Token Female Gamer

Double Fine, makers of Psychonauts and more, is cutting out the middle man by appealing to the masses, via Kickstarter.

Last night when I was checking it out, only $40k of the requested $400,000 was pledged, but it had just gone up. This morning more then $600,000 has been pledged.

For what you ask? Good question. According to the video of Tim Schafer, it will be a click based adventure game. The making thereof will all be documented on film. You can watch!

Now who doens’t want more adventure games, especially from the talented folks at Double Fine. It will be incredibly interesting to see how this goes as the project is clearly getting funded. With another thirty three days left on the Kickstarter pledge drive, there is lots of time left for even more fans to come out and pledge.

And frankly $400,000 is a very small budget for a game, which I guess is why they have only six months production scheduled.

My only concern is this: typically investors or producers reap some of the rewards as in profits. What happens with the profits? Also where are the checks and balances? Though Tim Shafer scoffs at this notion, there is something to be said for keeping folks accountable.

Double Fine has an excellent reputation and if I was giving away money to a game company, I would probably trust them more then most to actually finish a product. But in the end, I have seen so many projects fail because of running out of money, or poor scheduling, or simply lazyness, that the lack of accountability in the Kickstarter model makes me rather weary.

That all being said, I think Double Fine will make an excellent Litmus test to see if the middle man can be cut out successfully. Plus another adventure game from the fine creators of Grim Fandango. Bonus!

Edit: Its only noon and they already have over $800,000 raised. Maybe they can fund a sequel with the extra money. =)

Edit (5pm): Looks like the passed One Million Dollars! With 32 days left, I have to wonder how much father this pony will run. The fan reaction seems to be nearing mass hysteria. Everyone wants to give money, because everyone else is! Must. Get. In. On. The. Action.

Tags: adventure, drama, industry, kickstarter, money, win

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 9th, 2012 at 8:45 am and is filed under Computer Games, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.