Elysian Shadows

Double Fine, makers of Psychonauts, Brutal Legend, Stacking, Costume Quest, and Trenched (Not to mention Schafer and Gilbert being behind Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, and Day of the Tentacle!) set up a Kickstarter for a classic-styled point-and-click adventure game they would like to make. Within 8 hours, it hit the funding point!

With additional funding comes additional content- more platforms, more languages, etc.

I am really excited about this for two reasons:
One, it's an ADVENTURE GAME with TIM SCHAFER AND RON GILBERT!

Two, I've never seen a relatively large studio ever fund a game this way. With Double Fine releasing the game on Steam and development backed by The Fans, there are no rich guys in suits who are just concerned with profits: They can make the game THEY want to make, without having to add "x" number of tits, "y" number of explosions, and "z" number of space aliens.

If you fund $15, you will get to be in the Beta on Steam!

And the documentary!
They are also simultaneously having a company document the entire process of them creating their new adventure game. These will be released monthly for backers to be able to watch!

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

Double Fine:
http://www.doublefine.com/

This is absolutely crazy! I have been watching the progress from when they posted the kickstarter project yesterday and it goes up by the second. they had a goal of $400,000 in 35 days and in the last 30ish hours have raised $856,191.

It will be interesting to see how much it keeps up. It is really a big deal, definitely getting massive attention and will influence how similar teams publish future projects.

Edit* the 60 seconds it took me to type that it rose to $860,888

EdBoon wrote:This is absolutely crazy! I have been watching the progress from when they posted the kickstarter project yesterday and it goes up by the second. they had a goal of $400,000 in 35 days and in the last 30ish hours have raised $856,191.

It will be interesting to see how much it keeps up. It is really a big deal, definitely getting massive attention and will influence how similar teams publish future projects.

Edit* the 60 seconds it took me to type that it rose to $860,888

Once I get off work I really want to take a look at this. Several of my friends started a kickstarter project as a band a year or so ago if I am correct. Either way, by the looks of it, this project deserves some attention!

JarrodParkes wrote:Once I get off work I really want to take a look at this. Several of my friends started a kickstarter project as a band a year or so ago if I am correct. Either way, by the looks of it, this project deserves some attention!

Kickstarter is a great tool but i don't really think it generates much internally to it's site. Don't think people wander around thinking "who can i give my money to today?" you know. I have a kickstarter project going now (plug = http://kck.st/yP6XbL ) and it has done okay but i don't think any of the donors are just random people that were searching kickstarter, mostly names i recognize from around twitter, xbox live, friends, etc so i think kickstarter is great if u can get the word out, but it doesn't do much for publicity in my limited experience.

The thing about double fine is they have a huge following. Also what is interesting is that they are probably one of the biggest teams to post a game on there, they usually have publishers/etc to fund. It's interested to see how a larger company can raise that much. They are basically selling the game before they even develop it! (a $15 dollar donation gives you a copy of the game and beta access) They are also doing a documentary which might be playing a big role in the projects success. Definitely cool though.

update @ 6:46: $1,001,988

This really is a fantastic project. I donated all of my monies right away.

This will be interesting. Removing funding from influence on the game development process seems like a good idea on face value but I'm not so sure. It seems like its a move away from the publisher model and more towards the indie model, but I don't think thats entirely accurate. It definitely is similar to indie devlopment, but even then you have a personal stake in the success of the product beacuse your money funded its development and your future wellbeing is based on its success. Here the cash is coming in for basically no cost to the dev aside from a few very reasonable obligations (Have they been tested in court?). And any success is a huge payoff to the dev as there as the people who funded the game don't have any stake.

This is going to drive other developers to do this. It will be interesting to see who will burn the community first.

I went to sleep and they were at 400k, woke up and they were over 1mill. Crazy times, especially considering it was just a dude walking round his office. No gameplay footage, no trailer, no concept art, all we get is "Adventure Game"

That said, it is Tim Schafer