Fantasy MMORPG Stash has returned to Kickstarter with a rather interesting goal: to bring more players into its community, a somewhat alternative reason to seek crowdfunding. As a result, the funding goal is a low $1,000 – that hasn’t stopped interested backers from pledging close to $6,000 into the campaign, however. Think it’s safe to call this one a success.
So where is all that money going, if the purpose of this third campaign (the first was cancelled, the second was successful) is simply to widen the game’s audience? Developer Frogdice makes that clear through the project’s Kickstarter page, which contains a wealth of information about the game. These resources will be pooled into supporting additional artists, commissioning more professional music and audio, and working on new features. Further information is promised further down the line. The main goal, however, is simply to get more people playing the game.
This is undoubtedly one of the strangest Kickstarter projects I’ve ever encountered. It exists primarily as marketing. You have to ask: why didn’t Frogdice launch a project to fund an actual marketing campaign, instead? That way, Stash would benefit not only from the attention of backers, but from the additional advertising that would follow. Nonetheless, having reached their goal nearly six times over, I’m sure the developers are more than happy with their approach. For more on Stash, check out our previous coverage, as well as the project’s latest Kickstarter page.
Track the progress of the Stash Kickstarter in our Campaign Calendar.
Marketing style Kickstarter campaigns are a sore spot for some people. Their thinking is that Kickstarter should be purely for raising funds for development. Personally I don’t see an issue with it. If people are willing to back you, then great!
[…] thing about this KS project is that it launched a third crowdfunding campaign (according to this article on Cliqist, the first failed, the second was successful, and so is the third which was used to draw more […]