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Double Fine Raises $1 Million for New Adventure Game

Double Fine set out to raise $400,000 for a new point-and-click--and did.

UPDATE 2: Double Fine has now passed $1 million on Kickstarter. Pretty incredible.

UPDATE: Well, they did it. In a single night, Double Fine's Kickstarter campaign earned a whopping $597,036, with 14,372 fans dedicating an average of $41.50 to the project. Many of the top tier donation categories had multiple donations, and the sole $10,000 donation available actually went relatively early in the evening.

As with all Kickstarter projects, the page will remain live for the duration of the planned fundraising period (in this case, another 33 days), so theoretically you can still donate if the mood strikes you. But with the original donation budget now well-exceeded, you seemingly no longer need worry "if" this new adventure game will come to fruition, but rather when.

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No Caption Provided

Just days after Minecraft creator Markus Persson began talking with Double Fine Productions about funding a sequel to Psychonauts, the studio has announced something equally crazy: it’s raising funds via Kickstarter to produce an adventure game from Tim Schafer.

Double Fine is hoping to raise $400,000 in 33 days, and with that number going up by the hundreds just minutes after the announcement, it seems pretty likely Double Fine will be able to hit that number, and probably have much more to play with.

“Crowd-sourced fundraising sites like Kickstarter have been an incredible boon to the independent development community,” reads the description. “They democratize the process by allowing consumers to support the games they want to see developed and give the developers the freedom to experiment, take risks, and design without anyone else compromising their vision. It's the kind of creative luxury that most major, established studios simply can't afford. At least, not until now.”

The game will be developed over six-to-eight months, with the target being a PC release over Steam in October.

A “small team” will be working on the game at Double Fine under the leadership of Schafer, and getting in on the ground floor--a copy of the game and early access to the beta, access to an ongoing documentary and private discussion forum--requires a donation of $15.

Mac and iOS versions of the game are under consideration, but only if they collect more than $400,000.

“For fans of adventure games,” said the studio, “this is a chance to prove that there is still a large demand out there for a unique medium that inspired so many of us.”

$8,404 and counting.

Patrick Klepek on Google+

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jononono

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This is definitely a step in the right direction for gaming.

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@Nethlem said:

@SlasherMan: Them just reporting about this allready increases Hype, especially if you keep on throwing "updates" like it has happened.

Adding these updates to news adds a whole new level of subjective urgency that gives the reader the impression "he's missing out" if he won't keep on following all these "up to date" news.

It's exactly that kind of behavior that helps to build up Hype and keep it going further and further, if you create the sense of urgency people will keep on checking different news sources and these news sources in turn try to make themself look even more "urgent" by overacting even further. It's kinda like a snowball effect.

Like i allrady said: I don't think the GB crew did this intentionally, it's probably just patrick beeing shortsighted patrick and trying to generate "great news" without thinking ahead. Because GB didn't need to add into that hype, i believe that the strong DF -GB ties will give us alot of "GB exclusive" content on this whole thing in the future anyway. So GB didn't need this in it's function as a media site.

If you didn't understand the last part of my comment then you should think back as to why giantbomb got started in the first place.

Maybe you allready forgot, but Jeff is the guy who refused to take money for a review, even when his superiors pressured him into it he chose principle over greed. If you understand creative thinking people even remotley then you will understand why he did that and why this is such an huge and important example for gaming as an creative art.

Because personaly i'd like to think about the GB community and people as the more smart ones out there, at least compared to other sites and communities that see gaming just as an "business" that needs to be milked.

Thats not what happened with Jeff at all. Jeff had no idea what was going on behind the scenes. He just gave the scores, and apparently he gave the wrong score, so was let go, well technically he left of his own accord.

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RecallBerserk

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@Sooty said:

hahaha fucking perfect

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valiantgrizzly

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Edited By valiantgrizzly

@Nethlem: Stop it.

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Wacomole

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Edited By Wacomole

With all the people who are going to get a Special Thank You, the credits roll for the game is going to be ENORMOUS.

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@Nethlem said:

@SlasherMan: Them just reporting about this allready increases Hype, especially if you keep on throwing "updates" like it has happened.

Adding these updates to news adds a whole new level of subjective urgency that gives the reader the impression "he's missing out" if he won't keep on following all these "up to date" news.

It's exactly that kind of behavior that helps to build up Hype and keep it going further and further, if you create the sense of urgency people will keep on checking different news sources and these news sources in turn try to make themself look even more "urgent" by overacting even further. It's kinda like a snowball effect.

Like i allrady said: I don't think the GB crew did this intentionally, it's probably just patrick beeing shortsighted patrick and trying to generate "great news" without thinking ahead. Because GB didn't need to add into that hype, i believe that the strong DF -GB ties will give us alot of "GB exclusive" content on this whole thing in the future anyway. So GB didn't need this in it's function as a media site.

If you didn't understand the last part of my comment then you should think back as to why giantbomb got started in the first place.

Maybe you allready forgot, but Jeff is the guy who refused to take money for a review, even when his superiors pressured him into it he chose principle over greed. If you understand creative thinking people even remotley then you will understand why he did that and why this is such an huge and important example for gaming as an creative art.

Because personaly i'd like to think about the GB community and people as the more smart ones out there, at least compared to other sites and communities that see gaming just as an "business" that needs to be milked.


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Edited By larcnight

Take all of my money!

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Edited By KestrelPi

@Nethlem: I think the reason that sites don't report on every Kickstarter project is because not every Kickstarter project involves an adventure game legend returning to the genre that made him after 14 years of not being able to do so. As much as I'd like every worthy thing to get some space (I sure tried to get people talking about my little game, with only limited success!) I don't think anyone could argue that this project isn't -particularly- newsworthy.

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Nethlem

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Edited By Nethlem

@SurplusGamer said:

@Nethlem: Destructoid and Rock Paper Shotgun both put up a whole new post every time a new milestone was reached. Both sites (along with others) were MUCH more vocal than this one about the writer's personal approval of the project. Not that I care whether they were or not, I think it's fine for people to show their enthusiasm for this sort of thing.

As far as I can see, Giant Bomb simply reported on a big, developing story in games. That it happened to be for a local studio which they've invited around on a few occasions makes no difference. It is utterly ridiculous to propose that they shouldn't have reported on the story.

The hype for this project came about because Tim Schafer making an adventure game is massive news for anyone who remembers LucasArts in the 90s. The fact that Ron Gilbert is also at the studio at the moment certainly doesn't hurt either. This is something so many people have wanted for years and thought would probably never happen. All that would have happened if Giant Bomb hadn't reported on it would have been a bunch of confused people saying, 'hey, why isn't Giant Bomb reporting on this??'

Also, so what if hype was generated by the story? What if Giant Bomb was responsible for even 5% of the money? I still don't see where the ethical dilemma is here. People still make up their own mind, or are you suggesting that people who come here and read the story are so stupid that they can't make up their own mind about what to do with their money?

I know at thid point i might sound like rambling madman to some people because i keep answering even when i declare that i won't anymore.

But i believe i finnaly found somebody who catches my line of thinking :)

I'm not asking for GB to turn time back, i'm just voicing one viewpoint that people might get that don't understand all this so well. Originally i just wanted to get the suggestion in here for something that might counter-balance GB opinion in these peoples mindests like following up by shining lights on other kickstarters that do not enjoy the luxury of beeing talked about on Destructiod, RPS, GT, EG and all the others because of something that looks like an marketing textbook example of generating hype :P

We are all gamers, we see systems everywhere, it defines our way of thinking. So we should be carefull about how we react to each other as an community :)

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FateOfNever

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@Nethlem said:

And here we go full circle again...

How about you read that sentence following that statement? GB didn't need to join into this hype in their function as media news site, yes they are about getting hits and reporting news.

But they gonna profit from this whole story anyway and way more then any other news media site out here. Because down the line you can be sure that we gonna see alot of "GB exclusive" news and content about this whole thing, considering the strong GB - DF bonds.

So GB didn't need to join into the hype for profit, they gonna profit from this the most in the long run compared to all the other media newssites out there. That's why all this kinda feels like people are gaming the system, but maybe i'm just assuming people are smarter then they are and it's just patrick beeing stupid :P

If GB want to generate and join into Hypes then they maybe should pick them more carefully, or start some that are more usefull like the suggested idea of "10 best concepts on kickstarter". This whole thing is about beeing an community and as an community we should act a little bit more responsible and share the love a little bit better....

But by the logic of "They didn't need to report this news because this news is associated with people they know and this would have gotten coverage on other sites" then they don't ever need to report on any news because "some other website will have it covered."

That's like saying they shouldn't have covered Bastion at all because they know those guys. Nevermind that Bastion turned out to be an amazing game and one of the top games last year, they shouldn't have reported on it at all because they know those guys. Do you agree with that statement? That they shouldn't have given Bastion any coverage? That's an even more extreme case of what's going on here and what you're complaining about.

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@Nethlem said:

And here we go full circle again...

How about you read that sentence following that statement? GB didn't need to join into this hype in their function as media news site, yes they are about getting hits and reporting news.

But they gonna profit from this whole story anyway and way more then any other news media site out here. Because down the line you can be sure that we gonna see alot of "GB exclusive" news and content about this whole thing, considering the strong GB - DF bonds.

So GB didn't need to join into the hype for profit, they gonna profit from this the most in the long run compared to all the other media newssites out there. That's why all this kinda feels like people are gaming the system, but maybe i'm just assuming people are smarter then they are and it's just patrick beeing stupid :P

If GB want to generate and join into Hypes then they maybe should pick them more carefully, or start some that are more usefull like the suggested idea of "10 best concepts on kickstarter". This whole thing is about beeing an community and as an community we should act a little bit more responsible and share the love a little bit better....

*sigh*
*sigh*

Giant Bomb is not making any money off of this. Or at least, no more money than they'd normally earn from any ad revenues generated by people that read the story. Double Fine has not given them any money to report on this, and any money that they do give Giant Bomb will be for the purpose of advertising their game on the website; the same that would occur anywhere else. Giant Bomb does not get paid by publishers to run news about their games. Hell, Building the Bastion was not a for profit venture. It served to promote Bastion but did not in any way result in financial gain to Giant Bomb from Supergiant Games.

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Nethlem

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Edited By Nethlem

And here we go full circle again...

How about you read that sentence following that statement? GB didn't need to join into this hype in their function as media news site, yes they are about getting hits and reporting news.

But they gonna profit from this whole story anyway and way more then any other news media site out here. Because down the line you can be sure that we gonna see alot of "GB exclusive" news and content about this whole thing, considering the strong GB - DF bonds.

So GB didn't need to join into the hype for profit, they gonna profit from this the most in the long run compared to all the other media newssites out there. That's why all this kinda feels like people are gaming the system, but maybe i'm just assuming people are smarter then they are and it's just patrick beeing stupid :P

If GB want to generate and join into Hypes then they maybe should pick them more carefully, or start some that are more usefull like the suggested idea of "10 best concepts on kickstarter". This whole thing is about beeing an community and as an community we should act a little bit more responsible and share the love a little bit better....

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Hailinel

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@Nethlem said:

Please read my comments again, thank you.

I won't be repeating myself or defending statements i never made, that's wasted time. I only said GB didn't need to report about THIS news.

If it's news, why shouldn't it be reported? Would you rather Patrick not do his job?

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Nethlem

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Edited By Nethlem

Please read my comments again, thank you.

I won't be repeating myself or defending statements i never made, that's wasted time. I only said GB didn't need to report about THIS news.

DF didn't need GB's attention to generate that ammount of Hype

GB also didn't need to abuse the attention of this Hype, because down the line they will have exclusive content on this whole thing.

We clear now? Great.. like i said i don't blame anyone for anything, probably just bad luck that it went the way it did. I'm just saying to some people (and for last fucking time i'm not talking about ME here) this could look fishy. And Jeff usually watches out for "fishy looking" stuff on GB for exactly that reason as he wants to prevent it.

Now i'm waiting for the next opinion-nazi that's gonna missquote me and put my statements out of context on purpose, just so he can "win" an argument that was never supposed to be an argument.

Or maybe i'm gonna do something fun, yeah that sounds like an better use for my time :P

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KestrelPi

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@Nethlem: Destructoid and Rock Paper Shotgun both put up a whole new post every time a new milestone was reached. Both sites (along with others) were MUCH more vocal than this one about the writer's personal approval of the project. Not that I care whether they were or not, I think it's fine for people to show their enthusiasm for this sort of thing.

As far as I can see, Giant Bomb simply reported on a big, developing story in games. That it happened to be for a local studio which they've invited around on a few occasions makes no difference. It is utterly ridiculous to propose that they shouldn't have reported on the story.

The hype for this project came about because Tim Schafer making an adventure game is massive news for anyone who remembers LucasArts in the 90s. The fact that Ron Gilbert is also at the studio at the moment certainly doesn't hurt either. This is something so many people have wanted for years and thought would probably never happen. All that would have happened if Giant Bomb hadn't reported on it would have been a bunch of confused people saying, 'hey, why isn't Giant Bomb reporting on this??'

Also, so what if hype was generated by the story? What if Giant Bomb was responsible for even 5% of the money? I still don't see where the ethical dilemma is here. People still make up their own mind, or are you suggesting that people who come here and read the story are so stupid that they can't make up their own mind about what to do with their money?

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FateOfNever

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@Nethlem: So you're saying that GB shouldn't report on news? Because that more or less sounds like what you're saying. Or should they just not report on news that pertains to people/companies that they're close to? (Because that is also a lot of companies.) The "update" tag is just to let people know that there has been some amount of development with the original story, rather than running another, separate story, to address that other story they already have up.

But if you think that GB shouldn't report on news at all, that's fine. I think it's incredibly short sighted because GB won't stay up and running on good will alone, but, that's fine all the same.

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Nethlem

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@SlasherMan: Them just reporting about this allready increases Hype, especially if you keep on throwing "updates" like it has happened.

Adding these updates to news adds a whole new level of subjective urgency that gives the reader the impression "he's missing out" if he won't keep on following all these "up to date" news.

It's exactly that kind of behavior that helps to build up Hype and keep it going further and further, if you create the sense of urgency people will keep on checking different news sources and these news sources in turn try to make themself look even more "urgent" by overacting even further. It's kinda like a snowball effect.

Like i allrady said: I don't think the GB crew did this intentionally, it's probably just patrick beeing shortsighted patrick and trying to generate "great news" without thinking ahead. Because GB didn't need to add into that hype, i believe that the strong DF -GB ties will give us alot of "GB exclusive" content on this whole thing in the future anyway. So GB didn't need this in it's function as a media site.

If you didn't understand the last part of my comment then you should think back as to why giantbomb got started in the first place.

Maybe you allready forgot, but Jeff is the guy who refused to take money for a review, even when his superiors pressured him into it he chose principle over greed. If you understand creative thinking people even remotley then you will understand why he did that and why this is such an huge and important example for gaming as an creative art.

Because personaly i'd like to think about the GB community and people as the more smart ones out there, at least compared to other sites and communities that see gaming just as an "business" that needs to be milked.

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@Kevin_Cogneto said:

They've said on Twitter that it all goes to the game and the film. (Mostly in response to crazy people who think this would be enough to make Psychonauts 2) Based on comments they've made, it mostly it sounds like the extra cash will go towards making the game available on a wider variety of platforms, and towards a bigger voiceover budget that possibly includes voiced foreign language versions.

There is very little chance that they will be able to spend every cent of the kickstarter money just because the mir fact that you will end up with a weird number of money. Such as right now the kickstarter is 1,565,392. Im betting that they will have at least 1$ left over. unless they make it a point to spend every single cent. in which i see them buying somthing like a 99c hot dog from 7/11 with the last 1$. but even then you still have 1c left over.

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Edited By BachoGrande

I won't be able to contain my joy if Chris Avellone is able to raise similar money for Planescape Torment 2!

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@Nethlem: I really cannot see where they even tried to hype the game or the project in the article. They merely reported it, and the article reads as objectively as possible to my eyes. I see no exaggeration whatsoever anywhere in the article. If people do have high expectations, it's because of Schafer's and Gilbert's past works, which a lot of people remember fondly and many consider to be some of their favorite gaming experiences. Whether those expectations are misplaced or not, no one can tell until we all see this through. The game could end up great, or it could end up being a huge disappointment, but clearly people are willing to take that chance.

I don't really understand that last comment. And I don't really see how GB helped to advance gaming as an art (most of the guys prefer mainstream titles, and many smaller titles are overlooked on this site). But to address your point about profit, if DF were only looking to profit and that was their only goal, they would not be making the games they are today. Not a single game of theirs that I can remember could be called a commercial success, and yet here they are still doing their thing regardless. Clearly, they're just whoring out for the money...

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Nethlem

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@SlasherMan said:

@SleepyDoughnut: At the time I wrote that, this news article had only had 5000 views on Giant Bomb (I'm assuming this also counts the hits from the news section, not just the forums). Hardly significant considering everything. Also, if you compare GB directly to other websites on Alexa (which is what I did), you'd see a bigger gap than that link shows.

Whatever the case, there is nothing wrong with them posting about this either way. This whole argument was meaningless from the get go if you ask me.

But you keep forgetting that nowadays gaming media is build up in such a way that they each influence each other by exaggerating attention and facts.

You may have heard of this phenomem, it's called "Hype"...

I also thought that the GB crew might be aware of this and i'm pretty sure that they knew that their strong bonds with DF would help them catalyst this hype even further among this community. Is this bad? Not really.. it just feels kinda greedy and short sighted because like Brendan said: Hype exaggerates expecations, especially if people allready paid money...

Now they have a ton of money that and sold units all generated on expecations build by a "hype" they could never ever hope to reach.

I'm not saying the game will be "bad", i'm just saying in the broad big picture NO game can live up to the expectations that are generated by such an Hype.

You do not need to work in marketing to see what i'm talking about here..

Now think about all this.. and apply this to the kickstarter logic of funding games, and then you will see why some people might feel a little bit sour about GB joining in with this piece of news in the way they did. Maybe it's just patrick beeing stupid and not noticing what's going on, but then i still think GB should make up for this, by using it's communities attention for something more unique and helpfull to gaming in general.

Because so far GB had been among the few communties in the interwebs that helped VERY much increasing games acceptance as an creative art, instead of just accelerating the current trend of turning it into a profit driven business.

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Edited By SlasherMan

@SleepyDoughnut: At the time I wrote that, this news article had only had 5000 views on Giant Bomb (I'm assuming this also counts the hits from the news section, not just the forums). Hardly significant considering everything. Also, if you compare GB directly to other websites on Alexa (which is what I did), you'd see a bigger gap than that link shows.

Whatever the case, there is nothing wrong with them posting about this either way. This whole argument was meaningless from the get go if you ask me.

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Edited By Kevin_Cogneto

They've said on Twitter that it all goes to the game and the film. (Mostly in response to crazy people who think this would be enough to make Psychonauts 2) Based on comments they've made, it mostly it sounds like the extra cash will go towards making the game available on a wider variety of platforms, and towards a bigger voiceover budget that possibly includes voiced foreign language versions.

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Edited By Brendan

@FateOfNever said:

@Brendan said:

On another note, its an interesting problem Double Fine has now. With the incredible amount of development money they've gotten, most people would think that the more money they get would be equal to the quality of the project they could make.

This is often not the case in business, and with so much more money than they could have imagined, yet in the same development time frame they've set out for themselves, it becomes an issue of what to do with it effectively without clouding the vision they may already have for the project. There's a lot of cases like this where too much money has made things difficult, and although I completely trust in the expertise of Double Fine I think they may have a tougher road ahead of them now than if they had just raised $400,000. What in the heck do they do if they end up with 4 million in dev money and only half a year to ship this adventure game? Buy 10 RED Epic camera's and Steven Speilberg to shoot the documentary?

Do the only logical thing and buy the most expensive voice acting crew they can scrounge up! I'm sure they could get some top actors in there on that kind of budget they're looking at!

Really I was wondering this too though. I mean, one option would be to take the excess money and put it towards funding on another game or something (Double Fine doesn't seem to be short any ideas for games.) But since the money was raised via donations for a specific thing, would it be ethically right for them to funnel the excess donations to other projects? Do they just take all the extra money and put it into making sequels to the original game? (Whether sequels in setting, story, or theme or otherwise.) Or do they donate all of the extra money to something else (like Child's Play or something?) But would that even be right? I can't imagine they would keep all of the donated funds and try to apply all of that money to making this one game. Who knows though.

They're probably shoehorned into putting it into this game unless they can produce a really compelling press release to convince everyone otherwise. Even if putting it to other uses makes sense, its a principle thing when it comes to Kickstarter, and I don't think that website would appreciate that happening. Actually, I bet its straight up against the rules, no matter how much extra money is made.

It will probably be put to hilariously and expensive superfluous uses, because its not like they can hire a bunch of new people, who are the right people, in time for this short development cycle. At the end of the day I'm sure it will be a very entertaining game, so regardless of what happens I feel like my $30 were well spent.

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FateOfNever

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@Brendan said:

On another note, its an interesting problem Double Fine has now. With the incredible amount of development money they've gotten, most people would think that the more money they get would be equal to the quality of the project they could make.

This is often not the case in business, and with so much more money than they could have imagined, yet in the same development time frame they've set out for themselves, it becomes an issue of what to do with it effectively without clouding the vision they may already have for the project. There's a lot of cases like this where too much money has made things difficult, and although I completely trust in the expertise of Double Fine I think they may have a tougher road ahead of them now than if they had just raised $400,000. What in the heck do they do if they end up with 4 million in dev money and only half a year to ship this adventure game? Buy 10 RED Epic camera's and Steven Speilberg to shoot the documentary?

Do the only logical thing and buy the most expensive voice acting crew they can scrounge up! I'm sure they could get some top actors in there on that kind of budget they're looking at!

Really I was wondering this too though. I mean, one option would be to take the excess money and put it towards funding on another game or something (Double Fine doesn't seem to be short any ideas for games.) But since the money was raised via donations for a specific thing, would it be ethically right for them to funnel the excess donations to other projects? Do they just take all the extra money and put it into making sequels to the original game? (Whether sequels in setting, story, or theme or otherwise.) Or do they donate all of the extra money to something else (like Child's Play or something?) But would that even be right? I can't imagine they would keep all of the donated funds and try to apply all of that money to making this one game. Who knows though.

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Brendan

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You people are so up your own asses on this topic that I think one of you needs to get some fresh air and look at the big picture. Giantbomb reports video game news. This is video game news. Does the news often have an effect on things? Fuck yes it does, it always has. Does that mean that Giantbomb should not report news? Fuck no it doesn't.

On another note, its an interesting problem Double Fine has now. With the incredible amount of development money they've gotten, most people would think that the more money they get would be equal to the quality of the project they could make.

This is often not the case in business, and with so much more money than they could have imagined, yet in the same development time frame they've set out for themselves, it becomes an issue of what to do with it effectively without clouding the vision they may already have for the project. There's a lot of cases like this where too much money has made things difficult, and although I completely trust in the expertise of Double Fine I think they may have a tougher road ahead of them now than if they had just raised $400,000. What in the heck do they do if they end up with 4 million in dev money and only half a year to ship this adventure game? Buy 10 RED Epic camera's and Steven Speilberg to shoot the documentary?

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Nethlem

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@AiurFlux said:

Firstly I'm going to cut down the wall of text that you feel inclined to post. Secondly I'm going to bluntly state that if you feel this humble website is responsible for all or even most of the success that the Kickstarter venture had I'll say you're out of your goddamn mind.

Firstly i'm going to cut down on your useless wall of text that you somehow felt the need to write up. And secondly i'm gonna tell you it's useless because you obviously do not even understand the point i tried to make.

Please quote the specific part where i stated that GB alone is responsible for the giant success of this. Because i can't remember doing that as that's never something i claimed. I only said that GB certainly helped increase the popularity of this, i never claimed to know by "how much" but the pure principle of logic dictates that a news sites reporting about something probably increases it's popularity, while not reporting about it certainly won't decrease it's popularity.

If you can't understand that simple point i tried to make then i seriously see no need to keep this discussion going, you seem to be too focused to "defend" something like i "attacked" anything when i only shared my point of view and actually supplied an detailed explanation as to WHY i think so.

You are free to disagree with my opinion but if you feel the need to "attack" it (and by that basicly me on a personal level) then you better should make sure to read carefully what i write and make an effort at understanding it so you can attack that opinion based on it's reasonings and not missinterpreting what i'm writing and basing your whole counter point on your missinterpretation of what i wrote.

Because this will only lead to useless walls of texts... btw you should read up on the internet definition of "wall of text". Just because it's alot of text doesn't mean it's automaticly a wall, but if you are not reading carefully then alot of text certainly might look like a "wall" -_-

Anyway i'm outa here now because it feels like i'm having to defend an statement that i never made and that's never usefull, people should chill out and stop seeing this as some kind of "opinion competition". ..

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Buscemi

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Reddit totally made this happen.

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I hope they make Full Throttle 2

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@SlasherMan said:

@Nethlem said:

Would it have been an success without GB reporting on it? Of course! Would it have been such a big one like we wistness now? Who knows, but it's more likely it wouldn't have had that much success, i'm just gonna make that bold claim here ;)

This is exactly what I disagree with. GB's influence is not as great as you might seem to think, they may have grown in the past 2 years, but they're still pretty small and ultimately insignificant compared to the others. Kotaku, Joystiq, Gamespot, IGN, Gametrailers etc are all vastly more influential than GB and they ALL reported the same story. Add the various popular social platforms and discussion boards, and you got yourself a news story that's spreading like wildfire.

Trust me, if GB hadn't reported this story, it would have made near to no difference whatsoever.

I think there's a middle ground of impact. I don't think they had that big an influence as others are somehow up in arms about, but I wouldn't say they barely had any influence at all. If you look at the stats, you'll find that they're popularity has grown more than you might think. They're more popular than Destructoid now, and not far below Joystiq, so I think you underestimated their growth (which I would have too if I never saw that website). I mean for sure they're not as big as Gamespot or IGN, but still.

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@AiurFlux said:

@Nethlem said:

If i want to read the same lame uncreative, uncritical news i can read on kotaku, joystiq and most other news sites then i will browse those. But i visit GB for it's great understanding of gaming as an community, an creative art and how turning it too much into an industry destroys this creative process. And in that role i would have wished that they maybe just maybe stayed a little bit more neutral about this whole DF deal.. because DF and Tim certainly didn't need GB's media attention to reach that kind of success.

GB also didn't need the attention for breaking this news in such an way, because of the strong ties to DF they will keep on delivering unique news on this issue dragging even more media attention to all this that's focused on GB. Jeff and Tim are gaming the system, they know it and many other people will also notice this and it will leave an sour taste in the mouth of frustrated real indie devs that have original ideas and struggle to bring some attention to their ideas when every friggin gaming news site on the webs just keep acting like an industry ticker about the "big news".

All this is imho and i won't be discussing any further here as an awfull lot of people here seem to miss my point, like the guy who suddenly dragged spreadsheets about developement overhead costs into this discussion about "indie development" which by my definition means Joe Basement who's working a fulltime job just to finance to developement of his game.

@MisterBronze said:

Another indy project - 'UFHO2' saw a significant increase in donations after this happened. There is a good chance Double Fine actually raised the profile of Kickstarter a bit and there could be a positive impact on smaller developers who are looking for a similar way to fund their game...

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tinycolossus/ufho2-a-turn-based-strategy-game

That's an valid point, but only a small reparation compared to the respect that this might have cost GB among some people...

Firstly I'm going to cut down the wall of text that you feel inclined to post. Secondly I'm going to bluntly state that if you feel this humble website is responsible for all or even most of the success that the Kickstarter venture had I'll say you're out of your goddamn mind. Do you have any idea how much people talked about it on Reddit and a few other larger communities? I'm sure that people here donated, actually I'm not going to say donated or invested I'm going to say were patrons to Double Fine, but I'm also sure that a hell of a lot more came from outside of GB. Just because they REPORTED on what seemed like an absolutely insane idea while retard centric sites like IGN focused on the "Top 10 Mass Effect Characters That Should be in Other Games" hardly means that they're the be all end all. Their job is to report on shit, and they did. Not write spin articles like other sites do.

Now you can say that GB might have a bias towards Double Fine, but it hardly means that they shouldn't report on a major studio having a game funded by their fans. Nobody forced those 40+ thousand people to part with their money, and it sure as shit wasn't from reading a news article that caused almost 900 people to pay 250 dollars, damn near 17x the expected price of the final game.

But hey you have your opinion and I have mine. There are obviously 40,000 people, game designers and developers included such as Amy Hennig from Naughty Dog, that figure fuck it and will go with the benefit of the doubt. For that I applaud them, but I also remain apprehensive and skeptical of Kickstarter being used to fund projects from major studios. I do feel that it should be either an indie developer that needs money because they're in college and working on the next Quake, or a last resort for minor projects from a major studio. And I also think that we should not give developers, but especially publishers, an inch because they have proven in the past that they will take a mile.

Couldn't have said it better. People are completely ridiculous.

I think you might be coming to GB for the wrong reasons if this is your outlook. Nothing devious is going on, your paranoid attitude is laughable to say the least.

Guess what, people have friends, just because Doublfine and GiantBomb are friends doesn't mean everything they report on has to have an agenda. I'm not going to bother looking if you're premium member or not, but if you are you need to go back to Jeffs jar time. He very clearly explains his feeling about friendships in the gaming industry and it's not even close to what you're blabbing on about.

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AiurFlux

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@Nethlem said:

If i want to read the same lame uncreative, uncritical news i can read on kotaku, joystiq and most other news sites then i will browse those. But i visit GB for it's great understanding of gaming as an community, an creative art and how turning it too much into an industry destroys this creative process. And in that role i would have wished that they maybe just maybe stayed a little bit more neutral about this whole DF deal.. because DF and Tim certainly didn't need GB's media attention to reach that kind of success.

GB also didn't need the attention for breaking this news in such an way, because of the strong ties to DF they will keep on delivering unique news on this issue dragging even more media attention to all this that's focused on GB. Jeff and Tim are gaming the system, they know it and many other people will also notice this and it will leave an sour taste in the mouth of frustrated real indie devs that have original ideas and struggle to bring some attention to their ideas when every friggin gaming news site on the webs just keep acting like an industry ticker about the "big news".

All this is imho and i won't be discussing any further here as an awfull lot of people here seem to miss my point, like the guy who suddenly dragged spreadsheets about developement overhead costs into this discussion about "indie development" which by my definition means Joe Basement who's working a fulltime job just to finance to developement of his game.

@MisterBronze said:

Another indy project - 'UFHO2' saw a significant increase in donations after this happened. There is a good chance Double Fine actually raised the profile of Kickstarter a bit and there could be a positive impact on smaller developers who are looking for a similar way to fund their game...

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tinycolossus/ufho2-a-turn-based-strategy-game

That's an valid point, but only a small reparation compared to the respect that this might have cost GB among some people...

Firstly I'm going to cut down the wall of text that you feel inclined to post. Secondly I'm going to bluntly state that if you feel this humble website is responsible for all or even most of the success that the Kickstarter venture had I'll say you're out of your goddamn mind. Do you have any idea how much people talked about it on Reddit and a few other larger communities? I'm sure that people here donated, actually I'm not going to say donated or invested I'm going to say were patrons to Double Fine, but I'm also sure that a hell of a lot more came from outside of GB. Just because they REPORTED on what seemed like an absolutely insane idea while retard centric sites like IGN focused on the "Top 10 Mass Effect Characters That Should be in Other Games" hardly means that they're the be all end all. Their job is to report on shit, and they did. Not write spin articles like other sites do.

Now you can say that GB might have a bias towards Double Fine, but it hardly means that they shouldn't report on a major studio having a game funded by their fans. Nobody forced those 40+ thousand people to part with their money, and it sure as shit wasn't from reading a news article that caused almost 900 people to pay 250 dollars, damn near 17x the expected price of the final game.

But hey you have your opinion and I have mine. There are obviously 40,000 people, game designers and developers included such as Amy Hennig from Naughty Dog, that figure fuck it and will go with the benefit of the doubt. For that I applaud them, but I also remain apprehensive and skeptical of Kickstarter being used to fund projects from major studios. I do feel that it should be either an indie developer that needs money because they're in college and working on the next Quake, or a last resort for minor projects from a major studio. And I also think that we should not give developers, but especially publishers, an inch because they have proven in the past that they will take a mile.

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Kevin_Cogneto

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@Nethlem said:

@MisterBronze said:

Another indy project - 'UFHO2' saw a significant increase in donations after this happened. There is a good chance Double Fine actually raised the profile of Kickstarter a bit and there could be a positive impact on smaller developers who are looking for a similar way to fund their game...

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tinycolossus/ufho2-a-turn-based-strategy-game

That's an valid point, but only a small reparation compared to the respect that this might have cost GB among some people...

You are a madman. If you've lost so much respect for Giant Bomb, just leave already. Much as I enjoy reading your wall-of-text conspiracy theories of a secret Giant Bomb illuminati that's using its enormous global influence and internet fame to funnel cash into the coffers of their Double Fine buddies, I think somehow we can all find a way to go on without you.

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@SlasherMan said:

@Nethlem said:

Would it have been an success without GB reporting on it? Of course! Would it have been such a big one like we wistness now? Who knows, but it's more likely it wouldn't have had that much success, i'm just gonna make that bold claim here ;)

This is exactly what I disagree with. GB's influence is not as great as you might seem to think, they may have grown in the past 2 years, but they're still pretty small and ultimately insignificant compared to the others. Kotaku, Joystiq, Gamespot, IGN, Gametrailers etc are all vastly more influential than GB and they ALL reported the same story. Add the various popular social platforms and discussion boards, and you got yourself a news story that's spreading like wildfire.

Trust me, if GB hadn't reported this story, it would have made near to no difference whatsoever.

Excuse me but i think you missunderstand my "bold claim" here..

Because you just agreed with me, like i said: GB doesn't need to report about this, the whole thing would have easily collected enough money because DF and Tim are big names among the gaming media. (which also goes contrary to my personal definition of an "indie dev")

GB is also among the news sites that have more unique news content and don't just constantly copy&paste publisher statemens from all over the other news sites. Take a look around at kotaku, joystiq, gamespot, ign, gametrailers, eurogamer for example. They all allways cover the same "obvious big news" often in the very same copy&pasted way, they may have many regular content updates but most of them are basicly information garbage because it's like an industry tracker.

GB news on the other side? It usually stays clear of such news, that's why i like GB news, because they usually have unique content and fresh views, often discovering hidden little gems other websites often don't even take notice off. The news updates might not be as often but they make up with it in quality and uniqueness.

@Kevin_Cogneto said:

@Nethlem: Double Fine raising money on Kickstarter for a point-and-click adventure game is news. Joe Basement raising money for his first iPhone game is not. Why is this so difficult to understand?

That double fine raising money for this game would be "big news" and a "huge success" shouldn't be a suprise to anyone...

Also it's not really news because this is by now all over the interwebs (also no suprise) because most gaming media cover only the big stories so most of them allways cover the same.

I enjoy and come here to GB to read about the SMALL stories... stories like this guy: http://www.giantbomb.com/news/the-game-designer-who-wont-call-himself-a-game-designer/3959/

I come here to watch quick looks about strange games that no other gaming media site even bothers to mention, and i end up enjoying these games and discovering new things. The GB crew is great about finding the Joe Basement who just made the next Minecraft in his fucking basement.

If i want to read the same lame uncreative, uncritical news i can read on kotaku, joystiq and most other news sites then i will browse those. But i visit GB for it's great understanding of gaming as an community, an creative art and how turning it too much into an industry destroys this creative process. And in that role i would have wished that they maybe just maybe stayed a little bit more neutral about this whole DF deal.. because DF and Tim certainly didn't need GB's media attention to reach that kind of success.

GB also didn't need the attention for breaking this news in such an way, because of the strong ties to DF they will keep on delivering unique news on this issue dragging even more media attention to all this that's focused on GB. Jeff and Tim are gaming the system, they know it and many other people will also notice this and it will leave an sour taste in the mouth of frustrated real indie devs that have original ideas and struggle to bring some attention to their ideas when every friggin gaming news site on the webs just keep acting like an industry ticker about the "big news".

All this is imho and i won't be discussing any further here as an awfull lot of people here seem to miss my point, like the guy who suddenly dragged spreadsheets about developement overhead costs into this discussion about "indie development" which by my definition means Joe Basement who's working a fulltime job just to finance to developement of his game.

@MisterBronze said:

Another indy project - 'UFHO2' saw a significant increase in donations after this happened. There is a good chance Double Fine actually raised the profile of Kickstarter a bit and there could be a positive impact on smaller developers who are looking for a similar way to fund their game...

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tinycolossus/ufho2-a-turn-based-strategy-game

That's an valid point, but only a small reparation compared to the respect that this might have cost GB among some people...

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@DiGiTaL_SiN said:

These guys deserve it, I can't wait to see what they make.

Exactly, I have had more fun with their games than most of the other developers combined. I happily contributed $100 yesterday. Cant wait to see my name in the credits!

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These guys deserve it, I can't wait to see what they make.

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@OldGuy: Yeah, just the nature of the project, too. If anyone hasn't backed by now, they're much less likely to be a big backer. So the ratio of 15-30 dollar backers is going to get even bigger as this rolls on, I think the $100+ donations will drop right off. There'll still be people deciding to do the smaller ones all month, and hopefully that'll carry it to 2 million, but I doubt it'll go much beyond that. Not that 2mil isn't a completely amazing result.

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@umdesch4 said:

Of course, they're likely to get a few bumps up if this story gets picked up by the mainstream media, but barring something truly incredible, I can't see them going over single-digit millions.
Its started. . . there are stories on the MSNBC and CNN blogs and the USA Today, LA Times, Dallas Morning News and The Atlantic sites. . . so we'll se what that does. . .
 
Oh, and yes, over $10mil is crazy talk territory (but I thought they might only get $500-600k over the full 32 days, so what do I know?). . .
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@SurplusGamer: Well, it looks like it'll be $1.5mil by tonight, so if we extrapolate a 50% dropoff per day (which is completely unrealistic as it'll fall much faster than that and likely stabilize at some point) and always rounding down so I can do this in my head rather then the more accurate formula way (but this is just for grins anyway). . . You would wind up with $1993320 at the end of day 16 when you'd drop below $15. . . So I'd say $2mil is not unreachable (being that the closer you get to $2mil the more likely you are to reach it, with the buzz of the chase and all to drive people). . .
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One of the backers on the Kickstarter comments page is tracking it:

No Caption Provided

It's definitely flattening out, I figure we'll see a $2.0-2.5 Million budget when it's all said and done.

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@enemymouse said:

$15 million come March. Mark my words.

I dunno man. It slowed down a whole bunch today. Basically we're looking at roughly $1M in the first 24 hours, and only $0.5M in the second 24 hours. If that trend continues, my Taylor Series math tells me that given an infinite amount of time, they'd get infinitely close to $2M. Over the next 32 days, within a few cents of that.

Of course, they're likely to get a few bumps up if this story gets picked up by the mainstream media, but barring something truly incredible, I can't see them going over single-digit millions.

Don't get me wrong, I'd LOVE to see something crazy like that happen, but I strongly doubt it.

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@SurplusGamer said:

@enemymouse: I doubt it. It'd have to average just under half a million a day for the whole month. At this point I think it'd be pretty sweet if it made it to 2mil

I agree, at some point you reach the maximum amount of investors that want to invest.

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@enemymouse: I doubt it. It'd have to average just under half a million a day for the whole month. At this point I think it'd be pretty sweet if it made it to 2mil

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$15 million come March. Mark my words.

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@Nethlem said:

Would it have been an success without GB reporting on it? Of course! Would it have been such a big one like we wistness now? Who knows, but it's more likely it wouldn't have had that much success, i'm just gonna make that bold claim here ;)

This is exactly what I disagree with. GB's influence is not as great as you might seem to think, they may have grown in the past 2 years, but they're still pretty small and ultimately insignificant compared to the others. Kotaku, Joystiq, Gamespot, IGN, Gametrailers etc are all vastly more influential than GB and they ALL reported the same story. Add the various popular social platforms and discussion boards, and you got yourself a news story that's spreading like wildfire.

Trust me, if GB hadn't reported this story, it would have made near to no difference whatsoever.

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@Nethlem: Double Fine raising money on Kickstarter for a point-and-click adventure game is news. Joe Basement raising money for his first iPhone game is not. Why is this so difficult to understand?

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I don't see a problem with Giant bomb posting this as a news story. As far as I'm concerned, this is news. It's not every day that a company tries something like this, and I believe that an incredibly small percentage would ever be successful. The people at double fine make entertaining games, and have a friendly connection with their fan base compared to a lot of game companies around today. I think it's awesome how quickly the internet can make things happen and if that means more games from Double Fine, that's great!

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Money given!