Hi guys,

I'm Mathias, co-founder at gameloop.io, a new crowdsourcing and crowdfunding website for games. I just want some honest feedback of game developers.

The basic idea of the platform is that ideas for games can be posted (both by players and developers) for discussion and voting, and the developer can turn the best ideas into features. Features go through different stages (Planned / In Progress / Finished). Additionally developers can choose to run crowdfunding campaigns for these individual features (we call it 'micro crowdfunding') - works a bit like Kickstarter, except rather than whole projects only individual feature packages are funded. Another important difference is that there is no time limit on the crowdfunding. It ends immediately once the funding goal has been reached. Players have to back early if they want to make sure to get one of the selectable rewards.

When you look at the website you see that there is a bit more to it, but that was the gist of it.

So, what do you think? Would you use such a service for your game?

I'd be grateful for any feedback!

I like the idea of crowdfunding single features. This will hopefully keep things from becoming too complicated. It also is a good way for developers to get some hype going around their game. I also like the idea of having a forum where people can discuss game idea. That sounds cool.

My biggest concern is lots of ideas sound better on paper, but when implemented aren't that much fun. This could be because there is a big flaw in the idea that isn't found until it is fleshed out or the developer put minimal amount of resources into the feature and use the extra money on the rest of the game. In a normal development cycle, if a an idea is prototyped and found to have some flaws the developer can make some changes or throw the idea out completely. When the idea is crowdfunded, the developer feels obligated to keep the features without changing it too much. If it changes too much, then the people who funded it might be upset. The developers also might find that their budget for the feature was too low and they wont be able to deliver on all of the promises. Of course, these are problems any crowdfunding site would have.

It might be helpful to encourage developers to have a prototype ready before they crowdfund an idea.

I like the idea of voting for features, but I don't think users should direct their funds to the idea. Any money pledged is just pledged to the whole project.

Thanks for all the answers so far!

Nathan2222, you are correct, it is not regionally restricted in principle. However, we are limited by the countries that our payment provider (Stripe) supports.

Currently Stripe merchant accounts are available in 17 countries:

• Australia
• Canada
• Ireland
• United Kingdom
• United States
• Belgium
• Finland
• France
• Germany
• Luxembourg
• Netherlands
• Spain
• Denmark
• Italy
• Norway
• Sweden

This means that you have to be located (or at least have a bank account) in one of these countries to be able to receive money via Stripe.

We definitely encourage developers to have a payable prototype ready (we check and contact every developer upon registration). In fact, right now there are multiple games on the platform that have not yet been made public since they do not have a playable version yet.

It's true that ideas may sound better on paper than in practise and that things can change throughout development. It's a good idea to not go into too much detail when creating a "feature" on gameloop.io for funding to keep all the options open. Also in principle a "feature" can be anything. You can be very specific (e.g. "Add shotgun") or very general ("Create 5 Levels"). In the end all that matters is that you convice players to support it with their money and keep your promise in general, i.e. if you promise a multiplayer mode you should deliver one. But maybe we should emphasize to users that results may vary. We already do explicitly point out that there are always risks during developmet and that the feature may not be finished at all.

I'm skeptical that this would result in games of any appreciable quality.

Of course it's up to the developer to have a coherent vision for the game and he has to decide which ideas are accepted and which ones are rejected alltogether. Ideas on gameloop.io can actually be labeled "rejected" by the developer (including an explanation as to why). The developer has complete control over which "features" he creates and it's up to him whether he accepts suggestions from players or not.

Naturally you could argue that people will get upset when they can post suggestions but the developers just ignores them. If the developer is just not interested in player feedback in general he shouldn't use gameloop.io. On the other hand, if instead he just doesn't want people to post new ideas, but still have them vote and discuss his own, and fund his features, we are planning on allowing developers to disable the posting of ideas through users. This may also be useful for other scenarious when the developer temporarily just doesn't want new ideas to be created.

As a crowdfund-er (is that the right word?), what do I get from having a feature implemented? It's not a complete game. It's a tiny segment, and most likely you can't just plug it in into a larger module without requiring modification. "I just spent $5 to fund a feature, but you can't play it just yet! How exciting!"

Of course this wildly variable and depends on the payment model of the game. What the players get in return is up to the developer. For example you could do a similar thing to Steam Early Access, where there's a playable prototype and people who fund the alpha version (which could be a "feature" in terms of gameloop.io) get that version as a reward, while other people have to pay for it (presumably at a higher price).

Or maybe it's a free to play game that has ambitious goals. Players who fund the feature get unique ingame items or virtual currency. Obviously there are many different scenarious, and it remains to be seen how and if this concept works out. We won't know for sure until someone tries.

Some of the developers we are talking to right now have free to play games. At the upcoming GDC Europe / Respawn and GamesCom in Germany we will personally meet several smaller and larger professional game developers that expressed interest and hopefully can convince some of them to put their games on our platform.

I like the idea of voting for features, but I don't think users should direct their funds to the idea. Any money pledged is just pledged to the whole project.

I suppose the developer could simply create a "feature" called "version X.Y" to direct funds at general further development of the game.

If you don't want ideas from players that's fair enough. Makes me think we really should add that option to disable posting of ideas.

Then the developer is the only one able to put up ideas / features for voting and so on and just can get feedback on his specific ideas.

I definitely agree that the developer vision is important, especially for indies.