During a lengthy interview with Games Industry International, Project Eternity Creative Director Chris Avellone spoke about their own Kickstarter process. He had a few interesting things to say from the point of view of someone who's been able to help fund over $4 million dollars for their game.
When asked whether or not Kickstarter had "legs" Avellone responded that he wasn't "really sure how long" Kickstarter would last. He mentioned that they were concerned that a lot of gaming companies were barely making their funding goals. He also said that there always seems like a new Kickstarter project going up, so he worries about Kickstarter exhaustion. They'd watched Kickstarters for a while and noticed that Kickstarter support generally started off strong but dropped off.
"That was one of the challenges we knew we had to face going into it. We had no idea if we'd make our funding goal at all, just because we'd seen that pattern developing. We're like, "Do we have enough appeal to even stand out in the crowd?" Fortunately we did."
Avellone believes that the first successful or unsuccessful titles finally do release, that it will change Kickstarter–for better or for worse.
"When the first successful title hits, or even the first unsuccessful title hits, that'll change Kickstarter in different ways. We haven't really seen the upper levels of how much people are willing to donate," Avellone said. "Then there's the danger of when the first big failure comes out on Kickstarter, I think people will be even more hesitant about donating. It will be beyond exhaustion level; it will be "I'm not sure this process is going to pan out." I feel like Kickstarter is still in its infancy when it comes to the process; I feel like we're in the honeymoon phase."
