The above is a screenshot from a game being promoted on Kickstarter called Organ Trail. The creators explain, "No, that isn't a typo. Organ Trail is a zombie-parody-remake of the classic game, Oregon Trail for the Apple 2."
As you might imagine the project is immensely popular, having quickly gathered over 5 times its original funding goal.
There's something very interesting about buying things on Kickstarter, in that what you're buying doesn't yet exist. And because what you're committing money to doesn't yet exist, what you’re buying when you click isn't a product, but is instead a story, a story about that product.
I don't doubt that a significant number of people paid for Organ Trail purely because it's a re-imagination of the cherished Oregon Trail. Their purchase isn't about how good the gameplay will be; gameplay is a function of product. Their purchase is about nostalgia, which is a function of story.
This reminds me of a conversation I once had with Kevin Slavin. He was saying how people always ask why anyone would spend real money on a fake sheep in Farmville.
He relates a story about how when he worked on a project with Cadillac he discovered that the only difference between an Escalade and some other vehicle that cost $40K less was literally just the logo they slapped on the end of the assembly line.
So his question is: what are you paying $40K for that’s any different from a fake sheep?
His background is as a game maker, and the case he makes is that an interesting thing about games like Farmville is that they make "fake stuff" explicit, and in doing so they highlight an important truth that has always been the case: all we ever buy is story.
In the case of the Cadillac, $40K allows you to tell a particular kind of story, and for many people that's a fair price. The very same could be said about a $1 digital sheep.
I'm fond of saying something like "there's reality, and then there's reality that matters to humans." "All we [humans] ever by is story" nails it, and Kickstarter and its non-existant products are simply another interesting angle on that important fact.
