Crowd-sourcing. Crowd-funding. The next big thing. A flash-in-the-pan fad. Call it whatever you want, but right now, the gaming industry’s fallen in love with the idea of putting its fate in the hands of heaping piles of people. Double Fine Adventure was – so clearly that you could see it from space – the point where everyone took notice. Shockingly, crowds did, in fact, exist before that moment, but DFA caused them to really, truly become a thing in the industry’s eyes. Last week, however, saw Phase Two of that movement kick off with things like Penny Arcade’s Kickstarter, World of Warcraft’s Guild Mentoring Program, Steam Badges, and Steam Greenlight. Problem is, with the exception of the latter, we’re sort of doing a really miserable job of leveraging communities, you know, well.

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