Double Fine Raises $700,000 In 24 Hours With Crowdfunding

redletterdave writes "San Francisco-based game developer Double Fine took to Kickstarter to fund its next game project, and so far, the studio has enjoyed unprecedented success through crowdsourcing. The project, which was announced by the studio's founder Tim Schafer on Wednesday night, has already raised more than $700,000 in less than 24 hours. The funding frenzy has set new Kickstarter records for most funds raised in the first 24 hours, and highest number of backers of all-time, though both of those numbers are still growing. Schafer says he will build a 'classic point-and-click adventure game' in a six-to-eight month time frame, and will document the entire production process for fans to observe and give input on the game's development, which 'will actually affect the direction the game takes.'"

Comments

Using the internet for its intended purpose works?

[Xanny]

Oh my god, I can't believe it!

Excuse the sarcasm, but it has been obvious for a decade that publishers and traditional investment firms into game development have been a defunct and dying breed, it has just taken forever for any real game studios to take the risk to stop getting fucked (losing the copyright to their own media, sharing most of the sales, having no rights to distribution or advertising) to get funding and publicity.

My dreams just came true!

[airfoobar]

Fuck yeah!

Btw, to those who don't know who Tim Schafer is, he was the Lead Designer on Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle and Grim Fandango. Ron Gilbert, who is also on the team, is the guy who designed Monkey Island. This is the stuff of legends, people. I never thought this could ever happen.. Kickstarter really works!

Re:My dreams just came true!

[mustPushCart]

And psychonauts. You know, psychonauts? yea him.

Hold your horses - it's Double Fine.

[QuasiSteve]

Keep in mind that this is Double Fine.

Its current backer pledging rate of about $1,000/minute (yes, I'm serious) is not the norm. Check out other game projects at KickStarter. Most don't even make it to their funding goal when their funding goal is $4,000 - let alone the $400,000 that Double Fine had set.

Double Fine, however, is well-known in the gaming community. As are some of the names that attached themselves to this project. This in term allows them to leverage their existing social networks (followers on twitter, friends at facebook), their industry contacts, and get noticed by other sites (such as Slashdot) more easily.

Compare this, if you will, to the Humble Bundle. Yes, games within the Humble Bundle generally do quite well. But do they do quite well because of the game, or because of the Humble Bundle association?

That said, this is still very cool, and I would be very surprised if this project didn't top the #1 slot for most funded, most over-funded (absolute and percentage-wise), fastest to reach funding goal, highest funding rate and more at KickStarter. In fact, I'm sure KickStarter staff did a double-take at suddenly gaining hundreds of new accounts, about 130 per minute in the last hour, backing this project alone.

Re:Hold your horses - it's Double Fine.

[grumbel]

I have to wonder if this isn't the future for mid-sized developers, maybe even film/show producers.

The problem is that almost all success stories with new business models so far have been something like this:

1) Do normal commercial work
2) Get advertised a ton doing your commercial work
3) Repeat 1) and 2) for years or decades and accumulate a fan-base
4) Do a kickstarter/pay-what-you-want/novel-new-business model and get a shitload of free press
5) Profit

The problem is that without accumulating the fan-base first, it wouldn't work. Getting the free press also only works as long as your business model is fresh and new. When everybody is doing their projects via Kickstarter, it will be a hell of a lot harder to get noticed.

That's not to say that this can't work for some cases. If Kickstarter allows a few popular people to do what they want, awesome. But the old industry is still where most of the money is. One million for an adventure game is awesome, but compared to 400 million that Modern Warfare 3 made on launch day, that's still a rather small amount.

Re:You're late

[icebraining]

There's still a possibility:

Q: What happens if you go over the goal?

A: The extra money will be put back into the game and documentary. This could result in anything from increased VO and music budgets to additional release platforms for the game.

Re:You're late

[PIBM]

Actually, they stated that the extra money would be put to distribute the game on more platforms, so here's your chance to speak with your money :)

Publishers

[Vyse of Arcadia]

Game publishers the world over probably just thought to themselves, "Oh crap." Publishers of any medium are less needed every day, and I think a lot more people just realized it. Why even bother, if you're a big enough name, to try to get funding from a publisher when you can cut out the middle man?

Karma whoring ;-)

[Whibla]

For those who cannot be bothered to actually rtfa:

The actual kickstarter page

I have to say, this strikes me as a damn fine idea. Even if people do not participate in the kickstarter itself the game will still be on sale on Steam once completed, and with a large marketing headstart. win-win.

Re:What is my ROI?

[asdf7890]

It isn't an investment in the shares and/or dividends, you are simply pledging some money up-front in order to support the game being made. What you get, other than the game being made and you getting a copy (probably) cheaper than the price it will be release to the rest of the world at, is clearly documented on the page.

Re:What is my ROI?

[Half-pint HAL]

It's not an investment, it's patronage of the arts. It's a very old way of raising funds, but in the old days, funding arts was an ostentation. "Oh look at me, I funded an opera!" Also, there were such things as "subscriber lists" for books in days gone by. For things that were a bit "niche", a group would have a whipround to fund someone to put it together -- they were the "subscribers" and they'd all get listed inside the book. People did this because the books supported a cause that was close to their heart. Many books of Scottish Gaelic poetry were funded this way. Local history societies would do similar things to fund the publishing of books from their area.