Crowd Funding Website for Flight Sims

[xgibbousx]

Just wondering,

 

Do you think a crowd funding site composed entirely of flight sims would be useful? Are there enough potential development teams and interest by the community to support such a site? Could the sim community's size and means financially support possibly dozens of dev teams?

 

I thought targeting the crowd funding site specifically at flight sims (or possibly other types of sims as well e.g. space, tanks, etc.) would make marketing easier (i.e. it's much easier to target the funders/customers) and be cool for the simulator community. If it worked, we could see a rapid increase of high-quality modern flight sims over the next few years.

Edited May 2, 2013 by xgibbousx

[golfsierra2]

It's already there: http://www.lockonfiles.com

[xgibbousx]

It's already there: http://www.lockonfiles.com

 

I was thinking of something along the lines of Kickstarter/Indiegogo but only for simulators. I suppose flight sim development teams could just use Kickstarter/Indiegogo if they want to get crowd funded. However, I believe a campaign run on a simulator focused crowd funding site would be far more successful for them do to less noise and more targeted exposure.

 

Due to the lack of response on this thread, I don't think enough interest exists within the simulator community to support something like this. I'm just glad I didn't go spend a month making the site just to find out later that no one wants it like I usually do :] I'm learning!

[EtherealN]

It's already there: http://www.lockonfiles.com

 

How many simulators has that site funded?

[Irregular programming]

Why in gods name would you want to limit the market on your crowd funding?

[xgibbousx]

Why in gods name would you want to limit the market on your crowd funding?

 

Now, that's an excellent question!

 

I think it's similar to the difference between Gamespot.com/IGN.com/etc.com and Eagle.ru/AVSim.com/etc.com.

 

Sure, there's not nearly as much money to be had. However, the targeted nature of a sim-focused crowd funding website brings many benefits:

 

1. Much easier to get a seed user base. We have a nice target now and can funnel marketing efforts to it.

 

2. Less noise for the users wanting to fund the projects. They can very easily browse all sorts of projects they'd be interested in which leads into my next point...

 

3. More effective for the development teams wanting funding. They now get more exposure to a targeted audience (do to the lessened noise) and thus acquire more funding.

 

4. It'd just be cool for the simulator community. We'd see a huge increase in viable simulator projects come into existence.

 

The problem right now is the simulator market is in bad shape. This is in large part because "publishers" (who used to fund the simulator projects) don't see as big of dollar signs as with the next first person shooter etc.

 

However, it's been successfully demonstrated that the end users (funders) are now willing to take the place of publishers and fund projects themselves through shear numbers alone. Look at Star Citizen (space simulator) with almost $10 Million in funding on Kickstarter.