Sunday Sermon: Just what the hell is Crowd-funding supposed to be?

Right well I guess this is overdue in some respects. Like many in our community I've spoken about this crowd-funding phenomenon that seems to have swept through our hobby, mainly in terms of the projects that are up and running on various crowd funding sites. Many of the projects that I see are genuinely interesting, and many more really exciting. I'm a terrible person for new shiny stuff, I'm a magpie at heart and I struggle to resist the allure of new miniatures and games. So this crowd funding phenomenon is a bit like a drug to people like me. The opportunity to help somebody else realise their dream and goal of producing their own miniatures range or game has been a very powerful motivator for me, and my currently quite limited spending power. I'm partly a contrary bugger who likes seeing odd ball indie games developed, and I've always sought out the weird and out of way stuff in whatever environment I happen to be operating in, be it comic books, music, films, computer games or hobby. Kickstarter is therefore right up my street.

It also appears quite oddly to be up many other peoples streets too, which is great because it seems many products are getting the funding they require to made into reality. I have personally maintained my belief that Kickstarter and Indiegogo would go through a brief euphoria period with us hobbyists being enraptured and enamoured with it. Spending all of our cash on it, and then settle down. I honestly thought it might be a fleeting fad, and that people would start to get a bit annoyed with waiting for all their shiny miniature goodness to actually arrive. I still maintain this will ultimately be the case, but, I thought this process would actually take far less time that it appears to be taking. This is a boon and a bane in some respects for our industry. You see, I've followed crowd-funding for a little time, and from before our hobby cottoned onto it as a good idea. I've witnessed the collapse of computer game projects after they've received funding, and the inevitable recriminations that follow. I actually think that our industry on the whole has been significantly better than others at actually fulfilling there promises... which either proves as a sector we're awesome, or that these products didn't need crowd-funding in the first place.
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