Double Fine Adventure Crosses $2.5 Million In Kickstarter Funding 114
An anonymous reader writes "Double Fine Adventure, the crowd-funded adventure game from Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert (of Monkey Island fame), just crossed the $2.5 million mark in funding on Kickstarter. So far, about 73,000 enthusiastic backers have contributed an average of $35 dollars each, with 3 extravagant backers going as far as to contribute $10,000 (earning them a lunch with Schafer and Gilbert, among other goodies). The total sum is over 6 times the amount Schafer and Gilbert were initially hoping to raise ($400,000). Schafer released a few pictures showing what he's doing with all the money. The project has received attention in mainstream media (sort of), with NPR's Morning Edition covering the story."
Crowd-funding (Score:5, Interesting)
Crowd-funding is how entertainment will work in the the not too distant future, as far as creators are concerned:
0) Start by making something good, although probably for free, thus starting to build a reputation;
1) Offer to do something, for money, proportional to your reputation;
2) Get funded by the crowd;
3) Deliver a good end result, and with it improve your reputation;
4) Loop back to 1 as much as you need or want;
5) Retire.
Copyright? What for?
Again Kickstarter is used to rob the commons (Score:5, Interesting)
2.5 Million? And we'll never own the game.
For 2.5 Million we could fund the same effort or more and enrich the commons with a high quality opensource game that would allow a wide array of derivative. Instead the commons is robbed and is given a proprietary game.
Slashdot should not be posting kickstarters for software and other things that aren't free/libre open source licensed or creative commons licensed.
Use kickstarter to compensate creative people for their effort, but pay them to contribute to the commons as well.
Re:Again Kickstarter is used to rob the commons (Score:5, Interesting)
AC had a good point. Creativity is generally not improved by rewards, and there are other ways to support people than linking the right to consume with an increasingly precarious income-through-jobs link. We could have had $2.5 million of free stuff, and now we are getting yet more proprietary stuff.
See my essay on that theme (though it is directed more at tax-exempt non-profits):
http://www.pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors-on-copyright-policy.html [pdfernhout.net]
Longer version: http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-funding-digital-public-works.html [pdfernhout.net]
See also on why creativity diminished if done for material gain:
"RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc [youtube.com]
From 1964 on the strained income-through-jobs link.
http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm [educationa...ocracy.org]
Alternatives:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy [wikipedia.org]
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_dictionary_of_alternatives.html?id=IKZVKMPEQCEC [google.com]
Re:Again Kickstarter is used to rob the commons (Score:2, Interesting)