Chances are, you don’t know what “Psychonauts” is. I’ll allow a brief second so that unseen voices may pause, gasp, sigh, and silently curse you as “Heretic!” under their breath. … … We all good? Right, moving on.
As I said, you probably don’t know what a great, well-humored game Psychonauts was. I can’t blame you. But chances are, you know of a game called Full Throttle, and another one known as Day of the Tentacle. Well, here’s the catch: they were all produced by this one guy called TIM SCHAFER. He also produced a great game called Brutal Legend, a game set in a surreal, post-apocalyptic setting conceived by the unholy amalgam of dozens of songs from Heavy Metal bands.
If you haven’t caught up yet with the geniality that this guy is capable of, I can only weep for this generation and the next one.
Anyway, why is this all newsworthy, eh?
How about for the fact that, 5 days ago, his company broke the record on the fastest fund accumulation for any project on Kickstarter?
Before someone wipes clean the article on Wikipeda, let me show the historical impact of this single event:
Double Fine Adventure was announced by way of a Kickstarter project initiated on February 8, 2012. The idea came after Double Fine’s Tim Schafer was interviewed for 2 Player Productions‘ upcoming documentary on the game Minecraft, itself a crowd-funded effort through Kickstarter.[1] After the interview, Schafer and 2 Player discussed the idea of the production company filming a documentary about Double Fine as a future project.[1] When 2 Player completed the Minecraft project, around November 2011, they wanted to create a more in-depth documentary, recognizing that Double Fine had the right type of environment where such a documentary would be possible.[1] The two studios began to work out the specifics of the project, but Schafer realized that publisher interference would make an honest portrayal of game development impossible. Double Fine lacked the resources to self-fund a game, and 2 Player lacked the ability to fund the film, so the two companies elected to crowd-fund the project on Kickstarter, a method Schafer had seen successfully used to raise much smaller amounts for independent game developers. The creation of a new game was initially considered “kind of as a sidenote” by Schafer to accommodate the documentary filming.[2][3]
The adventure game genre was selected to offer the public a product that would not have existed without their support, and help to distinguish the project from the developer’s publisher-financed work.[3] Schafer, a veteran of LucasArts, has long been associated with adventure games, a genre that has long been stigmatized as commercially niche, particularly since the release of Schafer’s own Grim Fandango.[2] In his pitch to the public, Schafer argued that funding for such a project would be very difficult to come by, stating “If I were to go to a publisher right now and pitch an adventure game, they’d laugh in my face.”[4] Ron Gilbert, another ex-LucasArts adventure game designer at Double Fine, has long expressed this sentiment, writing in his personal blog, “From first-hand experience, I can tell you that if you even utter the words “adventure game” in a meeting with a publisher you can just pack up your spiffy concept art and leave. You’d get a better reaction by announcing that you have the plague.”[5]
The Kickstarter drive was launched in early February 2012 so that, regardless of its success, Schafer would be able to talk about it during the 2012 Game Developers Conference in early March.[3] Double Fine set the goal for the project at $400,000, with $100,000 allocated to the film production and $300,000 for the game. Although this was the largest goal of any gaming project yet on Kickstarter, it was the lowest budget the company had worked with, and a small fraction of the budget of the company’s previous downloadable games, which cost around $2 million.[3][2] Schafer admitted that a game made for this budget would be “hobbled,” and that the budget was chosen because it was the absolute minimum he thought he could make an adventure game for.[3] The two had originally envisioned a total $200,000 budget, a typical cost for an iOS game, but Schafer had doubts about whether Double Fine could deliver a game for such a low cost.[3]
Various incentives were given to those that donated $15 or more, including the game itself, early beta access to the game, access to private community areas to discuss the game, prints, and invitations to meet with the Double Fine staff.[2] In launching the Kickstarter project, Double Fine claimed it was the first major studio to use the model for the funding of a game.[6]
Within nine hours, the Kickstarter project had exceeded the $400,000 goal.[7] Within 24 hours, it had surpassed $1 million.[8] As the funds raised approached $1.35 million, Schafer noted that the funds had already exceeded the budget for Day of the Tentacle ($600,000) and was nearing the budget for Full Throttle ($1.5 million).[9] Kickstarter stated on the day after its start that the Double Fine effort is the most successful to date, having attracted more backers than any prior effort in the site’s history [10] while others have noted it is the second project to achieve more than $1 million in funding through Kickstarter.[6]
The Kickstarter page was updated with the promise that additional funds would go to increased production values for the game and film, and deployment on additional platforms.[8][2] A later update by Schafer affirmed that the additional funding will support development for the Mac OS X and Linux platforms and select iOS and Android devices. Additionally, the game will have voice acting for the English version, and include text localization for French, German, Italian, and Spanish languages. Schafer also stated that a digital rights management-free version of the game will be available after release.[11]
Impact
The success of the Kickstarter project has been seen by some journalists as a shakeup in the traditional publication model for video games. Many journalists questioned whether the success of Double Fine’s Kickstarter project would signal the end for publishers, John Walker from Rock, Paper, Shotgun disagreed, but added that it would force publishers to ask themselves questions such as “Are we really in touch with our audience’s desires?”.[12] Johnny Cullen of VG247 compared the Double Fine Kickstarter to the release of Radiohead‘s album In Rainbows, which the band had sold through their website in a pay-what-you-want model prior to a physical printing, without the interference of a music publisher. Cullen noted the model of crowd-sourcing has previously not worked for some game developers, and does not expect it to be a guaranteed success for future efforts, as he believes Double Fine is a unique studio with a dedicated fan base, aspects that are not shared by all developers.[13] Several other small game developers, commenting during the first 24 hours of the Kickstarter, shared a similar view, in that Double Fine’s reputation and trusting fan base, and Schafer and Gilbert’s past success with the adventure game genre, were uniquely suited to take advantage of the Kickstarter model.[14] Dan Whitehead of Eurogamer added that Double Fine Productions has had an unfortunate history of falling victim to game publishing problems that were outside of its control, and the Kickstarter has been seen as a way for fans to help support Double Fine as an underdog, and produce a product without any interference from a corporate publisher.[15] Luke Plunkett of Kotaku believed the success of the Kickstarter could be more attributable to the lack of high caliber adventure games, and Kickstarter was a way to immediately fill that need.[16] Schafer further agreed that the success of the Double Fine Kickstarter would be somewhat difficult to replicate for other games, even for Double Fine, as it would require the project to be “a good story for people to get behind”.[3] Another factor contributing to the Kickstarter success is the opportunity for those providing the funds to be part of something larger, not only by having their names appear in the game’s credits or appearing as characters within the game itself, but to the larger trend of changing the game publication model. Jane McGonigal, a game designer, sent a Twitter message to Schafer congratulating him on the success of the funding project, stating that “You’re making us all feel like we’re a part of something historic.”[6]
Publishers do their business in a way that works for them. They’re risking millions of dollars so they’ve got to mitigate that risk – and sometimes that means removing risky ideas from games.
The thing is, Double Fine is all about coming up with new, unproven and really creative ideas. It’s a constant battle for us to get those ideas to go through the system, that long spanking machine of people who have to sign off on your idea. They’re not evil, they’re just trying to protect themselves.
In the week following the Kickstarter launch, Schafer said that he wasn’t trying to “vilify” publishers. He understood that publishers were risking millions of dollars and would want to mitigate their risk by removing risky ideas from games, but pointed out that it was Double Fine’s job to come up with unproven and creative ideas. He went on to say that developers were moving from closed publishing systems, like PSN and XBLA, and on to open systems like Steam where they can set their own prices, issue patches and support users with ease – Schafer illustrated his point by saying that it costs $40,000 to issue a patch on a closed system. [17] Schafer further noted that while the Kickstarter was considered a success with over 40,000 people donating during the first week, the equivalent number in sales of a game would be considered a “flop” in the industry.[3]
Some gaming journalists who have contributed to the fund have found themselves conflicted, as they would be reviewing a game that they helped pay for upon its release.[8] Chris Pereira of 1UP.com contrasted contributing to the Kickstarter, where the funds are going to help develop the game, as opposed to pre-ordering a game, where the funds are generally profit for the company, and felt himself conflicted, and noted that readers would “question his motivation for covering the game now and in the future”.[18]
Outside of these shortcomings, at least two developers, David Jaffe (who at the time was in the process of creating a new studio), Chris Avellone of Obsidian Entertainment, and Brian Fargo of inXile Entertainment have stated that they may consider using Kickstarter or similar crowd-sourcing funding in the future for new projects, following the success of the Double Fine project.[19] [20][21]
(The Wikipedia article was retrieved, as is, on February 19, 2012.)
As you can surmise from reading that wall of text above, big-site reporters are already scrambling to cover this in detail, philosophers are philosophing while historians have already pronounced their judgment: this is something BIG, it really happened, and people better take good note of it. Specially with the video game industry being what it is.
If you’re just another mundane “gamer”, that is, a mere consumer of video games spawned from this modern generation then you are playing your Halo game, your Call of Duty game, your Final Fantasy game, your Tekken game and everything is just fine. Every iteration of your beloved game series sends another numbered title out onto the market, packaging the same thing, the same game from 2 years ago, just with prettier bells and whistles and premium play features that you have to pay additional extra.
But if you are more than just a mere consumer, if you have a mind to consider just why we are spending so much money to gain access to Downloadable Content (DLC) that could have well been on the game we just bought, and in many cases was but PR and Marketing departments were quick to spin a different story on the mainstream media, this is one event that might very well build up a shift in our current Paradigm.
This is a way we gamers say a very loud, fuck off, to the video game industry as it is right now. It’s the clarion call of a Revolution right here, folks.
U.M.Q.N. 