A lot of viewers are discovering this video for the first time years later, or may not have backed the EC Fund when it initially started, so here's an update on all of that for you folks: We picked a developer after reaching out to our community about it; our supporters liked the idea so we went ahead. We kept Indie Fund supporters updated through emails while the game was in development, but ultimately the game fell through. That happens sometimes. We're not offering the fund anymore and have no plans to try it again. Nowadays, indie publishers are starting to pop up left and right (and stay established!), becoming a viable option for many indie developers. Even some "big-fish" AAA publishers are offering support for indie developers. Even though the indie game market has become significantly more competitive over time, there are so many more resources and options now for indie developers to gain visibility. Things have definitely changed for the better since we made this video. --Belinda (Community Manager)

A lot of EC's other videos have talked about transparency, doing right by the players, and all the shortcomings at various levels of the game industry... and yet we haven't heard a single update on their indie dev fund... If it didn't pan out, that's understandable. But at least update your fans/follows (and more importantly, donors whose very money funded the thing), and turn it into an opportunity to learn. WHY didn't it get off the ground? What specifically happened with it? What could be done better next time? What could anyone heading into the industry take away from the situation, so they don't do the same thing themselves?

Here's a possible name idea for the fund: "Play It Forward"? Since you referenced "paying it forward" in the video, and the more consumers that buy the games and play them, the more money goes into the fund to help developers bring out new games. How does it sound? :)

So, I am posting this three years later, almost to the day, and would like to ask what has come of all of this? What game or games did you fund? What happened? What did you learn? Is there a follow up episode out there I don't know about? Anyone who has information, please respond! I am very interested :)

3:06 I laughed out loud at the publisher punching itself in the face.

I'm still here at the end of 2015 wondering what happened...

JC penny effect?

2019 and I'm curious about it. What became of this ?

Very late to the party, but this video really has restored a significant proportion of my faith in the industry. I'm fascinated to see how this develops, or has been developing, though it does make my head swim that AAA publishers aren't scrambling over each other to get these guys on board. Its always a pleasure to watch these videos, the mixture of passion, intellectualism and honesty is not just refreshing, its revitalising. Thanks EC team, you rock.

they turned a funding for a surgery to a brilliant opportunity to help a completely different people altogether. what an imagination and a brilliant way to be the change they want to see in their world. kudos guys!

Oh, it guys like you that put angels to shame!

i like it how you change the art style all the time. makes it so much more fun to watch

sooo...what ever became of this?

That Invader Zim doom poster at 5:03 just made my day. Thank you very very much.

Nope, I refuse to believe Arg drew this, there were absolutely no penises.

Guys, remember that anything you see from EC in early 2012 was reuploaded during their time on the Escapist. Which is where a lot of conflict from this fund came from.

That is an incredible initiative! This is the kind of attitude that the world needs! "...measure on their merit rather than their marketability.". Amazing job everyone from Extra Credits! Faith in humanity restored!

quality advices from James "you should put happy little trees there"

Be you angels EC? But they said: Nay - we are but human. Game on!

Image at 3:32 pretty much sums up big publishers. I just love that frame.

What you guys do is fantastic! Just found your KZfaq channel and I love it!

Just out of curiosity since it has been two years since it has begun, what has happened so far? I went to the page and there has been no activity and I can't find any projects related to this in the past couple years. It seems like a fantastic idea, but I don't see anything on it. It's like it just dissipated into the atmosphere

This is STILL a VERY RELEVANT video even after 5 years. Thankfully, most small publishers and some major ones (Nintendo comes to mind) have actually started doing some of the things mentioned here, not all of them but some. It's too bad that some KZfaqr's (couth Jim Stering couth) have let a FEW horrible publishers, both indy and AAA, make them think that EVERY major company in the gaming industry is pure evil when that's pure bull-crap!

Can I suggest that Allison invests in a bionic arm? She's had one in some episodes of extra credit and having one in real life too could only be awesome.

So far they've funded 11 games, 1 was cancelled, 5 are being developed and 5 have been successes. Their latest game paid itself off in only 2 days, recouping all costs for both the developer and Indie-Fund.

just try not to worry about it. Think react world. Okay don't do that. Think a project that failed to get off the ground. It happens, its gone, whatever. the artist is back and thats all that the fundraiser was really about

There are different art styles for a time period due to guest artists. Their own artist injured her arm, and during that time they were raising funds to help her get treatment and recover.

Achievement Unlocked: Awesome idea is awesome. 9001 pts

As the most awesome saying ever goes, "everyone does better when everyone does better". Hope to see great things from this.

the Activision Vs IW incident proves #3 in gold bars

They have their heads and hearts in the right place. Very admirable.

at the time the original artist had a shoulder surgary (the stuff brought up in the begining) so this stretch in their archive was getting a new guest artist every week

as someone who is trying to make a few games i find this wonderful... thats all i want to do so... yeah ...

The amount of ponies in this video pleases me.

Saw a lot of comments asking if this actually happened... Happy to report that it did!

You guys...are amazing, and truly one-of-a-kind. Only one thing is missing now, maybe- a link to the list of games that spawned from this. It's a subtle advertisement especially to those already curious. :)

I lol'd when the Publisher monster punched itself in the face haha!

EC Team, So, I've been watching the show on random for a little while and this is the first I've heard of this kind of opportunity from you guys. I have a team of creative, skilled, reliable individuals who are creating a game with me. We are all students learning game design, animation, and some other related degrees. Our biggest downfall is none of us have the money to work with the professional versions of the software and the equipment most of us have is just not able to handle the soft ware. We are still plugging away and building this game as we learn the software to have something for our portfolios. As the lead guy in this project I would love to have the chance to work to develop this game and have the dreams of my team come to reality and work on a professional level project. (maybe we could even call it some form of internship so we could get those credits lol). I know it is a long shot posting this on here, and I need to do more research into this to see if it has worked for the previous teams of developers. If it is something that sounds appealing I can send an email or arrange a phone call so that we can discuss the game itself, as well as the progress made and the equipment and software required by my team to make it happen. Thank you. -Brian Wicker-

This was due to the original artist, Alison, having some health problems which was explained in the video. They got a bunch of people to make art for the episodes during this time, which was great! In general the art style is the same, though. It's still great of course!

The publisher harm part was great

Does anyone know what studios / games actually worked with this fund and/or how far this publishing strategy has actually come along? Are there other publishing houses that have adopted similar strategies at all?

The way they manage their given cash sounds great!

Why are you ExtraCreditz folks so damn tear-jerkingly fantastic?

Will we be able to add to the fund above and beyond just buying the games that do wind up getting developed? I actually couldnt do anything for the fundraiser due to issues of my own, but i have a stable job now and would love to get involved. What you guys are doing here is totally awesome.

Been watching since 2014 and I just found this video and I love you folks even more now. Wow. I'm a gamer and musician and I might have a tendon disease that might make those passions harder. The fact that you care that much about your people and passion is deeply meaningful to me. Keep up the great work, folks. I'm with you all the way.

thats because they have the guest artist allison stays pretty consistent with her art style but its still fun.

I would like to collaborate with my few hard earned dollars in a second crowd fund to give EC and this mindset a second chance.

Pretty sure this was around the time the Escapist demanded 75% or their Rockethub finds.

I love the visual style of the episode

This is the first time I've laughed out loud at an EC video. Well done. I'll have to check out your Web comic.

by far my favorite guest art!

I'm actually pretty interested in getting my game in on this. you see I'm a student working on a personal computergame project which i plan on trying to be a marketable product, and was already looking into trying to get government grants and start up up a kickstarter fund in order to get it it funded, but considering how much this series helped to inspire the game, having this project be involved with you guys sounds like an especially tempting offer. however upon watching the entirety of this episode, there is a pretty glaring issue, that being that from what i can tell, my game is not the kind of title you guys would want to start off your careers as a game publisher, as it's no industry changing product, and it's pretty lacking on the deeper artistic meanings front. most of it's design simply revolves around cleverly disguising some tried and true mechanics so they seem fresh and new, trying to provide the best possible game we can with our available skill-set, on the barest boned budget, that had the greatest potential for growing as a minor franchise. Something that could be pulled off cheap, and pulled off FAST, provided we can fill in the final missing members of our team (basically we have the mechanics, level design, and majority of the artistic elements sorted out, like animation, 3d models, backgrounds, got a guy writing us an original soundtrack, etc ), we just need some reliable programmers and the like to help us put it all together so we can get on with play testing and refine the levels layouts and such. but that note, it is not the sort of game that can't be pulled off on free programs like rpg maker. especially not by an amateur (believe me, Ive checked :P) But on the other hand, it isn't exactly my place to try and decide for you, so I feel it's polite to give you the opportunity to reject. I'll look more into you guy's plans on becoming an independent publisher, and then put more effort into contacting you to pitch this game, because in all honesty, something like this would be just the kick in the pants my team needs to really get serious about the project instead of just assuming failure and that it's just another instance of a girl with her hopes too high, or that there has to be an easier way than for us to create our own original property, and especially now that we're about to start our first peak work cycle on this thing, what with summer vacation coming up, this sort of boost to moral would be pretty welcome.

I know this is off topic but I fucking love this artist.

so, anyone know the status of all this? Are there any projects in the works thanks to this endeavor?

So what exactly happened with this experiment? I was just looking through old videos and saw this one.

There have been, mainly a year after this one was produced, or somewhere near there. Probably the best thing you could do though, is send them an email, or check their website.

Yeah I guess I could see that as an issue, but like I said this system has been working well for Dark Horse and Image and they've been around for decades.

This indie fund is a good idea. I find the four points to be really reasonable. They seem too reasonable. If publishers don't do this, they seem so crooked and currupt. I am not saying that Extra Credits is bad in any way. I am saying that it is a shock that these ideas are not used everywhere. Fortunatly there is indie games and crowdsourcing. So one can do a game without exploitations. Because of the internet, now is a good time to change game publishing for the better. All media is changed due to the internet.

i love the original art style too. it just spikes up the episode a bit cause if the diffirent style

I realise you all decided Mental Drift wasn't the correct game for the project but I hope Lo and Behold just put it on the back burner and didn't scrap the idea entirely. The game looked awesome from the small bit I saw.

Santa is Real and Frendship IS Magic.

I knew of ARG before watching this episode. (Do I get a hipster cookie?) He seems to be amazingly prolific with the art! :O

I wanted to be a developer at first, but I realized that I'm just not that good of an artist, and creating art makes me miserable. I do still care a lot about games, so I want to become a publisher and take the industry into my hands from a macro level more than I ever could as a developer. I want to align commercial interests and artistic merit. For-profit corporations will always take actions that make them money--asking them to sacrifice an opportunity to make money is asking them to go against their nature, and even if you get them to do it, it won't last long. If they're convinced that terrible ideas are profitable, that's what they'll do, regardless of the better judgement of the individual members. So I want to change the industry by becoming a trendsetter at the highest levels and changing what is profitable, making _quality_ more lucrative than short-sighted cash grabs. How would I do that? Should I sign on with an established company like EA and try to climb the ladder, or try to start my own company? If I start a new company, what sort of budget should I start publishing with? How would I get developers to sign on with me?

I think EA probably is a big cautionary tale for this.

KANSAS GOT MENTIONED IN A EXTRA CREDITZ VIDEO! WHOOPIE!!!!

I'd really like to see a sort of publishing style used in games akin to those used by the comic book companies Dark Horse or Image, in which the creators retain all the rights to their creations that were published through the company, and can do with them as they please.

I love this! A bit late and all but god damn, if only there were more people like this.

How can someone get the exclusive video nowadays, incase said someone didn't know this awesome channel existed back then?

Wow that game actually looks super cool!

Kudos, guys, this is a WONDERFUL idea. Best of luck to you!

FRIENDSHIP is magic

A webcomic and web TV show raising funds for making better games? TAKE ALL MY MONEY!

extra credits thinking, Publisher screws over customer:its a buisness Publisher screws over developer:WHAT HEARTLESS MONSTERS

I just LOVE this idea! I really hope everything goes well :D

Fantastic use of action lines, Arg. Both perpendicular and parallel. How's the project coming? As this video is about a year and a half old, I'm hoping things are swell?

I'm starting to fall in love with this channel

Insomniac created the infamous original Spyro trilogy because they were held by a multigame contract and it also was Spyro's downfall.

You know there is one game I heard was ruined by publishers buying the studio. From what I heard Metal Arms Glitch in the System was a game that didn't do as well as the developer had hoped but he still wanted to make a sequel but the studio was bought with all its IPs and open requesting and even making a cash offer to make it was denied. Sucks a little cause the game actually was decent something I could enjoy at the very least.

Late to the party: Allison Left, but what happened afterwards with the fund?

That was this week's PATV episode.

if you guys are still looking you could always try to get it on the homestuck game... that is if they're still hireing

The art style changes because it's done by different artists. That's not really them changing the art style.

not any negative but this look a bit like contrediction: this video 3:40 Extra Credits: Innovation 6:00

i really hope someone at Activision comes across this video!

It's a game called Mental Drift ;)

Well she didn't break her arm, she had something called a radial tear in her shoulder

Dear god, his neck is connected to his torso

im realy a fan of Extra Credits since i discovered them but srsly this guy made around 170'000 in crowdfunding and dident inform anyone on where the money was/is going. they did not do anything of what they promised in that vid. I contaceted them now via Facebook if there is no respond i will have a fishy feeling if i watch Extra Credits. Realy sad

Have you guys ever spoken to WayForward? There is some great work that comes out of that studio, and some very talented people who work there (a bit of bias too, cuz I worked there a few times :P), but I think something good can come from that potential partnership. Just a thought ^_^ After all, I'd LOVE to see producers get behind Shantae, before it ends up delayed on an obsolete platform... again.

fucking tragedy the way escapist handled this rockethub thing

So let's say I make a game...Once the game's finished, if it's good, I can talk to you guys about publishing it? That's awesome!

Money's tight since I just moved out on my own, but I'll keep this in mind so I can donate some money when I have any.

They made a new Firefall video on Firefall's website. Just a shout out

I'm thinking of making a 3D third-person hack and slash/shooter with Guitar Hero-esque musical bits integrated into combat. Think it could work? The bosses would all be themed after iconic guitar and metal songs.

And after Dark souls being a success like that, Namco Bandai decides that they are going to pump a large amount of money into Dark Souls 2... *facepalm* "The good thing this time round is we're investing more in it from a marketing perspective," ""We're going to go guns-blazing with it, and hope to God that it works."

You know what they say. Leave luck to heaven.

I hope this doesn't end up as the JCPenny effect...

LOL, I love how even Allison can grow a beard and Dan can't. Based on a true story, I assume. :)

I am a non professional game developer but I want people to see my games, what do I do to get more people to see my games?

It would be lovely if you could put the episode number and/or original date of air in the title.