At a time when Kickstarter is the way for developers to bypass publishers and pull in investments directly from fans, one indie studio has decided to cut out the middleman -- to great effect.
UK-based Introversion, best known for Uplink, Defcon, and Darwinia, recently launched a crowd-funding effort on its own website. It looks incredibly similar to Kickstarter, with the obvious bonus that there's no other company taking a chunk of the intake.
It appears that the more direct Kickstarter/Minecraft approach is working wonders for Prison Architect too -- as is notable from the sales figures image below, the game has made over $270,000 in two weeks, with nearly 8,000 sales total.
"Kickstarter is for getting projects off the ground, and we were already two years into Prison Architect's development so it just didn't sit well for us," explains Introversion co-founder Mark Morris.
"By doing it ourselves, we don't have to time limit the alpha, and we hope that we'll get more and more gamers interested as we progress and start releasing the updates."
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Morris also notes that his studio simply had no idea what target to aim for, making a Kickstarter campaign even more difficult -- says the Introversion man, "By controlling the process ourselves, we can shape our development to the success of the alpha.
"We don't have to pay the Kickstarter fees which is nice, but I guess Kickstarter may have added value if they had listed us as a featured project," he adds. "We also had to take the time to set up our own technology to implement the tiering. We used a service called Digital Delivery App, which I can really recommend, but it did take effort on our part."
One of the most interesting parts of the current sales figures is that the $50 tier (in which backers can put their own name and persona into the final product as a prisoner) is the second best-selling tier, after the base $30 tier. Is it simply the idea of injecting your own name into the game that is causing people to grab this tier in spades?
"I think they're actually buying something much more than that," reasons Morris. "They're paying to help Introversion finish the game and assist in molding the direction the game takes and the features and gameplay that we create."
"There's a huge amount of generosity out there and I think the people who go for the 'Name in the Game' tier are proud of what they've done and want to be able to point to their prisoner and say -- I helped make that!"
Off the back of this success, and with Kickstarter successes happening regularly, does Morris think there's any space for publishers anymore?
"I think publishers add value for triple-A titles, but that's it," he tells us. "At the small and medium level, there is absolutely no benefit from working with a publisher."
He adds, "I firmly believe that developers are best place to form the relationship with Steam and control the marketing and PR for a game launch. Publishers are completely redundant in the indie world."
Really? I thought it was brilliant; it actually kinda made me want to buy the game. How many times have you seen developers show off hilarious bugs that you'll only get to see if you pre-purchase?
I think it matches the theme of the game pretty well. That is, "look at us, we are being totally serious over here... no really, we are. Ok, you got us. We aren't."
The video accurately represents the game in its current form, whats wrong with that? The bugs are many and hilarious but the game itself does show a lot of promise. Introversion have garnered a lot of good will over the years, I don't think they've ever released a bad game (Multiwinia is the closest they've come but even then its entertaining) so I think thats where a lot of the supports come from.
Yeah it was hilarious. Did you not watch the whole thing? The awful trailer voice was a joke.
I paid for the $50 package. I love the idea of the game, I'm a big fan of Introversion and putting my own little easter egg in the game is a nice little bonus that gives me an excuse to support an indie other than charity. Plus, I can't wait to hunt for my prisoner!
I'm wondering what kind of deal that they made with PayPal. I know that PayPal frown on Pre-orders and often freeze the accounts, and you have to be a non-profit to accept donations. I wish they would of given some insight on how they made this possible with PayPal.
I think if you're sending an early-release version of the game, it's not technically a "preorder." We ran into a similar issue with FastSpring, and solved it by including an in-development release so there was a tangible transaction happening.
was that an attempt at an american accent in that video? seems like maybe it might've been.
I'm similarly underwhelmed by the video, but introversion has a solid existing fanbase, and much more appeal in the UK, so I'm sure they knew what they were doing there.
"You get a special limited edition Game DVD and Soundtrack CD, a Poster (sent in a tube so you can proudly frame it). A Special Prison Architect T-shirt (sent in a jiffy bag so you'll need to iron it). A super sexy PA art book to leave on your coffee table and scare your nan. We'll be shipping this close to the launch of PA (which could be a while) so you'll have to enjoy ALL PREVIOUS TIERS while you wait."
http://www.introversion.co.uk/prisonarchitect/
Looking forward to it. So far Introversion games were pretty nice. Unique and well executed. PA looks like it lives up to that expectation.
Good for them though...congrats
I paid for the $50 package. I love the idea of the game, I'm a big fan of Introversion and putting my own little easter egg in the game is a nice little bonus that gives me an excuse to support an indie other than charity. Plus, I can't wait to hunt for my prisoner!
https://www.pathofexile.com/purchase
I'm similarly underwhelmed by the video, but introversion has a solid existing fanbase, and much more appeal in the UK, so I'm sure they knew what they were doing there.
http://www.introversion.co.uk/prisonarchitect/
Looking forward to it. So far Introversion games were pretty nice. Unique and well executed. PA looks like it lives up to that expectation.