A new crowd-funding platform to rival the might of Kickstarter has launched today, aiming to “re-invent the way games are funded.”
Fig is the brainchild of some familiar names in the industry, including Justin Bailey (former Double Fine COO), Tim Schafer (The Broken Age), Brian Fargo (Wasteland 2) and Feargus Urquhart (Obsidian). Indeed, each of these developers has said that they’re next work will be funded via Fig and not Kickstarter.
One of the big differences between Fig and Kickstarter is that it will solely feature videogames, and some developers will offer an equity stake in their product, meaning that backers could make money from successful projects by gaining a share of the revenue. This will only apply to major backers, said to be those who invest $1,000 or more, although some projects will feature perks only.
You’ll also notice that Fig currently has one game on the site which it is seeking funding for: a game called Outer Wilds has a $125,000 target to kick off its next development phase. Unlike Kickstarter, Fig will only showcase one game per month in order to maximise that game’s potential backing.
Whether it can do better for studios looking to crowdfund their titles than Kickstarter remains to be seen, but it’s certainly going to be interesting keeping an eye on it over the coming months.