The world’s current rate of change is astonishing, we are all very aware of the amount of information at our finger tips coupled with the hyper-connectivity of the world today. This is allowing ideas to have an exponential impact which defies physics, not just with how ideas are received and assimilated but even more importantly how they are created.

Crowd sourcing and funding is everywhere at the moment. Companies are using both to engage audiences with an idea and to seek funding to make their idea a reality.

I have benefited from both methods. Firstly as a person whom didn’t know how to build a game. To overcome this I crowdsourced using 99designs, eLance and Reddit to create Plummet Free Fall. It became a #1 app around the world and taught me how powerful (when properly leveraged) the crowd can be. Secondly I used crowdfunding to fund the development of GameStarter’s first game called Plunge Free Dive (can’t wait for this to be ready is looking great) using NZ’s crowdfunding platform PledgeMe.

GameStarter’s vision is to see how a story can evolve into an idea, all the way through to a game, when driven by a crowd. Not limited to solely getting feedback and voting on features, which is more co-creation approach, something Microsoft (Press Play) and Planet Side 2 do very well. The vision is to have the crowd contribute all content from idea, to mechanics and art.

I believe the two key influencers in this crowd creation space are Tongal and Quirky.

Tongal hosts staged crowd sourced competitions to create an end creative product, it is incredible. I even tried to transplant this model onto Gamestarter. However, I found out the hard way that with a game, people didn’t want to contribute their ideas and designs solely for cash prizes as they miss out on the slice of the pie.

Quirky’s social invention model is another model of which I have seriously considered. The ability for anyone to come up with an idea for a product, based on a life annoyance has made some submitters six figure returns.

GameStarter’s model is very much still a work in progress as intellectual property is such a focal point, where an original idea or a unique mechanic could become hugely profitable. Right now, the focus is on profit share. The pool is divided up via voting by the community and curation by the GameStarter team.

How GameStarter is Currently Being Processed

The current process is actually being completed by Typeform surveys, Medium blog posts, Mail Chimp, our Twitch.tv channel and a lot of emails. The funny thing is we have a platform 60% complete, and it looks great. However, because of the complexity that goes into making a game, we were making so many assumptions on the requirements of the platform and how we would interact with the community, that we were limiting ourselves from the get go.

The GameStarter work in progress platform. This was the stage we were focused on incentivised competitions hence the cash prize of $300 US

The first game GameStarter is crowd creating is called Moscow Metro Dogs. This is a game based on the stray dogs of Moscow, who have learnt how to catch the subway to get into the city for food then catch it back to their den. Here is the Week 1 update, showing the great results we received. If you want to be part of this challenge, go to GameStarter.io and sign up to the community.

The GameStarter platform is still in development, but has been slowed as we co-create based on how our community responds to our surveys. However, I must commend the passion which is so alive in the gaming industry on both sides. The responses we received have been fantastic, even if based on simple methods, and show how people love to get involved when they are working on something that adds value to them.

Now back to why?

While this all sounds cool and exciting, why crowd create?

Because the success you can create from game creation currently is incredible. It blows my mind! Plummet cost mo $4000, took 6 weeks to make and was a global hit. I even ended up talking about it on BBC World News!

Through a process which creates content via the crowd, and then allows it to be judged by the crowd, we can remove the grief and doubt that many developers suffer from. Creating original, adjudicated ideas that people want. I see many a talented designer or developer who want to be a part of game creation who have no idea where to start.

Hence the name … GameStarter.