As the indie development community grows, more and more independent game developers are wanting to make bigger and better games. Making these bigger and better games costs money, time, and effort.
Most of the time, indie game devs do not have the money to breathe life into their latest project, so the question often lingers: “which crowdfunding site should I use?”
When most people think of crowdfunding, they think Kickstarter. It is an incredibly well-known site, and they think that maybe if their project gets big on there, it will gain more popularity and get more backers. But thinking in this kind of way is incorrect, and people do not normally read in between the lines when starting their Kickstarter campaign. The biggest thing that people do not think about is that they can only get the money they funded during the campaign if they reach their goal.
Though Kickstarter makes this fact very clear, people still do not really acknowledge it. And because Kickstarter is so well known, it is incredibly saturated with other developers wanting to fund their next project. These two aspects alone makes funding a game extremely difficult for those who do not have the fan base to support a Kickstarter campaign.
GoFundMe, on the other hand, is a little safer when it comes to risk. Developers would not need to be very big in order to get any number of backers, if anything they might gain more of a following while running the campaign. When someone starts a GoFundMe, the person can keep whatever money they earn through their campaign, after fees and whatnot.
The biggest drawback to GoFundMe however, is the fact that is a very personal website. It is more to fund one person’s goals rather than an entire team working to fund their project.
There is a third site that I feel like I should talk about here and in my opinion is probably the best website to go to if you are an indie game dev looking to fund your next project and that is Indiegogo. Indiegogo is not as big/strict as Kickstarter, but not as small and personal as GoFundMe. Indiegogo is made for entrepreneurs, it pretty much says it on the home page!
On Indiegogo, people can have a flexible campaign which means that whatever money raised goes to the creator, or it can be strict like Kickstarter, where if the creator does not make their goal, they do not get any money.
At the end of the day, if you are an indie game dev, there are a lot of things you will need to do to get your name out there. I know the feeling personally as I am a struggling game developer myself. But that is why I am writing this article, so I can inform all of the other game developers like me that are struggling to find a funding platform. In my opinion, Indiegogo is the way to go. Now go out there and create your game!
