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If you’ve been following very much that’s been going on in gaming right now, you’ll know about Kickstarter.

At the time of this writing, game projects being crowd funded through Kickstarter include Sedition Wars, Extinction, The Duke, Badass Zombie Killers, Fairies Rule and more.

Kickstart has recently funded a number of miniatures projects, including Zombicide, Deep Wars, Blackwater Gulch and Mantic Games Kings of War.

This is clearly something that is really changing things up. But what is it doing to games?

Well, ultimately it means more diversity in gaming. When I first started playing tabletop games, there was really one system to rule them all. The monopoly was really broken up when Privateer Press who got started making D&D source books and used that capitol to keep Warmachine afloat in the awkward stages. But now, players are no longer afraid to try out a smaller game for fear that the company would be out of commission in a few months.

Some people have criticized Kickstart projects for bypassing retailers (ie. they offer up rewards that will never be available in the storefront, or offer such a good deal to Kickstarters that their finished game will feel like poor value for dollar in comparison).

But ultimately, what I think Kickstart means is that we get games that do things that are so out of the ordinary that they would never have gotten off of the ground otherwise.

I mean, really go and take a look at Deep Wars and tell me that this would have been a successful project in years past.