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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."

4 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. Crowd-funding by alexgieg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  2. Again Kickstarter is used to rob the commons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Again Kickstarter is used to rob the commons by Paul+Fernhout · · Score: 4, Interesting

      AC had a good point. Creativity is generally not improved by rewards, and there are other ways to support people than linking the right to consume with an increasingly precarious income-through-jobs link. We could have had $2.5 million of free stuff, and now we are getting yet more proprietary stuff.

      See my essay on that theme (though it is directed more at tax-exempt non-profits):
      http://www.pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors-on-copyright-policy.html
      Longer version: http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-funding-digital-public-works.html

      See also on why creativity diminished if done for material gain:
      "RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us"
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

      From 1964 on the strained income-through-jobs link.
      http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm

      Alternatives:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy
      http://books.google.com/books/about/The_dictionary_of_alternatives.html?id=IKZVKMPEQCEC

      --
      A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
    2. Re:Again Kickstarter is used to rob the commons by Thing+1 · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Watch this to understand how to cure many cancers: http://www.amazon.com/What-If-Cannabis-Cured-Cancer/dp/B003SSBSQQ (not that you will be allowed to...)

      --
      I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.