Two days ago, Tim Schafer - founder of Double Fine Productions - announced his plans to create an old-school point and click adventure game, the kind that hasn't been seen coming from major publishers in quite a while. To do this, he planned to finance the game using donations via the Kickstarter website. The original goal was for ~$400,000. Of that, $300,000 would be spent producing the game itself for publishing on Steam, with the remaining $100,000 spent making a documentary that would track the creation of the game at every stage of development. Apparently, was a rather
good idea.
As many of you should know, Double Fine is quite well known for developing games that are rather more esoteric than the usual cookie-cutter console first person shooter. In short, they make games that are unique, weird, and bloody memorable. To see this, you don't have to go farther than Psychonauts; a brilliant and wholly under appreciated game. Safe to say, Double Fine is held in rather good regard by gamers.
Tim Schafer may have underestimated
how high a regard gamers everywhere held for him and his company, because barely 2 days after the initial posting, Double Fine's Kickstarter proposal has earned
almost 1.2 million dollars. The original target of $400,000 was reached in just
8 ****ing hours. A number of Kickstarter records stand shattered, and quite a few people are surprised at just how much support they've garnered from the audience. This feels a lot like the days of novelists and musicians producing works financed by patronage.
I've done my part, have you?
