Square Enix Collective - How Does it Work?

Gamasutra talks to Square Enix about the Square Enix Collective and its role in the crowdfunding eco-system.

At the EGX Rezzed event in London that kicks off today, the Square Enix Collective is planning to show off a point and click game about a dead girl searching for her family (Goetia), a puzzle game about an engineer on Jupiter's moon (The Turing Test), a 1-4 player capture-the-flag game where players capture living heads (Oh My Godheads!), and an action adventure in a forgotten industrial world (Black the Fall).

The Square Enix Collective (SEC) is not publishing all of them. Some they're just...helping out on. SEC is a unique twist on the standard publisher/developer relationship.

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HOW DOES THE SQUARE ENIX COLLECTIVE WORK?

SEC works with developers to help build up a community around the game through their posts on their site, their contacts with industry journalists and professionals, and the audience reach of a large company.

"We have scale," says Elliot. "We can send emails out to millions of people; we can invest into marketing and bring companies like EEDAR and Petrol Advertising into the project; we can use our portfolio and the relationships we have to open up promotional opportunities that might otherwise be very hard to find."

This starts with SEC's weekly game pitches, which are sent in by game developers from all over the world. Games that are selected have their proposals posted on the SEC site. The general public is invited to post comments and feedback on the game pitches, and vote yes or no on whether they would back a project through crowdfunding.

Community votes don't solely decide whether SEC supports a project, but they play a vital role in the decision process. "We want to give fans of Square Enix (and that includes the Western games as well as those from Japan) a chance to have a voice - to give us direction," says Elliot.