Double Duty: Crowdfunding and the Evolving Game Production Network

Abstract

As independent game makers strive to tackle the demands of game production without the help of a traditional publisher, a familiar game production environment has started to evolve. Adopting a game production studies perspective, this article focuses on crowdfunding as a new channel for independent game development and the shifts crowdfunding causes in the game production network. Two successfully crowdfunded case examples— Bloodstained (2018), a digital game, and Conan (2016), a board game—are used to illustrate changes crowdfunding causes in the traditional game production environment. In removing the publisher as an “unnecessary” middleman, crowdfunded productions need to take care of the many tasks that used to belong to publishers, such as marketing, partner sourcing, distribution networks, and customer relationships. As projects turn to emerging production network intermediaries, their significance—as well as that of the crowdfunding backers—provides evidence to classify the crowdfunding model as a new game production logic.