Five SL-Based Crowdfunders I'd Love to See and Help Promote -- And Two I Probably Won't

I love blogging about crowdfunders of cool game/interactive projects, as you may have noticed, and I'd love even more to blog about those which began in SL, like the successful Raglan Shire crowdfunder. If you know of such projects (or are thinking of launching one yourself), here's several I'm particularly interested in:

• An SL-based musician who wants to crowdfund a full-length album aimed at a mass market audience.
• Developers who want to convert their popular SL-based game to a game for iOS, Android, the web, or Facebook.
• SL fashion/jewelry designers who wants to fund production and sales of real world versions of their styles.
• SL machinima developers who want to create a high-end franchise meant to reach an audience beyond SLers.
• Content creators who want to convert their sim or build into a 3D interactive experience for the web, iOS tablets, or Steam.

Those are just the first five off the top of my head, and I'm sure there are many more that would excite me just as much. You'll notice a pattern in all of them: SL projects aimed at reaching a wider audience. While it's still unclear if SL can grow its userbase any more than it has already, there's many cases of SL projects which went on to find a larger market beyond it. Think Kermitt Quirk's Tringo game, which became a web and Nintendo Gameboy title. Think machinima like Douglas Gayeton's Molotov Alva, which ended up on HBO/Cinemax.

Those in mind, here's a couple crowdfunders I probably can't get behind (or if I do, very reluctantly):

• Crowdfunders to pay off SL land tier. Yes, I promoted artist Bryn Oh's crowdfunder to cover her land costs, but ultimately this is a crowdfunder that benefits Linden Lab more than it benefits her (or her patrons.) I'd much rather if Bryn Oh had, say, crowdfunded a project to take her SL project and convert it to Unity and deploy it to the web and iOS.
• Crowdfunders to cover SL viewer improvements. Yes, I promoted Qarl's mesh deformer improvement (and I'm glad I did), but given that these changes are slow to be implemented by Linden Lab, and may not be usable in third party viewers, due to policy restrictions, I'm not comfortable pushing for the raising of funds that may end up being wasted on a futile effort.

All that said, would love to hear about SL-centric crowdfunders you know about or would love to see in Comments.

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Comments

[Ezra]

What about OpenSim, or OpenSim alternative crowdfunders?

For the six digits some of these games are fetching, it seems like more than enough money for infrastructure and well managed contracts and salaries to expedite a real competitor to Second Life.

Not sure exactly what it'd entail, but given two of Second Life's most blogged about competitors in recent years: a voluntarily created OpenSim and grids based on it, and $13 million in investments Blue Mars, there's probably a crowd-fundable middleground of possibility.

[Orca Flotta]

This is the crowdfunder you always waited for:

~~~~~ SUPPORT ORCA!!! ~~~~~

In fact send her all your money. She'll do something with it, something nice and not harmful. She'll buy more sail yachts, more gowns, hairs and shoes.

Yay shoes!!! Sexy heels, stomping boots, sneakers, sandals, flipflops ...

Who could say no to shoes?

[foneco zuzu]

Forget about Open Sim, they are competition now!
When they whre just a bunch of crazy nerds, a simple grain of dust on a shiny window, then it was a good theme to speak about!
Now, with Kitely, Inworldz, Avination, 3th rock and many more closed commercial grids around, with thousands of private grids, with several non profit grids avaiable, with residents just leaving Second Life for them, its not a game anymore (See latest rules for Tpv developers, or you conect only to Second Life or your viewer will be banned!).

[Metacam Oh]

how is that mesh deformer project coming along anyway?

[Connie Arida]

Yes please. How about a viewer that runs on Android Tablets.