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Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter finishes at $3,335,250

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Re: Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter finishes at $3,335,250

#41

Post by wccrawford »

Aloisius wrote: post #8

This was an amazing success especially given no equity traded hands. Game publishers shouldn't be the only ones worried. While I don't see it being easy to do initial angel funding on Kickstarter, it clearly is possible to raise significant amounts of money if you either have a good product and/or a name.

A few people have been very vocal about the lack of equity and how "unfair" it is.

Personally, I don't really see their point. It's not an investment, it's a purchase... With a slight bit of risk. Some of the higher tiers are collector's items and a part of history, and unavailable otherwise. The lower tiers have the game for less than it will probably retail for.

I personally feel the risk is very low for both this and Wasteland 2, but others feel differently.

Re: Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter finishes at $3,335,250

#42

Post by nkoren »

robryan wrote: post #5

Seems to be the start of something big, Wasteland 2 launched today on kickstarted and is about to hit $400,000. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2

13 hours later and it's about to hit $600,000.

Yes, I'd say this is starting to look like an actual phenomena rather than a fluke.

Re: Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter finishes at $3,335,250

#43

Post by VikingCoder »

I'm a backer, and I'm super-excited. I'm probably a weird one, though, because I don't think I've ever played a Tim Shafer game before.

One of the projects that got me really excited was Nataly Dawn's:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/555488012/nataly-dawns-f...

She wanted to raise $20,000 to record her first solo album. Nope, she got $104,788. This is the kind of thing that can change someone's life, and it's exciting to see it happen to independent artists.

Plus, people aren't "voted off the island" each week...

I'd love to see stats about Kickstarter - for each category, what are the percentages for funded or not. For each category, a graph plotting how much people asked for, and how much they received. Stuff like that.

Re: Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter finishes at $3,335,250

#44

Post by forgottenpaswrd »

sirclueless wrote: post #19
kennywinker wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the recent crowdfunding bill obama just signed, I hope to see a kickstarter-like site that offers equity instead of "rewards". There are lots of businesses that don't work well as kickstarters, but could work with an equity model.

Even so, I have my doubts that mob mentality and viral marketing will prove to be reliable diviners of good investments. That said, they may be every bit as good as say, a gated community of silicon valley entrepreneurs and angel investors. After all, in a sort of perverse coincidence, these people purport to predict mob mentality and viral potential. Maybe crowd-funding is just trading the experience and insider kno…

"I have my doubts that mob mentality and viral marketing will prove to be reliable diviners of good investments."

You are not a mob when you are in your house browsing Kickstarter, you are a person and if you can think for yourself, you will.

We had crowd funding for centuries, it is called "the stock market". As you said, now we can cut the middleman (and their abuses).

Those middleman had been abusing the system too much, e.g Renting your own shares without your permission to speculators (short selling)

Re: Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter finishes at $3,335,250

#45

Post by TillE »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #22
robryan wrote: post #5

Seems to be the start of something big, Wasteland 2 launched today on kickstarted and is about to hit $400,000. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2

Wasteland 2 being successful is far more impressive to me than Double Fine Adventure. DFA was a perfect storm. Amazing and funny front man in Tim Shafer. A proven studio that has released multiple games of similar small scope in recent years. Plus a pair of guys (Tim + Ron Gilbert) who practically invented the genre in the early 90s. Amazing, awesome, and wonderful that they were so successful but not necessarily a s…

Wasteland is of course best known as a precursor to Fallout, but it's extremely obscure compared to Fallout. I really can't figure out where the 10,000+ backers are coming from.

Kickstarter really could revolutionize the industry. This is incredible. We've seen small indie games on the order of $10k being funded all the time, but not $1M budgets. That's not enough for a AAA game, but it is enough to run a small studio rather than a couple guys in a basement.

Oh, and most importantly, the type of game promised (an old-school hardcore turn-based CRPG) is radically different from what's fashionable today, even among indies. They're not just making a sequel, they're reviving a genre. This is truly exciting.

Re: Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter finishes at $3,335,250

#46

Post by InclinedPlane »

wccrawford wrote: post #40
brianobush wrote: post #27

seems like the idea of platform for funding ideas (kickstarter) has proved itself as a valid idea.

I think it's a bit early to decide that. DoubleFine Adventure and Wasteland 2 are really big hits with the fans, and this is the first time this has happened. There's a lot of emotion involved here. If this were new IP and/or new devs, it wouldn't be nearly so crazy. I'm not saying it can't be done, just that it's not going to be a free ride in the future just because these 2 groups did it. They're going to have to w…

This isn't the first time this has happened. Remember that little game "minecraft"? The game was effectively developed live while pre-orders were sold that allowed people to play the pre-release code. It raised more money than both of these games before it was released. Enough to create a game company with several employees working on other games as well.

The fact should be firmly established now: it is feasible to bootstrap the funding of games and even the creation of game companies.

Of course it's not going to be easy, and for some people it's going to be harder than for others. But it's always been that way. Making games has always been hard, it's a rather brutal industry that is not very rewarding for most of the people in it.

Re: Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter finishes at $3,335,250

#47

Post by zipdog »

vibrunazo wrote: post #28
sp332 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hollywood blockbusters are more of an investment banking scheme than a way to fund the making of movies. I don't mean to be cynical, really. But the Hollywood (in particular) works is incompatible with this funding model.

Could you expand on that, or point to where I can read more on it?

Try: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting for a starting point (esp. 'Examples'). Also note that states often provide generous tax subsidies to film projects filmed in their territory. Some films can profit their investors without making any money at the box office (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uwe_Boll)

Re: Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter finishes at $3,335,250

#48

Post by Gormo »

sirclueless wrote: post #14
nkassis wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tim Schafer said it in an interview (with NPR I believe) this isn't replacing traditional publishers (yet followed by evil laugh). I think the two can coexist. This was a great way to revive a game genre with following that is still to small for a AAA publisher to go after. I think people who want to be successful with crowdsourcing like this will need to follow that pattern and attack small undeserved niche markets.

Do you mean "underserved"? I agree that the two can coexist (and probably have to). Kickstarter might work for areas with untapped potential when the game is published by a recognized personality with public goodwill on their side. But to be honest, to actually do something novel and unproven, or with a budget that is larger than goodwill can provide, someone needs to take a bigger risk. And to make that happen the I…

But there is built-in risk aggregation in the crowdsourcing model. If you raise $100,000 from a single angel investor or VC, that investor is risking the full $100k; ten-thousand backers each contributing $10 don't have nearly the same risk exposure.

On top of that, the expected reward is likely different: a traditional investor is looking for a financial return, and analyses the project in terms of its ability to deliver that return. But the motivations of Kickstarter contributors come from their qualitative desire to see the project itself completed and to enjoy the product it generates. There's also the possibility of prestige and networking opportunities that can come along with being a top-tier contributor.

The crowdsourcing model appears to exist in a grey area between traditional investment, pre-ordering as a consumer, and charitable giving, and it's probably too early to know for sure what its limitations are. It's actually possible that funding new and risky projects will in some cases be easier via crowdsourcing.

Re: Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter finishes at $3,335,250

#49

Post by kennywinker »

Aloisius wrote: post #18
kennywinker wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the recent crowdfunding bill obama just signed, I hope to see a kickstarter-like site that offers equity instead of "rewards". There are lots of businesses that don't work well as kickstarters, but could work with an equity model.

Did he sign it? I didn't know it had made it all the way through congress. Last I heard it got merged into the JOBS act.

You are correct. JOBS act just passed the house. My mistake.

Re: Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter finishes at $3,335,250

#50

Post by wccrawford »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #46
wccrawford wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a bit early to decide that. DoubleFine Adventure and Wasteland 2 are really big hits with the fans, and this is the first time this has happened. There's a lot of emotion involved here. If this were new IP and/or new devs, it wouldn't be nearly so crazy. I'm not saying it can't be done, just that it's not going to be a free ride in the future just because these 2 groups did it. They're going to have to w…

This isn't the first time this has happened. Remember that little game "minecraft"? The game was effectively developed live while pre-orders were sold that allowed people to play the pre-release code. It raised more money than both of these games before it was released. Enough to create a game company with several employees working on other games as well. The fact should be firmly established now: it is feasible to b…

That was different. When I bought Minecraft, I was able to say to myself, "For this price, if I never get an update, it was worth it."

That's not the case with these kickstarters.

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