Crowdsourcing Development

Among the challenges of crowdfunding, developers should not only be managing your projects within financial constraints, but on manpower constraints. The recent Kingdom Death Kickstarter seemed largely a one-man project, for example, but by enlisting assistants for individual sculptures, he managed to create a wide and varied model range. One of the creative ways Brian Fargo has managed the Wasteland 2 project was by outsourcing the building of assets.

Hidden among the Christmas updates including a giveaway of Bard's Tale, Fargo announced that he was using the Unity Engine not only as an internal development tool, but that he would be using Unity Assets. Unity's Asset Store features a large quantity of multiplatform (yes, for your iPhone, Xbox, or PC) content, from 3D models and textures to UI features and AI, most for less than $100. Not only that, but he began soliciting fan submissions based on concept art in a weekly contest, selecting the best entries and featuring them in Wasteland. Most models fitting what they're looking for run for less than $20 on the store.

 

The mean salary (in 2007) of a single animator is $54,550, per a quick Google search. Per an MIT report, benefits add .25-.4 times that salary, and one should expect to spend about $1,800 on technology for them. Office space rental near inXile's headquarters in Newport Beach, CA costs about $42/SF/year or $9450 for a 225 square foot office, and furnishing costs around $2,000. Hiring a single 3D animator would therefore run about $81,437 on the low end, leaving the cost of a single full-time animator around $39 for an hour of work. This of course means that they're paying less for these assets than a full-time 3D animator costs the company for a half an hour. This is, ultimately, a bargain.

In addition, this crowdfunding leaves full-time inXile staff free to work on game design and development, while assets are developed at a more rapid pace than they normally would. The game's timetable is advanced at a rapid rate, and art doesn't slow down development. Additionally, after the core product is developed, art teams aren't kept on, and aren't costing more.
All told, it's a novel approach to saving money on a project while getting a large variety of assets in a short timeframe, and giving people a chance to develop for a A-list project without any known experience. Unity seems like a very interesting concept -- using the crowd to develop every aspect of your game in a way that you find appealing. I've not had the chance to try a Unity product, as I've not played Battlestar Galactica Online, Endless Space, or Guns of Icarus Online. I'm very interested to see how it plans out in Wasteland 2 and Shadowrun: Returns, as well as Mechwarrior Tactics.