Double Fine Kickstarter project beats $400,000 in eight hours
Tim Schafer's Double Fine has achieved $400,000 Kickstarter funding for a secret new game, amassing the total from eager gamers in just a few hours.
Double Fine launched a Kickstarter campaign with a $400,000 goal to fund "a classic point-and-click adventure utilizing modern touch technology" earlier today.
The amount was reached in around eight hours.
Developer Greg Rice expressed delight at the success of the scheme on Twitter: "You people are the greatest people in the world. Party time!"
"This has been an incredible night, thanks to you crazy people," Schafer said.
The studio boss added that all extra funds will go into shipping the game on platforms other than PC, adding more music and extra "awesomeness".
"Let's keep funding this thing until it becomes a monster," he said. "All the money goes into making the game and documentary better."
Schafer described the Kickstarter campaign as a "Thunderdome", in which publisher disinterest in adventure games will do battle with fan demand for them.
"Think it will work? I hope so, because I would rather work directly for the fans than for anyone else," Schafer wrote.
"If the Double Fine Kickstarter Adventure is a success, it could open the doors for all sorts of new funding possibilities, and all kinds of new games that could never happen in the old system. So basically I’m just talking about changing the entire world forever for the better. And getting a game out of it."
Double Fine has teamed up with 2 Player Productions, the filmmakers behind a crowd source-funded Minecraft documentary as well as Penny Arcade: The Series, to ensure fans get more out of the proces than a finished game. The entire development process will be documented and shared exclusively with its financial backers via monthly updates.
You can get on board this scheme for just $15, but the campaign also offers some amazing opportunities for those with a little more cash in their pockets. As well as a number of bonuses available through Kickstarter, Schafer listed a couple of enormous rewards - from dinner with Schafer and the development team for $15,000, through $50,000 to be a character in the game, to $150,000 for one of only four remaining unopened copies of classic Schafer adventure, Day of the Tentacle. Also: an undoctored photo of Ron Gilbert smiling for just $35,000.
In interviews over the last few years, Schafer has made his dissatisfaction with publisher-funded development clear; his decision to leap into crowd-sourcing may have been at least partially motivated by enthusiastic response to a suggestion that Mojang boss Markus "Notch" Persson fund the constantly demanded sequel to Psychonauts. The Minecraft creator has personally pledged $10,000 to the initiative.