2014 saw the continuing, meteoric rise of Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites being utilised as non-traditional methods of getting video games made. It seems to have worked pretty well so far, with adventure game pioneers Tim Schaefer and Ron Gilbert returning to the genre thanks to fan funding, and the makers of Eternal Darkness...erm... Anyway, these past couple of years have seen a whole bunch of successful and exciting funding campaigns through Kickstarter and Indiegogo, with Steam's Greenlight initiative also helping to support these mostly independent PC and Mac projects. Some of them have even started to be finished and released, like the first part of Schaefer's Broken Age (originally titled Double Fine Adventure for his studio). Most of them, well, haven't actually come out yet. Development cycles for video games are pretty long, even if you have sunk some of your own cash into its production. So whilst 2014 has been a good year for Kickstarter campaigns, 2015's the year you'll actually get to play those crowdfunded games. C'mon, Hyper Light Drifter...
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
