New Game Industry Crowdsourced Funding Site Launches

"Crowdsourced" funding, where creators of all stripes solicit donations from users to back their projects, has shown great promise for the game industry: Fundraising site Kickstarter has helped fans fully support projects like the Kill Screen game magazine, the Babycastles indie game arcade in New York, and the text adventures of popular designer Andrew Plotkin, to name just a few. Now there's a crowd-funding home specifically for "anybody who has anything to do with the gaming industry," in its own words: The new organization is called 8-Bit Funding, and it's launched to the public via a new website. Like Kickstarter, developers or other project founders list the project they're hoping to have funded, and offer their users "perks" as small rewards or incentives for certain-sized donations. Projects are funded by PayPal, says the site. The main benefit of 8-Bit Funding is intended to be the specificity of the site; the idea is that gamers, or those most passionate about funding gaming-related projects, are more likely to visit a site devoted only to that space. "With 8-Bit Funding you don't have to jump through legal hoops, or try and convince a group of stuffy old suits that your project will earn them back their money," explains the company on its site. "8-Bit Funding is purely about one enthusiast helping to fund another enthusiast's project." 8-Bit Funding does charge a 5 percent base-line fee to use it (as do other crowd-funding sites), and PayPal will also take its customary 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per transaction. As with similar services project-holders may choose between giving donors their perks or refunding the money if they don't meet a certain "grace period" amount. Initial projects available to be funded include Excruciating Guitar Voyage 2, The Bookkeeper, One-Eyed Monsters, Cardinal Quest, Dreamcasters' Duel, Kung Fu Kingdom and Galactic Adventures, all of which are games seeking funding amounts ranging from $1,000 to $20,000.