While the buzz over Kickstarter has been incredibly positive since Double Fine Productions raised a ton of capital for its upcoming adventure game Broken Age, legendary designer and industry professional Sid Meier, who currently heads up Firaxis Games (of XCOM: Enemy Unknown fame) recently spoke to GamesIndustry as to why he wouldn’t be hitting up the crowd-funding site any time soon.
“You’ve got to convince people to support it and create trailers or whatever it takes to get the support. I think you kind of lock yourself into a lot of ideas early. I really enjoy the luxury of changing my design and evolving over time.
“I’d be a little concerned with Kickstarter if I committed to X, Y, and Z and I found out down the road that Z didn’t work very well, I kind of promised to do this. I think it’s great for people who want that indie environment, but there are advantages and disadvantages to each situation.”
As for working with a big publisher, Meier says that, “They do all the stuff I don’t want to do; they allow me to make games and really focus on that part of what it takes to get a game out there. I get to design games, I get to program games, I get to work with the artists and the sound guys and do the fun stuff.
“They worry about testing it and publishing it and promoting it and selling it–whatever it takes to do that I would be really bad at, they do. So more power to Chris Roberts and the Kickstarter, but having a great publisher is a real asset and allows me to focus on the things that I can do and not worry about all the other stuff that needs to be worried about.”
Meier’s last title, which he designed on his own, is the free to play Ace Patrol available for Apple iOS.