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Double Fine Adventure Crosses $2.5 Million In Kickstarter Funding
An anonymous reader writes "Double Fine Adventure, the crowd-funded adventure game from Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert (of Monkey Island fame), just crossed the $2.5 million mark in funding on Kickstarter. So far, about 73,000 enthusiastic backers have contributed an average of $35 dollars each, with 3 extravagant backers going as far as to contribute $10,000 (earning them a lunch with Schafer and Gilbert, among other goodies). The total sum is over 6 times the amount Schafer and Gilbert were initially hoping to raise ($400,000). Schafer released a few pictures showing what he's doing with all the money. The project has received attention in mainstream media (sort of), with NPR's Morning Edition covering the story."
Click the pictures link, it's worth your time.
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
Double Fine Forever
now funded by the crowd
Crowd-funding is how entertainment will work in the the not too distant future, as far as creators are concerned:
0) Start by making something good, although probably for free, thus starting to build a reputation;
1) Offer to do something, for money, proportional to your reputation;
2) Get funded by the crowd;
3) Deliver a good end result, and with it improve your reputation;
4) Loop back to 1 as much as you need or want;
5) Retire.
Copyright? What for?
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
"..an independent team led by Chistian Allen (lead designer/creative director for games like Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and Halo: Reach) has launched a Kickstarter for a new hardcore tactical shooter."
Their PR is nowhere as good as Schafer's, but tactical shooters deserve some love too!
2.5 Million? And we'll never own the game.
For 2.5 Million we could fund the same effort or more and enrich the commons with a high quality opensource game that would allow a wide array of derivative. Instead the commons is robbed and is given a proprietary game.
Slashdot should not be posting kickstarters for software and other things that aren't free/libre open source licensed or creative commons licensed.
Use kickstarter to compensate creative people for their effort, but pay them to contribute to the commons as well.
The only problem I can see is that now that the precedent has been set, the result better be the gaming equal to the Second Coming, else the fickle "gamerz" out there will raise so much Internet fury that everyone will be too scared to attempt this again.
Consistency is only a virtue if you're not a screw-up.
No, really, this totally stinks and makes no sense at all.
When the Order of the Stick (a niche-audience webcomic based on D&D and fantasy RPG) just recently hit over a million $ several stories were submitted, none were taken. Now Tim Schafer hits roughly double that, it's "News For Nerds, Stuff That Matters"?
Seriously, editors? Have you taken crack? How is a RPG-fantasy webcomic that started from zero ten years ago that now hits 1.2 million $ on kickstarter not "News for Nerds" but when some known and famous (within his circle) game developer hits a measly double of that it suddenly is?
The point is not that the Webcomic was not featured here, the freaking point is that suddenly another kickstarter project (as impressive as it is and I backed it as well, btw) that plays in the very same level of spectacularity is? Both results on kickstarter are very impressive and are a clear sigh something changes at the moment. Something how things are financed, how independent authors can create a business. I find that very, very awesome and it's something that has never been seen as this in human history.
But you guys think it's not newsworthy. That, dear slashdot, plainly sucks. Hand in your geek cards.
"News for ners, stuff that matters" should become "We do not freaking care if it's News for Nerds, we only like to throw dice and pick our stories without any discernible criteria". That'd of course explain all those stupid non-nerd stories you took from somewhere that pop up here.
It'll either be awesome or crash and burn horribly. Those are the only two options Tim gave us. =p
What? Have you been living under a rock or something? It's Tim Schafer, man; it CANNOT be anything short of orgastic.
...he's gonna have some 'splaining to do.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Schafer plans to do just that and make a documentary about it, to demystify the process for kids who think that only big publishers can make games.
The 74,000 backers are obviously just buying the game for their kids.
I know who it is. But even the most epic game designers can have off-games. It's one thing to have a company breathing down your neck for "quality assurance," but to have MILLIONS of fans that have donated their hard-earned cash, directly funding your project?
That's some serious pressure.
Consistency is only a virtue if you're not a screw-up.
I get what you are saying and some lesser designer might indeed start to crack under the pressure, but looking at what Schafer has been saying in the public and his pictures here, it doesn't seem like he even notices it. I really doubt quality is an issue, but one thing that people WILL complain about is that it takes so long for the game to materialize. People are impatient and a large adventure game is a multi-year project, that is going to cause some quarreling eventually.
It makes so much sense for the crowd to fund the creator, rather than a publisher who takes on the risk and exerts creative control over your product. Using the right online platform, you can turn your entire consumer base into a focus group that tells you exactly what they want, and even pays for it in advance.
We're returning to a model of creative production based on Renaissance "patronage," but with that patronage distributed throughout the population of individuals who will actually be using the product you produce. There is huge potential here if we can find the right kind of online platform (I do think we need to go beyond Kickstarter's model in the long term).
I'm not sure it's accurate to say this game is "from Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert." See http://grumpygamer.com/5694081
"People are impatient and a large adventure game is a multi-year project, that is going to cause some quarreling eventually."
Tim has indicated his deadline for the game to be later this year. If it does become a multi-year project, then there can be some understanding why people may bicker about it.
But then, all those who paid enough for the lowest benefit (15 dollars iirc) will be participating or at least have the option to participate, in the closed beta of the game as its' being produced. If there are snags that might drag it on, they'll at least be kept well informed of what's going on.
Most people that I see get uptight over things taking long to complete are usually caused by a lack of communication from the company/group in question.
and while we are on the topic, the Erfworld Kickstarter has raised over $64000 with over 880 backers to fund a motion comic
Additional funds will go towards -
New Erfworld website
Free Erfworld book 1 for a variety of people
Funding a reprint of book 1
Funding to making Hamstard beanies
Funding for a make-your-own-Hamstard-comic tool
Funding for a soundtrack album
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The problem is Tim was not happy with being told what to do from his big wig bosses, and wanted to branch out to create games he wanted to make. The story mentions that.. Claiming artistic freedom, thats is fine, but the old supply and demand ruins that. If he wants to make games the way he sees fit, then he should branch out and do that. But it is not what the artist wants it is what gamers want.
Saying that, I remember the games for the Amiga and while they were not popular, partly because the Amiga was not popular, they were fun games and really had no big wigs controlling what the artist wanted to do. No doubt there is a market for this, but he seems to be using open money to create games, and those that invested the proper amount get rewards, like a copy of the game, but I could see problems with this.
I am getting ahead of myself, I hope he has oncepts for games so those investing money, know it is a game to be throwing money at. I would not demand a certain game to be made, I just want to know what they are coming up with, and if it is something I would play, probably not, as I get older those old Amiga games seem to bore me, much like the crap commercial games that are out there now.
What I like about this fact is that people think positively: they're ready to donate to something they like. But in most of it... As this talented speaker on TED said, we need to integrate the technology, entertainment, design, i.e. the happy (and consumer) part of our life with the awareness of injustice, bad life of poor, bloody lessons of history and other things which would make us little more adequate about what world we live in. He also said that the indicator of health of society is how they treat the poor, not the rich. I join those commentators who think that $2.5M would do much more useful and meaningful things if it was donated elsewhere, i.e. with a little bit deeper thougth.
i'm waiting for the feds to audit kickstarter. a company that does zero due dilligence for its projects has to be funding some seriously shady stuff.
Imagine if you'd been one of the chumps who crowd-funded that?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Of course, once a project like this starts getting successful, Kickstarter helps push it along as they feature it heavily on their front pages. Lots of other worthy projects are struggling to meet their goal as you can't easily browse through projects that aren't heavily funded or "popular". I'd much rather see lists of projects that need more help. (That said, I jumped in on this one early because of how awesome Psychonauts was.)