While many different individuals and developers are turning to Kickstarter and crowd funding to finance video games, some people within the industry are not keen to join the fad. One such person is Sid Meier, the influential designer of the Civilization series and who currently works for 2K subsidiary Firaxis Games. Meier recently spoke out against crowd sourcing in an interview with GamesIndustry International, revealing his reluctance to use the platform because it can lock in developers to ideas before development even begins.
“You’ve got to convince people to support it and create trailers or whatever it takes to get the support. I think you kind of lock yourself into a lot of ideas early…I really enjoy the luxury of changing my design and evolving over time. I’d be a little concerned with Kickstarter if I committed to X, Y, and Z and I found out down the road that Z didn’t work very well, I kind of promised to do this…I think it’s great for people who want that indie environment, but there are advantages and disadvantages to each situation.”