement way beyond the current system. I hope others will join me with this idea and make this a true shakeup.”
“Any developer that puts the ‘Kicking it Forward’ badge on their Kickstarter project page is agreeing that they will put 5 percent of their finished product profits back into other Kickstarter projects,” he continued. “To be abundantly clear, this is only money that the developer earns as profit AFTER the project ships and AFTER they have paid their expenses. This is NOT a suggestion to invest money they received from people who invested into their project via Kickstarter.”
“Once a project in this program has become profitable, the developer is going to spend this 5 percent profit, which is their own money, on whatever Kickstarter projects they want to support,” he added. “They can determine unilaterally who they want to give it to and when. Neither myself nor a committee is going to tell successful developers what projects to invest in. Ultimately, this is an honor system at the end of the day. No one is going to audit their books to make sure they complied. In many ways Kickstarter is an honor system too, so this is no different. Of course some unscrupulous developer may not follow through with their promise but I believe the development community sticks together.:
Source: kickstarter.com