With $50million raised on computer games, What will Kickstarter bring to the UK gaming industry?

Kickstarter has had a phenomenal drive in building projects of all types, but none the more so in gaming. Kickstarter has produced over $75 million dollars to gaming projects with about $50 million of that on computer game projects. Now that its launched in London can the crowd sourcing giant benefit the British computer game Industry?

The numbers are interesting, just 34% of all projects successfully completed their fundraising with 12% not gaining a penny. Even more interestingly, the cycle of donations has massively increased to over $7million per MONTH, Kickstarters most frequent backers are, believe it or not, gamers.

23% of all pledges have gone towards gaming projects in the US. What does this mean for the UK? Well recently Kickstarter posted that 171 projects are already in the pipeline with over 15,000 pledges and over half a million pounds, nine of which have met their funding goals, its hard to tell how many are video games.

The appeal to developers is to raise capital in this way is simple; using crowd funding removes that outside interference from venture capitalists, private investors and banks, not to mention the strain on being able to raise the capital privately. In Conclusion, the UK gaming market is in need of a massive boost, gaming companies like Rebellion are few and far between and most creative developers do not have the backing or funding sources to take their dreams further, Kickstarter really could influence the future of the British gaming market, we may very well see the next Angry Birds or even Call Of Duty emerge from a publically backed campaign bringing not only the developers but also the backers success.

Tom Bramwell, Editor-in-chief of UK gaming site Euro Gamer, put an interesting angle on kickstarter and its development. "I don't like the way Kickstarter provide loads of cash to developers with very little real accountability beyond judgements passed in the court of public opinion. With that in mind, I think in the short term it will probably increase investment and therefore be positive for the games industry generally - after all, consumers spending more money in different ways is consumers spending more money - but perhaps in the long term there will be more trust issues as a result of failed projects and the overall effect will be negative" - Tom Bramwell, eurogamer.net