Player Attack: After pledging to the now (ridiculously) successfully funded Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter, a few nagging doubts crept into my head. What about all the little people? The people without the star power or the history of Tim Schafer and Double Fine? Isn’t Kickstarter for them? How were their projects faring without this viral wildfire of tweeting and facebooking and donating?
Investigating the Games category of Kickstarter, it seemed there were a lot of people who wouldn’t be telling success stories at the end of their campaigns. Ideas too ambitious, perhaps, or too much money requested. But there was some amazing stuff there, too. I couldn’t help but get excited, and so I’ve shared a few Projects below.
The Humble Day of the Devs Bundle 2022 just launched. It includes sixteen items including Psychonauts, Brutal Legend, Broken Age, and more.
Find out why ScreenCritics Joe is full of praise for 'Double Fine Adventure' - and why more developers should allow gamers look behind the curtain.
I (Robin Ek, The Gaming Ground) had a lot of mixed emotions when I found out that Tim Schafer and Double Fine had launched a crowdfunding campaign for "Psychonauts 2" yesterday. And this is the reason why (pros Vs cons, past scandals and expectations).
Don't worry, he will ask for more money soon, lol.
I'm a huge fan of the original Psychonauts, but i will not be able to donate for the crowfunding campaign because so many great games are coming next year.
But let's see how much the Feminist Frequency will donate for his campaign now...
3.3 million dollars? Why do I have a feeling that Tim will be asking people for more money once the campaign is over?...
One thing that is worth noting is that the Double Fine Adventure has (to date)made $1,012,770 in just $15 and $30 donations. So it seems possible to fund a reasonably small game project based solely on user interest without any massively huge pledges from Notch or Steve Dengler or who have you.
Now that said, it's taken almost 50000 backers to manage this. So it seems as though Kickstarter is not the way for a fledgling dev to break out. You're going to need an established audience to make it work consistently.
People like Will Wright, Richard Garriot or David Jaffe could probably use Kickstarter effectively to fund whatever they want to do next. Small devs who have already come up through the traditional pub model like Hothead Games or Capybara (DeathSpank and Sword and Sworcery) could probably make a go at it.
But between Steam, iOS/Android, XBLA/PSN and less traditional means of self-publication a la Mojang, it seems possible for anybody to reach an audience of 50k or so before going the Kickstarter route. The only barrier now seems to be talent and imagination.