Carmageddon's Crowdsourced ReReincarnation
Hmm. I was under the impression that Stainless' forthcoming Carmageddon reboot was in a safe place already in terms of funding, but nonetheless they've added their game of pedestrian slaughter and hyper-aggressive future-racing to the infinite ranks of Kickstarted development. The internet's been enormously happy about the news today, which puzzles me slightly as it's not like the game wasn't going to happen without crowdsourcing.
So, yeah. Carmageddon Reincarnation is happening. Again. And this time you can pay for it before rather than after development is completed! It's up to $40k of its desired $400,000 at the time of writing, though $10k of that comes from just one backer who'll be flown to the UK and have their likeness applied to an in-game character. $10k! Christ. Mere mortals, meanwhile, will receive a copy of the game for pledges starting at $15. And, y'know, other rewards for larger payments. Don't make me explain this again.
As to why an already existent development project has taken to starting its kicks, quoth Stainless:
"We’re a modest-sized indie developer (around 50 trapped souls), and we've already invested well over a third of a million dollars getting the rights back and beginning design and prototyping. This represents all of our profits from our other work - but we think it's worth it. We currently have a small team working on the project - but without some sort of dedicated funding, that can’t continue indefinitely. We can't put this game into full production without a sizeable team dedicated to it. So we need a pile of CASH to get the game made."
Cash does help to get things made, it's true. This does strike me as somewhat akin to the Leisure Suit Larry affair, where there's a certain moral dilemma about funding something that was basically going to happen anyway instead of potentially getting something that otherwise didn't have a hope of funding off the ground. But that is, perhaps, false logic. Clearly fan investment means evil, nasty businessmen can be sidestepped entirely, and the game's budget will genuinely reflect the demand for it rather than just whatever was scraped together first and/or inflated expectations. if there's sufficient interest, they could theoretically make a much better game than were the solely funding based on their Magic The Gathering funbucks.
Pledging may be done here. It's gone up by $1000 since I started writing this post, which probably bodes well.