Mark Eichhorn
Kickstarter is old news by now, but many would be surprised by what an old idea it is – several centuries old, in fact.
Back around the 18th century in Germany there were a few profound changes in the world of books. The novel established itself alongside the previously more prevalent travelogues and religious texts. Also, German became a primary language for publication in order to reach a broader audience (before, most printed texts were theological or philosophical, and therefore written in the language of the scholars, Latin).
Another crucial change is that the topics the authors depicted themselves changed, as did how those authors conceived of themselves and of their role as writers. They no longer wanted to depend on generous donations of a patron, or by earning a salary in another line of work. Simply put, they demanded to get paid for their creative output, to receive money for their books. In other words, there was a shift towards commercial practices for an art that, to that point, paid nothing in direct revenue and was considered to be something to be done in your spare time.
As you might imagine, things changed for publishers as well. They no longer traded books “page for page” but you had to put down cash to get the rights. Popular authors therefore became a hot commodity, and publishers would compete for copyright (literally, “copy right” – the rights to make copies). A side effect of this was that piracy became a serious issue as more and more money became involved in the business of publishing.
It is not hard to spot the analogies in those early days of book-trading to contemporary issues of artists and publishers. There are many ways to match these two historical moments, but I will keep to the focus of this article – Kickstarter!
As we are all aware, the gaming world went crazy when Tim Schafer announced that he wants to kickstart his new game. His subsequent and overwhelming success made crowd funding THE new business model, a utopian solution to every industry ailment. Except it has all been done before. There are many examples of “crowd-funding” in the history of publishing (for example, Alexander Pope passed the hat for his Eighteenth Century translation of Homer), but I want to focus on a little known figure to illustrate some of the dangers of this utopian line of thinking.
The object of my study is Friederich Gottlieb Klopstock , an Eighteenth Century German poet who was renowned in his time but now lingers in obscurity. While well known, Klopstock’s reputation for intricate and complicated writing meant that he was turned down by a series of publishes for his yet to be written book, “Gelehrtenrepublik.” The apparent consensus was that this future book would be too niche and too hard to sell. So, in a move mirrorning Schafer’s, Klopstock turned directly to his audience using the payment model of “Subskription.” In the following year, Klopstock managed to raise enough funds to start working (a modest success compared to Schafer’s, but not bad considering that his marketing methods were all offline and analog). Klopstock set a team up to help him with distribution and people were anxiously expecting their own copy of the great artist. But when they finally got it, they were not pleased. Not at all.
Klopstock’s subscribers, including Goethe himself, were aghast at what they were reading. Too boring and convoluted even for Klopstock’s standard, very few took a liking to it. Since many copies were in circulation, there are stories of people presenting Gelehrtenrepublik as a gag gift to spur laughter at social gatherings. While the book was not an economic failure, it was certainly an artistic one, and a huge blow for Klopstock’s reputation; he never would be able to rely on “Subskription” again (although he did re-release a known and liked book of his through this model, however).
Tim Schafer keeps his subscribers updated on the development process, so the risk of a huge disappointment for his fans gets somehow minimized. But in the end the final result is what counts and I would assume the future of crowd funding does not depend so much on its success stories but on its failures. Publishers know that not every game can be a top-seller and losing on some titles is a calculated risk that they take regularly even if their understandable wish to reduce the risk as much as possible lead to a somehow stale assortment of genres. But for the single user, a product he bought before production even started is not allowed to be a failure. Otherwise he will, like in Klopstock’s case, never put down money for this (and maybe any other) person’s projects again. It’s true that even geniuses can’t produce incredible stuff all the time that everyone loves – but with crowd funding, you get one chance. If you blow it, that’s most likely it.
I don’t want to take anything away from Schafer or Kickstarter (or all the other projects out there). I think it is fantastic that (niche) products can be funded by those who want them, taking the decision of what we are able to buy away from the industry. I really hope that it will be a huge success, and that future projects will be as well. And, there is indeed the chance that even if it fails, people will accept it and just move on, funding other projects optimistically. Nevertheless, it seems to me that it is more likely that Kickstarter’s failures will eventually become more important in deciding the future of game development and publication than its successes.
Mark Eichhorn is a student of Comparative Literature and Philosophy studying in Vienna. He is interested in literature, film, and games from all over the world.
Further Reading: What If The Double Fine Adventure Sucks? (Medium Difficulty)
