Kickstarter wearing itself out, says Chris Taylor

Crowdfunding site Kickstarter is beginning to wear itself out, the CEO of troubled studio Gas Powered Games has said.

Speaking at Casual Connect Europe, as reported by VentureBeat, Chris Taylor also blamed the failure of his studio’s Wildman Kickstarter, which has now been cancelled, on the fact that many potential contributors were still waiting on games they had already pledged for.

Gas Powered Games’ Wildman Kickstarter was cancelled with four days to go having raised just $500,000 of its $1.1 million target. The studio’s future is also up in the air after Taylor revealed just days into the campaign that he had laid off most of the company’s staff in an effort to ensure developers received compensation.

“People had spent a lot of money on other Kickstarters and were waiting for those games to arrive,” he said.

“We also started just after Christmas, when people had already spent money.”

He added: “Kickstarter is starting to wear itself out. It’s a numbers game. Someone has lightning in a bottle. This business is really, really tough. It’s turning into a lottery business, unless you work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and study gaming for decades.

“Now, it’s tough. It’s like going to Hollywood and saying I want to make films. You have to compete with James Cameron. I’m leaning toward there is no free lunch” when it comes to raising money for games.

Taylor went on to say that it was becoming increasingly difficult in the game industry to gain funding through traditional means, such as investment from publishers, and that independent development of console titles in particular was hitting a wall.

“There was a heyday in the 1990s where you could burst in the door of a publisher and you could get a contract. You blew your budget anyway, and they dealt with it,” he said.

“That has locked itself so tight. Consoles are going to just hit the wall. The guys who wrote these big checks — that’s just gone.”