Crowded House

That's where the second crowdfunding model comes in - essentially crowd micro-funding, in which the crowd donates little or large amounts, with a view to taking home a share in any eventual profits from the venture. If this sounds like it's the stock market being reinvented, then that's because, in essence, it is - it's the emergence of a grass-roots stock market in creative projects, growing up in the shadow of the completely bastardised and arguably unfit for purpose stock market in corporate shares upon which our economy rests (and often, slips off).

Needless to say the latter model creates all manner of legal problems, because the laws governing funding and finance have been created to enshrine stock markets as the beating hearts of national economies, and it's going to take a long time for governments to twist their heads around the idea that individual people might want to take that power into their own hands on some scale. The legal problems, however, may not matter - people are going to do it anyway, and the law will have to sort itself out in the wake of progress, as usual.

What does this mean for game development? It means doors are opening. Few of those doors will be remotely as large and wide as the one through which Tim Schafer and his crew sailed this week, but the model which he has used is hugely illuminating - especially once you start to consider what else might legitimately be considered crowdfunding. Minecraft, for instance, started out selling 10 Euro copies of a very unpolished alpha to loyal fans in order to fund further development - if that's not crowdfunding, what is? If that's not a radical new business model (build something rough and see if people love it enough to pay for you to build a better version), then what is?

"What does this mean for game development? It means doors are opening."

Sure, Tim Schafer is famous and has a huge following - but Markus "Notch" Persson wasn't. Besides, not every developer needs to make $400,000 to build their game. Not every developer needs to raise funds before doing the groundwork for their game. Variations of this model can work for smaller amounts of money, for games at various stages of development (right up to being finished - lots of projects on Kickstarter have successfully sought money for physical publication of completed digital products), and with various incentives for investors, from the warm fuzzy feeling of being a patron of the creative arts up to the potential for a genuine financial return.

Think this is a flash in the pan? Think again. Consider the foundation of nation states - the world's most powerful entities in spending terms, built on the simple economic principle that if a whole lot of averagely wealthy people contribute a little bit, they can outspend the most wealthy elites without breaking a sweat. Now consider that principle applied to the free market economics which exist in the creative industries - and while you're at it, remember one more thing.

The success of effectively crowdfunded efforts like Minecraft and Double Fine's new game comes at a time when the world is in the throes of one of the toughest recessions in decades, when disposable income is at a premium for many. Consider a future, five years down the line, where the economy is growing again, disposable income levels are rising - and crowdfunding is well established and trusted as a way to patronise and influence the arts. In the long run, perhaps the 20th century will come to be seen as a difficult transition period for the arts - when for just a moment, the cold hand of capitalism had to be grasped, in the gap between the patronage of the wealthy and the patronage of the crowd.