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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?
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.
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.
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
Wow, you're really mad over a bad webcomic.
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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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