The
Kickstarter campaign for Frost Giant's fledgling RTS Stormgate met its $100,000 goal in 15 minutes. It hit $1 million in under 48 hours. Now it's crossed the $2 million line. But Stormgate isn't a brand-new project: Its development was fully-funded prior to the crowdfunding campaign.
I recently spoke to Frost Giant communications director Gerald Villoria about the campaign, and why the company decided to go ahead with a crowdfunding campaign for a free-to-play game that was already privately funded through its early access release this summer.
Before it became the number one videogame Kickstarter of 2023, Frost Giant had already raised $35 million in its initial round of funding for Stormgate, Villoria said. That strong investor support is not surprising, considering that the company is run by previous development leads on such games as StarCraft 2, Warcraft 3 and Command & Conquer.
That $35 million was intended to be enough to get the team across the summer finish line for its Steam early access release, and also ended up paying for some other things, like
putting Simu Liu in the game.
"That said, modern AAA game budgets are often measured in the hundreds of millions, and that's not counting marketing budgets," Villoria said. "So while $35 million may seem like a lot of money, it pales in comparison to what the biggest studios are spending.
"What our funding didn't cover was many of the extras and special amenities that are only possible with big publishing budgets, such as a physical Collector's Edition of our game and expanding our beta pool."
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