Double Fine (Tim Schafer ) - Crowd Source/Kickstarter adventure game project.

Thought this might be of interest, not so much on the crowd sourcing/kickstarter nature of the project which has been around for a while, but that its Tim Schafer's (Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango) company, Double Fine (Pyschonauts, Brutal Legend, Stacking) doing it.

Double Fine Adventure

Not sure when it started but they are over 75% towards their funding target with a month left to go.
Going to be very interesting to follow this and see what happens.

 

I cant belive they have $300,000 holy moly thats insaine

 

YYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

Finally, after decades passed, another point&click adventure from Tim Schafer. He definately made his best games for this genre. Sometimes wishes come true. :O)

Please support him too and fund it!

 

Wow they are now past the goal in less than a hour?

 

No idea when they started but who cares, it hasn't stopped yet and now a.o. we're heading for a Mac version and more quality. I would love to see this explode in terms of

a) As a statement for that DoubleFine should make much more adventure games. Contrary to TTG they really could deliver a experience like you were used to from the golden LucasArts era.

b) As a valid alternative to get less dumb games with a larger scale done because there is a demand for creative games between sizes of a Battlefield 3 and more typical iOS games. DoubleFine has this interesting critical size which enables them to making great (at least unique and creative with a soul) games which a typical indie normally can't do.

c) Just because it's so cool!

 

And btw. even if you aren't interested in adventure games, the documentary about the development process of a experienced developer like DoubleFine alone could be worth the money for you.

 

I fully support this, because I am a huge fan of Schafer and point and click games. However, I feel like it sets a precedent that terrifies me, and I cringe at the idea of large greedy publishers jumping on the same bandwagon to save money.

"Come on guys, only $800,000 more for the next Call of Duty!"

 

Here here, I purchased the TTG point and clicks, but I never found them as appealing as the ones LucasArts made back in the day.

 

And they've doubled that already.

WTF?

 

Wow, since my first post less than 8hrs ago they doubled their total pledges ($600,000) and gained almost 10k backers! It would also appear that this has only been going for 24 hrs, amazing progress.

Interesting when looking at the pledge page the $10k dinner with Tim has gone and they've got 7 x $5k and 40 x $1k pledges! Just hope there aren't too many bogus pledges, if that's even possible?

I wonder if this might lead to other (established) game developers following suit for games that have a decent following but for whatever reason publishers will no longer fund production on?

 

@Vdek
The problem with TTG is that over five years ago it started all very promising. A small company with some ex LucasArts devs, whilst they built the technology, they produce their first games like the Texas Hold'em and later on their first adventure Bone. Bone was a very promising start as it had this extra quality and feeling almost every adventure game being produced after the golden era lacked. But it was way too short and easy. This wasn't much of an issue as everybody knew this company needs to start and grow first, they don't want to scare away new gamers with to hard games and so on.

After some time and after getting licenes like SamMax on board things looked a lot better but still the games were pretty easy, to easy for a reasonable amount of those who were buying those games. Whilst they were good, they also were never fully fulfilling but at least good enough to keep you buying them and hoping that they take the feedback serious. Later on they even got licences like Monkey Island. They had a increased budget, needed less marketing due to the big name, had Michael Land as a composer on board, original speakers and so on but even then things again were to easy, lacked creativity and more excitement, they ditched the beloved point&click steering in favour of a terrible direct control implementation, over and over again reused their do-it-three-times formula and this was one of their better adventures.

Instead of fulfilling what a noticeable amount of their customers where hoping for over the years they got more and more boring, instead of coming up with original ips they went the safe licence route with already installed fan bases with audiences who didn't care about adventures in the first place. Therefore they had to dumb down the games significantly in order to not scare away those customers. They delivered games for the least common denominator. They wanted to get adventures to get working the same as TV series with a mass market appeal and on consoles. They continued ignoring some core mechanics of a adventure game and instead went for aspects which are important in films but they did this on quite a horrible quality level. So in this process they gave up almost everything which adventure gamers liked about this genre, like point&click, like inventory combinations, like innovative puzzles, like some challenge, like a good story and interesting characters and so on. Looking at things it can feel like they misused adventure gamers pretty much. Some designers who didn't like the direction left, new ones seemed to be less experienced, the products also got more crappy from their technical aspect like a increasing number of crash bugs, glitches, stuttering framerates on iOS and so on. They grew to fast and felt to clever.

You could see the problems coming up before and recently they also were facing problems with Jurassic Park not doing all this well, even getting critics from otherwise more forgiving fans and so on. You can notice these things pretty well, when they try to get more communicative and open to critics again. In the end there is nothing better than money to make people think about certain issues but it's extremely disappointing that things evolved this way at all.

 

So this morning they've hit $1.2 million - thats in 24 hrs and there are still 32 days to go! I wonder what the final value will be, easily 2 million probably more, I guess it depends on how many 'fans' have yet to discover the Adventure Game project. Not only a great success for Double Fine, but also for Kickstarter I'd imagine, great publicity all round I think.

 

That’s rather crazy.

I've not been around long but I have never heard of this guy... (sorry) I have heard of grim fandango though but still 1.2million is loads this is absolutely mental they make a thousend in a matter of seconds... if I did this I bet I couldn’t even make $2

 

You just made my day!

 

Oh and I’ve played The Secret of Monkey Island and monkey island 2.. but still i didn’t even know this guy made them until i googled him.

But by saying that imagine if shigeru miyamoto did something like this? he could get trillions but then no company(Nintendo) could not fund a game by him considering every ones success

 

I think Kickstarter is a pretty secure way of raising funds. I was reading the FAQ in there and they are using a transaction method which involves Amazon. Kickstarter takes 5% of the total money and Amazon takes some processing fees. They only do this if you reach at least your intended goal, if not, all the money gets returned to the people who pledged. They also confirm phone numbers and credit cards, typical security stuff even with the people who pledge.

It's nice that some people actually successfully reach their target funds. I'm just wondering though, what if the project leader was someone known to be rich, like Bill Gates or some other mainstream game developer? Do you think people will still give them money or not? This is a very interesting situation going on lol

 

I think it depends, just because you are a successful game dev doesn’t mean you are rich maybe your game is free and has no adds or maybe you donate loads of money.

If someone that is rich though like bill gates I don’t believe in donating to it as they have enough money to make it(on less you get the game for cheaper than normal).

 

There was a guy who posted in the showcase forum using kickstarter and he couldnt even raise 6k. I guess without any clout you are not going anywhere.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/indestructiblecannon/narz

 

The money shouldn't even be taken out of your account until the deadline, and only then if the goal has been reached, so for 'backers' its very safe, unless you back some unscrupulous person of course.

I'd be a little more concerned for the 'creator' though, as you say Kickstarter take 5%, but then Amazon will also take 3-5% and in both cases I suspect thats of the total amount and not that Amazon gets 3-5% of total, then Kickstarter gets 5% of the remainder. So worse case you'll looking at losing 10% of pledges, which at $1 million is a heck of a lot of money! Of course this also assumes that every pledge is honoured too.

Thinking about it kickstarters FAQ really doesn't give enough details to know where a 'creator' would stand. hopefully it would be fully explained in terms conditions.

Either way I feel both charges become rather large for 'high value projects' and honestly would have thought some negotiation could/should take place. Of course compared to other sources of funding 10% is probably very good, especially as you have no need for collateral or to give away a percentage of your business.

 

Yep 'clout' can be a deal breaker, but like anything else success on kickstarter would rely on several aspects I assume;

1. Trust - Proving who you are and what you can do is essential as you must earn backers trust to invest in not only the project, but you/the team
2. Concept - Obviously needs to be a concept that people want to play or find interesting.
3. Marketing - You need to market you 'kickstarter' page, as much as you would a game release.
4. Rewards - You need decent rewards, getting you name/face in a game by Tim Schafer has more presitage than some random iOS game.
5. Market Reach - although there are millions of iOS devices, its still a limited market compared to say desktop PC. So someone may love your game concept, but without an iOS device it makes no sense for them to back it.

Sure there are more.


LOL - only just realised the big image on the kickstarter page is actually a promo video, hadn't even watched it before pledging.

 

Tim Schafer has a big celebrity bonus, more as Gilbert is connected to some degree as well. They both worked on some of the best games ever made. Double Fine as a studio is capable of doing great work. So there is a lot of reputation. Secondly what makes this once special beyond other most probably successful alternatives, like Sid Meier could do it as well, is that this one is about adventure games and adventure gamers. We have been told for decades that our genre is dead, got punished with terrible direct control implementations, got confronted with more and more dumbed down concepts and instead we hunger for creative, weird and story driven intensive challenging games like there used to be in the golden LucasArts era. We're a little bit crazy but we also believe into what we think is cool.

And now two of the creators of some of the best adventures team up after about 25 years when it all started. What do you expect?

Joe normal won't do as fine. He needs to provide something people want, present it properly, market it, just the way you wrote already to get a much smaller pack of cash. Some will fail, others will get their funding, a few will end up being extremely lucky with more than they expected. Don't get me wrong but your observation already sounds so money motivated and less passion driven and i think that's an important aspect as well. Is this your hope to get something done you really want or is it just a way to get some money for doing just something? All in all it very much depends on your specific situation but if you have a fan base which never got heard elsewhere this is a great opportunity and i don't understand the whining about the percentage kickstarter takes because for taking 100k, they enabled you to get 900k before. If you think you can do better and get more traffic on another platform, go ahead, maybe you want to establish one on your own as well, maybe a humble version would be even better but for this specific case kickstarter was/is a great help.

 

This precisely popped so violently in my mind when I read the articles on Kotaku ...
No wonder, it's gonna happen.

But all in all, this can be a good thing in the end. If this funding model comes popular enough, huge games will try it. And then the ones having control over game features won't be those investors/marketers who often don't have a clue about gaming, as they don't play themselves.

I can already see a giant studio funding like that, posting regular polls about what feature gamers want to be implemented, or asking the audience to validate a gamedesign document, etc.

If they fail at delivering what was asked, they will lose investors (gamers) trust, therefore any possible future crowd funding.
And if they deliver, it means even more funding over time.
It's much more Win-Win than the actual bankers.

More connection with gamers (so a much more predictable success), Gamedesigns on demand, more control over features. This can really be interesting.

And also, more studios having the chance to be funded properly, just by presenting a clean gamedesign document. Ok now I'm excited in the future again

 

Most likely only a small amount of people would use the opportunity and there opinion moment mean as much as a company that has been around for many years

 

Funders (gamers) opinions will matter far more, as they will be the studio's purse.
This process bypasses all the tedious, unfun, and gaming uneducated procedures of actual investor funding. Power to the audience, not to the bank. I can't see a better option.

 

Exceeded 300% funding.

 

@nomad
But you do realise that this could end up being a complete mess because gamers just aren't game developers and thousands of them don't make things easier, depending on their mindset. You know if i want to fund a film by Werner Herzog then i want it to be a Werner Herzog film as well and not some film which is done by him more as a puppet of wannabee Werner Herzogs. A certain degree of input is fine but you also have to know where to draw the line.

 

Absolutely ;-)
But this is already the case with investors anyway. So here, devs will still have to put funders requests into perspective, while those requests will be realities instead of estimates.

 

I guess there are a lot of people out there who still want to play old school adventure games. Maybe my next project should be a adventure game. Seen as it's technically not difficult only content creation would the biggest hurdle. Maybe I should make one free episode and then use kickstarter for follow ups. If he can raise over 1.2 million in a day a few thousand a month shouldn't be that much now or would it?

 

What makes you say that? Kickstarter is a service provided by a company. Being an exceptional user doesn't give you the right to change the terms of use for someone else's product that you signed up for. My WoW account should probably be half price by now.

Also, the government takes a far higher percentage of kickstarter campaigns (something like 25-30%).

And re: some other posts, donating to a kickstarter is not an investment, its a pledge (ie: donation). Backers are not investors, and have no stake in the project or say in how things are developed.

Lastly, some Unity projects have reached their funding goals on kickstarter http://kck.st/pbebtz

 

@SimonAlkemade
It's cute that you say only here as most people can't get this aspect right. ;O)

 

You're confusing "adventure game" with "a tim schafer and ron gilbert adventure game"

 

No, he's more confusing some adventure game with a point&click adventure game on a Schafer&Gilbert quality level.

 

Btw. there are a number of scenarios of how adventures people want and would get fund as well could be done:

To name just one, for instance Bill Tiller and Munky Fun (or someone else with the tech on their side and the proper adventure mindset) could kickstart AVS Year.

 

Like everyone else, I didn't know what to expect. Sure you'd feel they could easily reach their target over the duration, but you'd be a liar to say you expected it to do this well. You may have hoped it would do this well (as did I) but you couldn't expect it.

Huh? Where did that come from? Whining? No its a discussion point, outlining the inherent cost of using Kickstarter, which is damn important to be aware of if you are intending to become a 'creator'.

As for the 'fees' yes I think they are too high for what kickstarter is (at least for high value pledges), that's my opinion, not sure why it seemed to offend you so much. I don't need to make my own version, someone else will see this and realise the business potential of under-cutting them anyway, if not already. Personally i'd be concerned if I was Kickstarter after this, as companies could easily set this up for themselves and cut them out altogether.

Besides, although I feel it is too high in this case, I pointed out that it is likely to still be considerably better than most other means of raising funding.

Passion? What does passion have to do with this discussion, what a frivolous response, passion wont put food on the table, neither will it make a sound business. Passion is of course important to the creative process, but should have no bearing on business sense.

What makes you think i'm looking to get funding to do anything? Again it was just a discussion point, clearly one you disagree with, yet you couldn't just say that, without getting personal?

As to 'Joe Normal' there are already plenty of success on kickstarter as well as failures. That was the point of my second post, that you can't simply put anything up and expect to have pledges rolling in, it requires effort, more so if you not some famous person or brand.

 

What makes me say that? The simple fact that for what Kickstarter does, it feels too much if you have a high value pledge goal. I'm not saying they can't or have some moral reason not to and as I said its still probably far better than any of the alternatives.

I'd disagree about an exceptional user not expecting to get more favourable rates. You're WOW comparison isn't really the same thing, because we're not talking about a single person, we're talking about the volume of cash raised. In business if I were to bulk buy something or provide a large input of cash I would expect to get preferential treatment and that's how business works. Otherwise I take my order/cash to someone else, who does.

Not sure what you mean by your comment about the government taking more. Care to elaborate?

 

@Noisecrime
I wouldn't have expected it to skyrocket this insanely in the beginning but i expected it/guessed for to arrive in a 2-3 million dollar area till the end. 1.4 million at this moment, it slowed down significantly but there are still some days left.

I'm not offended at all, you just sounded like you were whining to me but i also took this into context to what happened to this project and when you get this much money you also should be fine to share with others, at least that's the way i think about it.

Passion is quite related to making games or working in this business. Otherwise you probably shouldn't do it.

Frivolous is a cool word, maybe i enjoy making frivolous statements. :O)

 

Passed 1.5 million and still 30 days left for at least another half a million, should be doable.

He easily could make even more money by offering more signed stuff, some Double Fine Adventure merchandise, connecting it to products being sold in their store for campaign purposes, offering a easy way for making gifts, making high priced categories more obvious, getting the information on Steam to many more gamers.

 

Yes I think you probably do

Not sure where its going to end, I'd agree they should easily hit 2 million based on where they are now before the deadline, though I'm not sure about 3 million. Its a shame that Kickstarter doesn't provide graphs or other tools to analyse the pledging trends (at least not that I've found?) over time, as it would be quite fascinating to examine. For example has Double Fine burnt too brightly at the start or will it have a long burn, that could perhaps mean it would hit 4-5 million?

Mind you I think the bigger question now is what are they going to do with all this money? Although the Kickstarter FAQ talks about 'projects' there doesn't seem to be anything, other than the guidelines as what is an acceptable project, as to what happens if it exceeds its goal in this fashion?

I know DF said they would look to support more devices/platforms (e.g. Mac), but that's about it. I guess they could put back the delivery date so as to make the game 'larger', though that might be a tricky sell. The obvious hope would be that they spend the money developing a toolset to allow for future adventure games to be written and delivered across the most popular platforms.


One other thing with Kickstarter. I notice there is absolutely no framework (legal or otherwise) to address unscrupulous 'creators' or projects that reach their goal, yet fail to deliver. At least nothing that stood out from a quick read of their guidelines/FAQ, other than 'try emailing the creators'. In a way this is understandable, as a company you wouldn't want to get involved with these sort of disputes, but then I have to ask, exactly what is Kickstarter offering for its 5% fee? Am I missing something in their T&C about this?

Regardless, I think the whole crowd sourcing aspect is something that is going to gain considerable traction over the next few years for a wide variety of media and from various companies. If this had been around back when Firefly was on, I could easily see the community saving the show for another series or two. However I don't think it would be able to raise enough funds on its own, it would have to be backed up with some private funding too, maybe 50/50 split, where by the private investors make money on the additional sales and advertising potential of the show.

 

I also would favour if the game gets larger and better designed and so maybe turning it from a possibly half sized game into full length experience, instead of that Linux gets supported or we get a fab documentary soundtrack but i also see one possible obstacle and that might be if i remember things correctly the 25th anniversary of Maniac Mansion in october this year and i'm really not sure how much this means to them. But maybe all is cool and Gilbert's project is more related to this date, due to the concept art posted on his grumpy gamer account or they'll just throw enough manpower at the project.

Tim talked a bit about previous production costs like 600k for DOTT, 1.5m for FT and 3m for GF. Of course this was money many years ago but on one side you're having more costs here, on the other side things went cheaper there as well, so who knows what exactly 2.x million will enable us to get. I guess 1 million € enables you in germany making a really nice adventure experience already, might be less or more as well because it really depends. Personally, and beside of the larger gaming experience, i'm hoping for a OS X version in the first place (see Unity i got cool, you can hire me now without any fears), then i think a cool soundtrack always adds to a game as well as at least a nice talkie version in english. Actually i'm fine with german subtitles already, and they'll most probably come from Boris Schneider-Johne who once did all the translations from Maniac Mansion up to Indy 4, you know, in times when they sent you the source code and you had to hack the translations right into the gamecode and send it back. I expect they want to make the iOS version. Anyway i'm sure it will be cool in this or another way and if not then i at least was excited for some time. It has been quite some time since i checked a sales timer, or however these things are called, on a almost addicted basis. This is so cool it makes me want to be part of this process.

As for crowd sourcing, yes, i think there will pop up some more in the future but i somehow doubt that the concept will be used to its full potential in the near future as well but maybe i'm just to tired right now. I'm sorry, i have to check this timer thing again...

 

Right, all I'm saying is, an exceptional user/donor/consumer doesn't have a right to preferential treatment, especially in the case of a service like kickstarter. In fact, kickstarter by design gives exceptional users prefential treatment. The $10k donor on the double fine kickstart gets lunch with tim and ron! But unless one of the pledge tier rewards is "you get to have input on the development of the game", you don't.

That wasn't really directed at you, just in general. I was just mentioning it because a lot of people fail to realize is Kickstarter funds are considered taxable income... so you actually lose ~30% of your funds to the government come tax time

 

I didn't know that too, i hope Tim does. :O)

Maybe we should just send presents in the future, like parcels with money in foreign currencies. I would love to see how he drives to the local bank, maybe in a truck, and pays it all in, in the video documentary.

 

*Ahem!*

Unless it's very different over there I think you'll find it is:

Assessable income MINUS deductions = Taxable income.

 

Hehehe, there goes the expected bandwagon : http://kotaku.com/5884350/outgoing-...r-kickstarter-funding-for-his-new-project-too

 

Right, sorry, so it would add to your assessible income. You'd need some mega deductibles to not have to pay taxes on 1.5 million dollars of income

 

Factor in staff, office-space, contractors [e.g. voice], marketing etc.

Depends on your local laws, and what they do with it, but I'd expect most if not all of it to be deductible* - after all the money has been given for them to make something, not as a profit motive in and of itself. That comes from selling the game

* [This is personal opinion, and I only claim a very basic understanding of this topic. As such, i's quite possible to be horse s...!]

 

1.6 million dollars.

 

Yeh it's going great, I chucked in $15 most just to see the documentary series. I read somewhere that kick starter revenue over the allocated target has the gift tax on top of the kickstarter 5%.

 

Aha, talking cross purposes, you are talking about backers I was talking about the creator. I agree a backer has no right to preferential treatment, if you want that then go for a higher reward. I was talking about Double fine potentially losing $50k to Kickerstarter and $100k total with Amazon's/credit card companies slice, though compared to other means of raising funding its still very attractive.

 

Kickstarter Fees
- 5% on fully funded project

Amazon Fees
- 3-5% Credit card Charge

Taxes on funds received
- ~35%

 

1.842222 millions passed and a update video from Tim on the kickstarter site.

According to this it's gonna be Win, OS X, Linux, iOS, Android, DRM free option as well, talkie in english, subtitles in efigs.

Cool? No, awesome!