I was confused by the idea of Kickstarter when I first heard of it, and even when a couple of independent game makers I know put up their projects and saw some success from it. Going against the traditional formula of people paying for actual games that exist, the idea is that you offer rewards to people according to the heftiness of their donation, and get funded to create a game that they've essentially pre-ordered if you reach your target within your time limit.

In recent weeks, the site seems to have come into its own in a transformation into the Centre for Funding the Revival of Games from the Time When Games Were Actually Any Good - the unique way that the projects on the site are funded can eliminate so much of the vast risk surrounding the current game industry. After a couple of very high-profile games saw funding in the millions, there have been invitations for people to donate to revive Tex Murphy, Leisure Suit Larry and a Space Quest-alike from the original game's creators.

The one that finally got me to throw my money at it, though, was the project to revive Carmageddon. The original game was infamous among people at my age of school when it came out, directly because of the furore over its violence from Daily Mail readers all over the world - but I never really saw the inherent appeal of the violence (or suffered any disappointment in it being reduced in either the toned-down zombie-filled UK version or the positively Bowdlerized robotic German version) - to me, the game's appeal was in being given a large space with some opponents, pedestrians and a universally ignored objective of following a course, and left to run riot however you liked, in a time when sandboxes like this were a relatively new concept. And it was all combined with a very strange sense of humour which seemed to be the product of a group of dangerously mad people being locked in an office with a game being produced as a sort of side effect.

The rather Blue Peter DIY feel of game-making at that point in history is illustrated quite wonderfully by some of the raw footage for the Prat Cam that was recently uploaded - this was a feature where you'd have a view of the driver's face in the top left of the screen, which would react to the events of the game. There were no actors or motion capture brought in here - they just set a camera up in front of the whitest wall they could find, dressed some nutcase called Tony from the office in a red helmet with a paper cut-out of an eagle on the front, and filmed him:

as the team hit him with a pool cue to simulate collisions.

Do you love Britain? Because I do. I think I'm going to love seeing this game creation philosophy come back.

And in case you're not entirely convinced, just look at this early piece of concept art. It's clearly going to be the best thing ever.