Player Attack: After pledging to the now (ridiculously) successfully funded Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter, a few nagging doubts crept into my head. What about all the little people? The people without the star power or the history of Tim Schafer and Double Fine? Isn’t Kickstarter for them? How were their projects faring without this viral wildfire of tweeting and facebooking and donating?
Investigating the Games category of Kickstarter, it seemed there were a lot of people who wouldn’t be telling success stories at the end of their campaigns. Ideas too ambitious, perhaps, or too much money requested. But there was some amazing stuff there, too. I couldn’t help but get excited, and so I’ve shared a few Projects below.
The Humble Day of the Devs Bundle 2022 just launched. It includes sixteen items including Psychonauts, Brutal Legend, Broken Age, and more.
Find out why ScreenCritics Joe is full of praise for 'Double Fine Adventure' - and why more developers should allow gamers look behind the curtain.
I (Robin Ek, The Gaming Ground) had a lot of mixed emotions when I found out that Tim Schafer and Double Fine had launched a crowdfunding campaign for "Psychonauts 2" yesterday. And this is the reason why (pros Vs cons, past scandals and expectations).
Don't worry, he will ask for more money soon, lol.
I'm a huge fan of the original Psychonauts, but i will not be able to donate for the crowfunding campaign because so many great games are coming next year.
But let's see how much the Feminist Frequency will donate for his campaign now...
I understand where you´re coming from, since I bought the original game for myself and my two brothers on release. I´m very tempted to do that, but since Tim has said (and done) some really "not so smart" things in the past. I´ll just wait until the game launches instead. To be fair, she probably couldn't spare a dime. As she´s begging her "fans" for money on Twitter several times per day.
Just checked out the crowd funding page and looks like it will be a success, good on you to whom ever gave but he aint getting a dime from me. Hasn't he made enough profit from previous games to be self sustaining by now yet?
I sometimes think it might be better to try and sell your IP to another company rather than ask the community for funding. I am a big fan of the first Psychonauts (got a complete OG Xbox copy) and of course I want a sequel. But is 3.3 million enjoy to match the quality and production value of the first game?
Edit: 3.3 million is 1/3rd of the games budget.
It´s a risky move for sure, and since the "Broken Age" crowdfunding campaign had quite a "few" problems along the way. One might wonder how smooth things will go for "Psychonauts 2"? True, Tim did state that they would pay for most of the costs themselves though (time will tell).
Did anyone listen to what Tim said? If true based on how much money you give you actually get a percentage of money back. So this seems different than Kickstarter where you are actually investing into the game. I swear that's what he said. Did I hear wrong?
Yes, I did listen to what he said. That would be the idea yes, and no you didn´t hear it wrong. However, it remains to be seen how well that will turn out in the end.
3.3 million dollars? Why do I have a feeling that Tim will be asking people for more money once the campaign is over?...
They also has a major investor and are putting a lot of their own money into the project, altogether it adds up to $13m. With no publisher and them using their own crowdfunding website it might be enough.
I won't pledge though because although Psychonauts is one of my fave games ever I was a little burned on Broken Age, it took way too long and it wasn't the game I expected it to be.
Even if Tim had 30 million dollars, that wouldn´t mean a whole lot if he can´t make the best out of the money (thus the out come of "Broken Age"). Yes, that´s where I lost my trust for him. I agree on that, I actually thought that "Broken Age" would give me the same awesome vibes as MI, Grim Fandango or Manic Mansion gave me. I was wrong.
One thing that is worth noting is that the Double Fine Adventure has (to date)made $1,012,770 in just $15 and $30 donations. So it seems possible to fund a reasonably small game project based solely on user interest without any massively huge pledges from Notch or Steve Dengler or who have you.
Now that said, it's taken almost 50000 backers to manage this. So it seems as though Kickstarter is not the way for a fledgling dev to break out. You're going to need an established audience to make it work consistently.
People like Will Wright, Richard Garriot or David Jaffe could probably use Kickstarter effectively to fund whatever they want to do next. Small devs who have already come up through the traditional pub model like Hothead Games or Capybara (DeathSpank and Sword and Sworcery) could probably make a go at it.
But between Steam, iOS/Android, XBLA/PSN and less traditional means of self-publication a la Mojang, it seems possible for anybody to reach an audience of 50k or so before going the Kickstarter route. The only barrier now seems to be talent and imagination.