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."
Schafer wins the Internet (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Schafer wins the Internet (Score:5, Insightful)
It appears seemingly more responsible than what Wall Street has been doing at my money.
Re:Crowd-funding (Score:4, Insightful)
Music you say ?
0) Start by composing a few good tracks , although probably for free , play in a few pubs thus starting to build a reputation;
1) Offer to go to gigs , for money , proportional to your reputation;
2) Get funded by the crowd that showed up;
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;
Music artists hurt by pirated albums you say ? Tell that to anybody that enjoyes going to concerts.
I've paid for once concert more than I've paid for all my CD's , and a concert is a one-time event,
Good musicians earn their living through concers , shit ones through radio ad revenue.
Re:Crowd-funding (Score:5, Insightful)
To keep other people from making something better using your building blocks and leaving you out of it.
Unlike yourself, who hasn't used a single concept (like the idea of an adventure game or using a mouse as an input device) from somebody else at all.
Re:Crowd-funding (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. Copyright isn't the demon here, it's the middle-men that have taken over the administration of creative works at the EXPENSE of the creator.
Copyright isn't inherently evil, but the corporations and interests that are far removed from the average creator's interests are twisting copyright to make it something negative to the consumer.
Re:Crowd-funding (Score:5, Insightful)
To keep other people from making something better using your building blocks and leaving you out of it.
The (alleged) purpose of copyright is to promote the progress of arts. The moment it starts keeping other people from making something better, i.e., starts PREVENTING the progress of arts, its whole purpose becomes null and void. So, again: copyright? What for?
Re:Crowd-funding (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Again Kickstarter is used to rob the commons (Score:5, Insightful)
Or we could use the money to cure cancer!
Seriously though, people spend the money on whatever they want. There's always something better they could have spent the money on, but things don't work that way. If they did we'd all be giving all our money to whatever society deemed the absolute most important cause.
As for turning slashdot into a church of RMS .. bleh.
Re:Again Kickstarter is used to rob the commons (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Again Kickstarter is used to rob the commons (Score:3, Insightful)
high quality opensource game
That there is an oxymoron. There are no high-quality F/OSS games.
Slashdot should not be posting kickstarters for software and other things that aren't free/libre open source licensed or creative commons licensed.
/. doesn't exist to drive F/OSS agenda, it exists to propagate news items about stuff that people are interested in.
Use kickstarter to compensate creative people for their effort, but pay them to contribute to the commons as well.
Tell some high-quality F/OSS dev to make a kickstarter project then and stop whining about it here.
Re:Again Kickstarter is used to rob the commons (Score:5, Insightful)
"Tell some high-quality F/OSS dev to make a kickstarter project then and stop whining about it here."
The problem is that the social dynamics of Kickstarter don't work very well for F/OSS, given that pledges are generally tightly tied to specific rewards (and pledges are amplified by the project creating "artificial scarcity").
The big issue is that people need to wake up to the notion that they are supporting and even creating "artificial scarcity" with how they spend their time and money. Related by me: http://www.artificialscarcity.com/ [artificialscarcity.com]
Re:Crowd-funding (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't work. You really think that this kickstarter project is endlessly reproducible? There are so many great movies and TV shows and books and songs and video games that would never have seen the light of day if they had to be funded in advance.
By your own admission, you have to do some good, free works first, before you get jack. And one good game ain't gonna cut it. You really think people would dump millions of dollars onto some developer who's only claim to fame was a single, albeit fun, flash game? Of course not. You'd have to make hit after hit, and only then, after years of unpaid hard work, would you even have a chance of getting paid.
Kickstarter, the Humble Bundles, they're all nice supplements. But for the vast majority of content, copyright is necessary. It needs reform, but it is necessary.
Gilbert's involvement might be overstated (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure it's accurate to say this game is "from Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert." See http://grumpygamer.com/5694081 [grumpygamer.com]