What does Kickstarter mean for Linux gaming?

As it turns out, quite a bit.
I think at this point it is clear that Kickstarter has the potential to get games published that we would not see otherwise. Point and click adventure games, turn based strategy and old school RPG titles. If someone has an idea and can convince people that he or she can execute on it, there's potential funding to be had, all without taking out a bank loan.

Since this is much more closely connected to the user base as such, and since Linux users tend to be rather vocal (and as we saw with the Humble Indie Bundles quite willing to back that up with money), this also means a bigger chance of getting linux versions of games. The same goes for Mac versions of course, though that falls outside the topic of the blog. Still, Mac and Linux users tend to be in a similar spot here, so some solidarity should be considered.

Of course, it remains to be seen if Kickstarter is a gift that keeps up giving, if it's going to work outside established game designers and if it'll consistently deliver on what is being promised, but there are a lot of possibilities out there, including the funding of open source projects.
One of the bigger challenges with a truly open source game is that it tends to be everybody's secondary pursuit. After all, the coder has to eat too.

But if a popular idea could be crowd-funded, then that might be solved, without sacrificing the open source ideal. This is not too different from the bounty system that sees use for some software programs (like the AROS operating system), where a bounty is put up by the users to have something coded, fixed or done, and when someone delivers the goods, they cash in the bounty.


The internet has done more to put computing in the hands of the ordinary citizen than perhaps any other advancement, and I think we are slowly seeing the beginnings of just what is possible.