Double Fine asks fans to fund new point-and-click adventure game

[DudeistBelieve]

"Goal: 400,000
Pledged: $493,384
Days to Go: 33"

*facepalm* in 33 more days, he'll have enough to make TWO point and click games.
Not that im complaining. I just mean..... WOW! Im glad im not the only one who wants to see more from the big T.S.!

In 33 more days he will have enough money to buy the world, and become supreme evil overlord.

Maybe the employee who made the kickstart page will try and keep the extra money to make his own game studio... leading to a huge fallout with Double Fine.

 

[Axioma]

Well, it's still 33 days, and now there's $640,000.

Ye gods.

 

[DeadlyYellow]

That article states that disc based games can cost up to 30 million dollars to create.

Sure, if you're going to license the entire Motley Crue album catalog and get Ozzy to be a voice actor...

But no. The article also says that even a simple XBL game can cost $3 million to make.

Who the fuck are they kidding.

You can run up quite a budget funding a studio that isn't based in your mother's basement.

And guess what, 9 times out of 10 the game from Mom's is the better one.

I drive a car.

 

[Xenowolf]

I wish I could support the cause, but I'm a bit too young to be donating.

Ans I'm sure my parents would looove to fund a silly little video game.

*Sigh* Guess I'll just have to help by buying Stacking or Costume Quest.

Surely you could just ask them to donate and then give them the money that they donated?

 

[Fijiman]

If I weren't broke I would totally do it. It's almost too bad that they wouldn't be able to do a kickstarter for Psychonaunts 2 because of the amount of money it would require.

 

[LookingGlass]

Looks like it'll hit $1M any minute now...

Incredible.

 

[Eri]

ONE MIRRION DORRARS! Unpossibre!

 

[AyreonMaiden]

One mil. Absolutely incredible. I can't believe it. I have faith in gamers! A bit, but still!

People will pay to fund what they want. This proves it. Big names have got to notice this, dust off the most luminary names in gaming that have died too soon, and begin the gamer-fueled revival of fan favorites.

 

[Sol_HSA]

i wouldnt be surprised if more and more studios start doing this.

More and more studios will try and fail. Miserably.

I think there are a few others who could manage it.

I think Sid Meier could get a million or 2 if he promised us a new Alpha Centauri. And Warren Spector probably could too.

Thought about this last night, and came to the conclusion that there's probably around six other people on the planet who could pull it off. However, most of them won't, either because they're entangled in other projects and happy that way, or because the couple million you can expect, at most, from kickstarter isn't the kind of money they want to play with.

Warren Spector, for instance, in a lecture said that he doesn't want to do small projects like that.

I've never taken Sid Meier for a public enough person to do something like this. Maybe he would.

Molyneux possibly would, but would people follow him, as everybody knows he hypes too much?

Carmack probably wouldn't make enough of a human interest story for kickstarter to work, although I dunno, if he said he'd make quake 17, maybe there's enough trigger happy people to pitch in.

Romero? Um.

Toys for Bob guys (of star control fame) recently sold out.

Etc.

 

[Sol_HSA]

...and make up for all the losses Psychonauts unfortunately made.

Tim has said in some interview that for some reason fans like to think Psychonauts was a flop, but it actually wasn't. It wasn't a megahit, it "only" had decent sales.

 

[DanielBrown]

Got no intrest in such games, but damn the thing is growing fast. Will any money, apart from the 400k, go to the games budget as well, or to cookies I wonder?

Damn, they've already made three times as much money as they planned for, with over a month left.
LOTS of cookies!

Just hope other game companies won't try to pull this. For this case I think it's amazing, but my past experience hasn't been that great with these sort of things.

Pay $5.000 and Yahtzee might review your game!!1oneone

 

[Ilikemilkshake]

i wouldnt be surprised if more and more studios start doing this.

More and more studios will try and fail. Miserably.

Oh i dont doubt that, infact the whole 'kickstarter revolution' might completely end with Double Fines game if something goes wrong in development, or even if it just isnt any good. But you can't deny between this and Minecraft there's the potential to completely change the way games are made/published/distributed.

 

[Sol_HSA]

i wouldnt be surprised if more and more studios start doing this.

More and more studios will try and fail. Miserably.

Oh i dont doubt that, infact the whole 'kickstarter revolution' might completely end with Double Fines game if something goes wrong in development, or even if it just isnt any good. But you can't deny between this and Minecraft there's the potential to completely change the way games are made/published/distributed.

Sure. But people seem to always learn the wrong lesson.

Minecraft model: should all games be given out at alpha stage, asking for less money with promise of the full version when/if the game gets done? If a couple hundred people have paid you, do you have moral obligation to finish your game (process which might cost millions, while you got all of your $1000 so far), or should you move on and maybe make a better game next time instead?
Really, this model works for certain types of games and certain types of game development. It's best if the person is going to make the game anyway, possibly to be released for free. Minecraft is, like they've said themselves, a Cinderella story. Can't really be turned into a repeatable business model.

Kickstarter now.. works on its own rules. Which people better than me have analyzed. And it works (as far as I can recall), like this:
- Have a cool project (adventure games by adventure game legends, check.)
- Make a funny video with human interest (definitely done on both counts, check.)
- Offer interesting, realistic and good rewards (check.)
- Gain or generate publicity (check.)

If EA would start a kickstarter saying hey, come and fund madden 2017 or whatever, pay $60 upfront and you'll get the game when it's done, and that's it, just how much money would they gather?

 

[Ilikemilkshake]

i wouldnt be surprised if more and more studios start doing this.

More and more studios will try and fail. Miserably.

Oh i dont doubt that, infact the whole 'kickstarter revolution' might completely end with Double Fines game if something goes wrong in development, or even if it just isnt any good. But you can't deny between this and Minecraft there's the potential to completely change the way games are made/published/distributed.

Sure. But people seem to always learn the wrong lesson.

Minecraft model: should all games be given out at alpha stage, asking for less money with promise of the full version when/if the game gets done? If a couple hundred people have paid you, do you have moral obligation to finish your game (process which might cost millions, while you got all of your $1000 so far), or should you move on and maybe make a better game next time instead?
Really, this model works for certain types of games and certain types of game development. It's best if the person is going to make the game anyway, possibly to be released for free. Minecraft is, like they've said themselves, a Cinderella story. Can't really be turned into a repeatable business model.

Kickstarter now.. works on its own rules. Which people better than me have analyzed. And it works (as far as I can recall), like this:
- Have a cool project (adventure games by adventure game legends, check.)
- Make a funny video with human interest (definitely done on both counts, check.)
- Offer interesting, realistic and good rewards (check.)
- Gain or generate publicity (check.)

If EA would start a kickstarter saying hey, come and fund madden 2017 or whatever, pay $60 upfront and you'll get the game when it's done, and that's it, just how much money would they gather?

Im not saying every game needs to be funded like this. Publishers like EA and Activision would still do their thing because the games they make are AAA games requiring millions upon millions of dollars. Look at The Old Republic for example, estimates of its cost are between $200-$500 million dollars, obviously kickstarter isnt going to raise that kind of money. So publishers are still going to fund AAA games.

Looking at the Minecraft model where you buy a game in Alpha with the promise that with enough funding they can provide updates. Well that only works if you have a presentable and workable Alpha game so that people can buy this and dont feel ripped off if it never gets 'completed'
Again this doesnt work for every type of game.

And for Kickstarter yes this particular story owes its success largely to Tim Schafers name is attached but word of mouth campaigns can generate popularity for unknowns like Notch, so why couldnt it happen to someone else?

Again im not saying ALL games are going to be funded like this, im not even going to say alot of games will be funded like this but this type of thing does give developers the chance to make games that normally would be impossible to get backing for, which can only be a good thing.

 

[Sol_HSA]

Looking at the Minecraft model where you buy a game in Alpha with the promise that with enough funding they can provide updates. Well that only works if you have a presentable and workable Alpha game so that people can buy this and dont feel ripped off if it never gets 'completed'
Again this doesnt work for every type of game.

And if you start another project before having "finished" the first one, would people fund your next "alpha" ?

Another thing to consider in the "minecraft model" is that it only works if you don't NEED the money. If you have couple dozen in-house artists, you can't rely on whether the alpha will sell or not. You need some other kind of funding. In Notch's case, his savings, and not having to pay anyone else. He got lucky.

As far as I recall, Notch wasn't the first to try this model, and there are some cases which, while successful, were less impressively so. So yes, this is something that can be tried, and should be tried, but it's mostly for non-established studios.

And for Kickstarter yes this particular story owes its success largely to Tim Schafers name is attached but word of mouth campaigns can generate popularity for unknowns like Notch, so why couldnt it happen to someone else?

Sure it can. But what I'm saying is, this is not following "let's fund games in different ways" formula, but the formula that has formed around kickstarter for any kind of project.

Could it work for smaller games for smaller amounts of money? Sure. Just follow the formula. You don't have the rocket fuel of Tim's celebrity to drive it to millions, but you might be able to generate some thousands.

Again im not saying ALL games are going to be funded like this, im not even going to say alot of games will be funded like this but this type of thing does give developers the chance to make games that normally would be impossible to get backing for, which can only be a good thing.

Ingenous people have tried (and succeeded) in funding games in various ways. One example I know is a person I know who funded his game company at one point by having a deal with ice-cream vans to sell his game. If measured by copies sold, his game was the #1 most sold game in Finland at the time. Didn't make any headlines, though.

He tried to scale it to other countries, but the ice-cream van chains in other countries weren't interested. So that was that.

 

[Ilikemilkshake]

Looking at the Minecraft model where you buy a game in Alpha with the promise that with enough funding they can provide updates. Well that only works if you have a presentable and workable Alpha game so that people can buy this and dont feel ripped off if it never gets 'completed'
Again this doesnt work for every type of game.

And if you start another project before having "finished" the first one, would people fund your next "alpha" ?

Another thing to consider in the "minecraft model" is that it only works if you don't NEED the money. If you have couple dozen in-house artists, you can't rely on whether the alpha will sell or not. You need some other kind of funding. In Notch's case, his savings, and not having to pay anyone else. He got lucky.

As far as I recall, Notch wasn't the first to try this model, and there are some cases which, while successful, were less impressively so. So yes, this is something that can be tried, and should be tried, but it's mostly for non-established studios.

And for Kickstarter yes this particular story owes its success largely to Tim Schafers name is attached but word of mouth campaigns can generate popularity for unknowns like Notch, so why couldnt it happen to someone else?

Sure it can. But what I'm saying is, this is not following "let's fund games in different ways" formula, but the formula that has formed around kickstarter for any kind of project.

Could it work for smaller games for smaller amounts of money? Sure. Just follow the formula. You don't have the rocket fuel of Tim's celebrity to drive it to millions, but you might be able to generate some thousands.

Again im not saying ALL games are going to be funded like this, im not even going to say alot of games will be funded like this but this type of thing does give developers the chance to make games that normally would be impossible to get backing for, which can only be a good thing.

Ingenous people have tried (and succeeded) in funding games in various ways. One example I know is a person I know who funded his game company at one point by having a deal with ice-cream vans to sell his game. If measured by copies sold, his game was the #1 most sold game in Finland at the time. Didn't make any headlines, though.

He tried to scale it to other countries, but the ice-cream van chains in other countries weren't interested. So that was that.

I agree with everything you've said so im not really sure where our argument is coming from.
Also selling games from ice cream trucks is both insane and amazing but i can understand why it wouldnt translate well to other countries.

 

[Staskala]

Any chance we get a "Help Tom Hall buy back the rights to Anachronox" next?
Oh right, no one played that game