http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/667 ... -adventure

Shut. Up. And. TAKE MY FUCKING MONEY.

So I pledged $30 and I saw it was good.

Seriously, 1) it's Double Fine, 2) they're developing for PC again, 3) it's a point and click adventure game. Best day of my life (not really).

I was sold at 'ADVENTURE'.

I'm not a fan of point and click adventure games.

Also I currently have no source of income.

They made their 400K target.

I want more games to get funded this way, I just don't care enough about this project to fund it. Seems to have already reached the goal though.

I see this as a good thing.

Now if only obsidian could get funding for a propah rpg this way

What with the rumours about a possible Psychonauts 2, perhaps Notch can fund one part and crowdfunding can fund a million dollars. Especially if people funding the project get some part of the returns (in which case you get a great came and probably get back some of the money invested in the project).

Oh yeah, and funding the project = game development documentary. But it'll probably show up on TPB as well.

Well, it also looked like funding the project gave you a copy of the game.

If this actually works, and more companies follow suit this could actually be the most incline the games industry has seen in a long time. Unlikely, but a man can hope.

Hmmm, when the Angry Video Game Nerd used a similar system to fund his movie, people bitched left and right about how this was not the "proper" way to fund a project, because there is some sort of imaginary law, i guess. "He should be taking a risk, he should get some money from the bank, why doesn't he trust his fans to buy the game", etc.

I don't give a rats ass about any of that stuff and honestly, this is a great new way to fund projects like this. It's voting with your money on a new level.

I dunno. I think all this proves is that it's worthwhile to invest in personalities, and if you're famous and you've managed to create an image for yourself that people associate with the games you've made, you can get money. Sure the games you've made need to be good, people have to love what you do and what you stand for, but it's not enough to just be a great game developer.

This works because everybody knows who Tim Schafer is (and to a slightly lesser extent Ron Gilbert), and they know he's doing weird off-mainstream oddball games, and he's serving a genre that used to be ultra mainstream but has a really hard time finding a large audience these days. A niche audience that's been served with crap for the past 10 years. A lot of things need to be true for this sort of project to succeed.

And so much kudos to Schafer and Doublefine for figuring out that they're doing the sort of thing that could work with this model, but that doesn't mean it'll work for everybody else, and it doesn't mean it's going to change the industry to any significant degree.

A kinda right place , right time, right people thing? I'm not a point and click adventure devotee, but if one of my favourite developers tried this with a genre I enjoy I'd put up some cash. I hope the eventual game is a roaring success, coz I think it deserves to be, as much for the faith shown by fans/pledgers as anything.

Yeah I just think there's not a lot of people that could pull this off. If I tried it, I'd have a really hard time collecting $10,000

In fact even if Off Topic Productions did it, we'd be lucky to reach $50,000 in pledges. It'd have to be somebody like Warren Spector or Sid Meier or Chris Avellone.

Also, Double Fine can probably be trusted, a lot of games and mods with schemes like these were just scams.
Which does make one reluctant to put in money incase none of it is ever seen back, or used at all...

Just 'cause it worked for Minecraft doesn't mean it's going to work for everything...

But then, you'd never do it, or at least it would take a very special circumstance; the risk of wasting peoples money is too great.
That's the crux of the matter. Only someone with a proven track record could do this, but then, only someone with a proven track record should be able to.

It is high-risk investment, and people going into it know that, but game development is such a shaky business as it is...veterans of the industry routinely fuck up, and someone brand new ought to recognize that he's vulnerable to making the exact same mistakes, only more so. From a legal standpoint, that might even make you personally liable if you lead the project and you mess up, because it could be argued that you should've known better.

Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing if this ends up destroying Schaefers name, or if the game actually ends up getting produced. It seems like a win right now, but it's also a potential hornets nest.

Let's be honest, if he thought he could make a game for 400k, he will probably be able to make the game with more than 3 times as much money, regardless of how shit his estimates were( you know, as long as they were not wrong by a factor 10 or something).

MCA already talking about doing a kickstarer

Yeah, well TBH, I think you should probably be thinking of even less. Young Horses raised $24,000, which was based on their free (and awesome) game Octodad. While TNM was free as well, it was only available to people with a copy of DX. So I think OTP would probably only be able to raise an amount similar to the one raised by Young Horses or less. It depends to great extent on proof of concept though: does it sound like fun and is the concept well-developed? Trying to fund a project with nothing more than some concept art isn't going to cut it and most people would be hesitant to fund, for instance, yet another tower defence game.