Just days after Minecraft creator Mike “Notch” Persson publicly announced an interest in funding a sequel to Double Fine Productions’ 2005 game Psychonauts, a funding project was created to make an all new adventure-game from Tim Schafer’s studio a reality.
The San Francisco-based Double Fine Productions has released five titles since Brutal Legend came out in October of 2009. These five games have been released in partnership with three different publishers: THQ, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and Microsoft Studios. In an effort to sidestep the problems and complications gained from working with major high-level publishers, Tim Schafer and his team have decided to go it alone.
The development studio created a Kickstarter project, hoping to raise $400,000 for the development and self-publishing of an old-school adventure game and accompanying documentary. The plea was made by way of a video explaining the project plan and in less than 24 hours, just under 26,000 fans helped the project reach $1,000,000 in funds.
It was in the early of the morning here in Britain, but Double Fine Productions had surpassed its $400,000 target by daybreak. Projects backers on Kickstarter can pledge various amounts to the project from just $15, to $10,000.
The $10,000 pledge, which got you lunch with senior staffers Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert and a tour of the Double Fine office, was quickly snatched up. The five available $5000 reward packages, which include an original painting, were also feverishly taken.
Racing close to $1000 pledged every minute, the total steadily rose throughout the day. Tim Schafer himself said in the launch video that he hopes to cut out publishers altogether and speak to fans directly in order to raise the money to publish Double Fine Productions next project, as any publisher approached with a pitch for an adventure game would “laugh in his face”. Thankfully, fans listened and responded with their collective buying power.
The Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter fund currently has a total of 52,261 backers with $1,653,454 in pledged money. Who knows where it end? All I know is that I am super-excited for another Gilbert-Schafer adventure game, after all they both worked on the fantastic 1990 adventure hit, The Secret of Monkey Island.