Buy Imperial War Bonds: Kickstarter’s Role In Funding Wargames
What sort of odd and fantastic worlds will gaming come up with now that it’s being backed by the gamers themselves?
It started as an effort to help a couple of beautiful friends. They had decided to put on a burlesque show (like you do), and were having trouble getting funding for the express purpose of the removal of clothing (proving once again how bizarre and out of balance this world is). Being the Carnegie style philanthropist that I am, I joined up with Kickstarter and tossed a few shekels their way. A mere matter of minutes later, my first love of all things corset and fishnet was overshadowed by my second love of all things small, sculpted, and armed to the teeth.
And there were a lot of them.
Social fundraising sites have become a nerd’s way of buying war bonds–an investment in the plastic wars of the future. A quick browse and a few downloaded apps later, and I was hooked.
Bear in mind that this was fresh off the wake of Kingdom Death’s massively successful Kickstarter. Kingdom Death proved that a talented group with a quality product could literally raise millions of dollars, no matter how niche or esoteric that product seemed to the outside world. Kingdom Death produces mature, boutique miniatures for a very adult consumer (read: boobs). That alone was enough to get me intrigued, but now they’d added the bonus of getting in on the ground floor, so to speak. And it worked.
Not to suggest that any of this is news (particularly the Kardashian joke). What I think is important here is the niche aspect of what is available. What attracts many to the raw, unbridled world of Nerdery is the esoteric and sometimes unwieldy information:
That’s a pretty rudimentary example to the average nerd (except for the “suck it” part), but I don’t need to remind you that saying something like that in front of the average Joe will make them as blinky-eyed as a epileptic chimpanzee that’s been slapped with a trout (again: except for the “suck it” part).
Initially, (ie, a few decades ago), this esoterica was very straightforward. Take humans and human conditions, throw in an alien or an orc, and bake at 350 til gold and nerdy. But like a toddler with Mega Blocks (because his cheapass mother wouldn’t buy him Legos), the worlds just kept growing and growing. Now, orks are in space, aliens are inside of all of us, and last chance I took a look, everyone has chainsaws.
The tradition of fantastic sporting events continues with games like Dreadball and Kaosball, while a quasi-historical game with a War of the Worlds bent can be found in All Quiet On The Martian Front. As I’ve mentioned before, Kingdom Death: Monster is offering horror with a heaping bowlful of uncensored sexuality. Games like Krosmaster Arena or Rivet Wars, on the other hand, seem to be offering tactical warfare with in worlds that can only be described as adorable.
What’s important to note is that the specific niche that these games belong to is irrelevant because their target audience already shelled out the cash to get it started. All of the games mentioned above were Kickstarter campaigns, and all were massive successes before the game was even made.
What games have you backed up? What strange worlds and ideas would you like to see implemented in wargames of the future?
