Earlier this week Square Enix launched Collective—a program designed to promote indie games in a new and interesting way.
The program is starting off with three games for gamers to check out. For roughly a month, these games are in the ‘feedback stage’ where the community can vote on the game pitch and offer feedback before a lot of work is put into the project.
If a project garners a lot of support in this first phase, it may be given the opportunity to be supported by Collective’s indiegogo campaign page. They may even receive extra support from Square itself.
The public is able to vote on each project to say if they would back the game through crowdfunding and this rating is prominently displayed on the main page. There is also a comments section where you can speak directly with the developers about their project. Granted that isn’t anything new, but getting input early on into the project can help developers understand exactly what people like and don’t like about their game and tailor it more towards what backers want to see. That is the idea at least.
The three games up for feedback right now are World War Machine, Game of Glens, and Moon Hunters. This is just the beginning for Collective though. In a couple of months, submissions into Collective will open up for any indie developer interested.
It’s an interesting idea that could turn crowdfunding video games into a more organized affair and for that alone, I’m hoping for its success.
