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If you didn’t notice, there hasn’t been a new Kickstart This! in over a month, mostly because John works us all far too hard (joke), but largely because the column was becoming a bit hum-drum. Kickstarter has started to feel less like a creative space for games that could not find life with a traditional publisher, and more like a graveyard for great ideas poorly sold, or a junkyard for half-baked ideas that had not been given time to mature.

I had heard Kickstarter was also going to be updating the crowdfunding platform in a “major” way. This turned out to be more than a lick of paint, which, as an aside, the site has received – it runs a lot smoother and the and the options are much clearer now.

The big change turned out to be Kickstarter Live, which launched on the 1st of November. It allows creators to host a live broadcast, and to field questions from potential backers in the comments section. The benefits of this should not be underplayed. Audience engagement is one of the toughest nuts to crack when raising funds via crowdfunding. While project updates offer people news, being able to interact with backers on the same platform, instead of hosting an AMA on Reddit or a Facebook Live broadcast, especially in the early days of a campaign, means that you can rally your troops and harness that momentum more easily.

Speaking of rallying the troops, the world has change quite a bit over the last few weeks, and Kickstarter is no different. With a wave of protests and a renewed sense of charity sweeping the globe in response to recent world events, Kickstarter temporarily changed their front page in support.

And in honor of Kickstarter’s expansion into Mexico, we’re looking at Ariel, a video game developed south of the border, this week. (more…)