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, Funny)
I agree. I believe my investment is in safe hands.
Re:Schafer wins the Internet (Score:5, Insightful)
It appears seemingly more responsible than what Wall Street has been doing at my money.
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Blocked destinations:
Haven't these people made enough money from donation?
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?
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To keep other people from making something better using your building blocks and leaving you out of it.
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.
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I don't think it is so much about the concepts, so much as the characters and world that's been created. The Harry Potter franchise itself is worth a lot of money and any additional works produced in that universe are going to sell loads of copies solely based on the branding.
Uh, you're thinking about trademarks, not copyright. I haven't seen anyone arguing about abandoning trademarks (yet).
Also, without copyright, anyone can make their own copies of your work as soon as you release it.
Yes, but at that point you already got paid in full for your work.
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Uh, you're thinking about trademarks, not copyright. I haven't seen anyone arguing about abandoning trademarks (yet).
Why not? They make as much sense as copyright.
Yes, but at that point you already got paid in full for your work.
So say you got crowdfunding of a thousand quid for your novel that took two years to write, that's all you should ever be able to make off it, even if it goes on to sell millions, be adapted as a movie and so on? Doesn't seem fair to me.
At least with copyright, if your book goes on selling steadily you get some income from it.
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Why not? [Trademarks] make as much sense as copyright.
No. The idea behind trademarks is to avoid mixing up different author's creations. That's in no way connected to copyright issues.
So say you got crowdfunding of a thousand quid for your novel that took two years to write,
If you agreed to that, you need a new accountant.
that's all you should ever be able to make off it, even if it goes on to sell millions,
It wouldn't sell millions, just a million people would be able to consume it.
be adapted as a movie and so on?
That depends. I'd be free to make a movie based on an 8 year-old boy who discovers that he is a wizard, but I wouldn't be allowed to call him "Harry Potter", because that's a trademark. Just like Avatar was a straight copy of Pocahontas [wtfoodge.com], for example.
Callin
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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.
Right, so by that argument your car uses technology and concepts based on other people's work (going back to the inventor of the wheel), so I should just be able to borrow it whenever I feel like it?
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Right, so by that argument your car uses technology and concepts based on other people's work (going back to the inventor of the wheel), so I should just be able to borrow it whenever I feel like it?
Yes, I should be allowed to construct my own car based on the idea your car was built upon (while still respecting trademarks, as already mentioned).
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.
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"Copyright isn't inherently evil, but the corporations and interests that are far removed from the average creator's interests "
I'm sorry but the average creator is a douchebag, many creators once they get rich push for copyright extension. In the beginning before the rise of the 'middlemen' original creators got rich and then used government to abuse copyright. The bad Creators are just as much a problem. See modern game developers, their sense of entitlement is disturbing. By all means we should be ab
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I'm sorry but the average creator is a douchebag
Yes, because of course what is important is your having free acess to anything you want, fuck all that fostering creativity and culture nonsense, eh?
It is clear where your sympathies lie, in your own shallow brain.
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I like to think of copyright as a poison (monopoly of the expression of culture) which when administered in the right dose, however, proves to be a medicine, and is quite beneficial (albeit with a few side effects).
The problem with copyright is that the junkies have the ear of the prescribing physicians, who keep bumping up the dosage for everyone, regardless of the consequences.
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?
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Re:Crowd-funding (Score:4, Insightful)
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Why is that a problem? With the grandparent's model, you're paid before you release your product.
Sometimes old ideas resurface and prove useful again. Before copyright, there was patronage.
It's just that now it's a crowd of regular folks instead of a single wealthy noble.
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Patronage still exists, and indeed is how most creative works are funded. It's just that now the patrons are not kings, they're publishers. They give creative people an interest free loan to fund the cost of creating the work, and then they own it. The only difference now is cutting out the middlemen.
Not to quibble but I see them as fundamentally different, both in intent and execution. About the only thing they have in common is that they are both a way to get creative works done.
... personal. I
Patronage was more personal and it was more like sponsoring or hiring someone. You pay the artist, he produces the work. In its heyday there was no easy way to mass-produce copies of a work; if a great painter made a portrait of a king, you could not distribute millions of copies of it. It was much more
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Patronage still exists, and indeed is how most creative works are funded. It's just that now the patrons are not kings, they're publishers.
I'd agree with the first, but not the second. The biggest form of patronage these days is government grants for artists (at least in Australia - don't know what it's like in the US).
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The important thing is to not lose something like trademarks or moral rights:
So, some intellectual property is bad, because it stops you just copying anything you want for yourself, but some is good, because...why?
A "moral right" is just a wishy washy version of an actual "copy right". And trademarks are just bollocks all round.
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.
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The Beatles should have skipped making Abbey Road because they were, according to you, shit musicians for not playing concerts any more?
What's more, most people listen to music an order of magnitude more than they listen to music at concerts, and you want musicians to minimize the album quality so it's just good enough to convince people to see them live? That's idiotic.
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The Beatles should have skipped making Abbey Road because they were, according to you, shit musicians for not playing concerts any more? What's more, most people listen to music an order of magnitude more than they listen to music at concerts, and you want musicians to minimize the album quality so it's just good enough to convince people to see them live? That's idiotic.
I never understood this style of "debate" because it completely throws out the concept of entertaining an idea regardless of whether you agree. It's frankly infantile.
I believe the thought is something like this: "I don't like this idea, so I'm going to be completely dense, take it to the most ridiculously absurd extreme possible instead of trying to see how it may work if done reasonably, and then declare that it's idiotic." No, your methods are idiotic.
This idea may or may not work out. That rema
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He's violating the principle of generosity. When debating somebody, you invariably come across a statement that could be interpreted in several ways. The principle of generosity says that you should try to interpret this in the best way, which makes the strongest argument, and assume that that's what he meant. Be generous to his argument, in other words.
The usual instinct people have is to take the most idiotic interpretation and use that, since it's easier to attack. But as we see in the GP, it doe
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He's violating the principle of generosity. When debating somebody, you invariably come across a statement that could be interpreted in several ways. The principle of generosity says that you should try to interpret this in the best way, which makes the strongest argument, and assume that that's what he meant. Be generous to his argument, in other words.
The usual instinct people have is to take the most idiotic interpretation and use that, since it's easier to attack. But as we see in the GP, it doesn't help your side, it just makes you look like a jackass. Which is why, if you're interested in winning your argument, you need to be generous.
It just seemed so natural and obvious to me that I didn't realize there was a term for it. Thank you -- seriously, you have educated me today.
I agree with you about the nature of it but I disagree in terms of emphasis. You're correct that this kind of impatient "I must be right and you must be wrong so easy-to-attack is all I care about" mentality doesn't work very well and often backfires. But I don't really view it so much in terms of working or not working.
To me it's the product of an (emotional
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Wow, you both make great points rarely seen in this day... Thanks for the enlightenment...
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If you look at films of a lot of the Beatles concerts, you literally cannot hear anything except girls screaming, it's got absolutely nothing to do with music.
I'm sure it's an age thing, but night after night of live gigging just doesn't interest a lot of people when they get out
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I am all for new ideas, but this is not really a new idea. This is an idea that's been playing out over the past one hundred years,
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If I say "all good guitarists are right-handed" it is an entirely valid counter-argument to point out that Jimi Hendrix was left-handed, and an entirely irrelevant counter-counter argument to say "yeah but I don't like Jimi
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I want to listen to music in the comfort of my own home, same as when I read a book.
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Good musicians earn their living through concerts , shit ones through radio ad revenue.
I'll take it as given that the you think of a professional musician as a twenty-year old kid, single, with the stamina of an army mule.
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If this actually works out. You'll start seeing some FUD over this from the big game houses like EA.
Thats the real thing all the riaa, mpaa, game publishers and everyone else is really scared of. Becomming irrevelant and not needed.
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EA will love this.
Let the 'crowd' risk the money to see if the developers are worth a shit. If they prove themselves EA can buy a proven studio, if not then EA didn't lose any money so why should they care?
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Why would a studio that can attract crowdfunding ever let themselves be bought out by EA? Do creative types have a predilection for 80 hour weeks and having their decisions dictated by corporate suits all of a sudden?
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Maybe best of both worlds? Funding through Kickstarter, distribution via EA Partners/Origin? This new game will for instance be distributed via Steam (and a DRM-free version to backers, ref. the first update video) for the PC/Mac editions.
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If this actually works out. You'll start seeing some FUD over this from the big game houses like EA.
When large governmental or corporate interests are against something and launch FUD campaigns against it, in my eyes whatever they're railing against couldn't possibly have received a better endorsement. "Consider the source". The next most priceless event is when that Puritannical "you must live as I do" mentality gets its panties in a wad.
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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?
Crowd funding is already what we do. They make a good game, you buy lots of it, they make a sequel. What you're talking about is cutting out the middle man (publisher/developer who lends them money) and doing it yourself.
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.
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This. Crowdsource funding is a fun one-off for already established artists with a large following.
In addition to the problem for non-established artists, if every single artist/author/video game producer had their hat in hand asking for crowd-sourced money, it would become an ignored barrage. Projects like these work because they're unusual enough to get people's attention and maybe even a couple Slashdot articles.
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And yet, reality has already shown how this works:
0) Start by making something good, although probably for free,thus starting to build a reputation;
1) Offer to do something, for money....
2) Watch your fans/community/users/whatever turn on you like a pack of piranna, for they have come to expect, nay, are entitled by the very gods, to the fruits of your labour for free. Sellout!
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Has that ever worked? I mean all the successfull software kickstart projects seems to be made by people who have previously for many years made successfull commercial software.
So kickstart seems to be good af funding projects/users which are already somehow famous from previous projects.
There's also a Tactical Shooter! (Score:5, Informative)
"..an independent team led by Chistian Allen (lead designer/creative director for games like Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and Halo: Reach) has launched a Kickstarter for a new hardcore tactical shooter."
Their PR is nowhere as good as Schafer's, but tactical shooters deserve some love too! [kickstarter.com]
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... I thought they already made that, and called it Frozen Synapse [frozensynapse.com]?
But then I've signed up for the kickstarter, so I guess not :)
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, 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.
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"Or we could use the money to cure cancer!"
Read this to prevent much cancer and even maybe cure a bit of it: http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article24.aspx [drfuhrman.com]
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Then some opensource creator should use Kickstarter to make some games. If it is so important to you, go search for such an opensource start-up and post it on /. I know I would kick money into it if I *knew* I was going to get some great product.
Tim Schafer has a reputation for being one of the best and lots of people have played games that he touched. This is where a lot of his support is coming from.
Re:Again Kickstarter is used to rob the commons (Score:5, Insightful)
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]
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I think you are wrong there. The 2.5 million will most likely not fully fund the project(Creating all that content is very expensive) It will most likely just make it possible to complete the project, and then normal sales of the project will provide the rest of the money to pay anyone involved in the project.
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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]
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To be honest, that is just lack of imagination. In the creation of anything, there is plenty of stuff you could give to pledges: stickers, magnets, concept art, original sketches, NPC names... F/OSS can use kickstarter, it just need to plan ahead on what things it can give as pledges, while still retain enough cash for the goals.
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People don't respond to idealistic ideas as well as their basic nature.
The idea of Kickstarter can work well for F/OSS, but these GNU/BSD/MIT people need to understand social engineering better.
P.S. voted you up
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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").
So? The scarcity in the rewards doesn't have to be scarcity of the software - and if you look at the rewards offered, that's generally only true of the very lowest tiers. Above that, you have rewards like "name in the credits", or participation in the creative process, or game elements named after you, or a dozen other things of that nature.
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There are at least two succesful open source projects in kickstarter:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/149077132/a-house-in-california-a-point-click-art-game?ref=live
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1384519763/pissed-off-penguins?ref=live
Just because people backed the project doesn't mean it can be released freely afterwards. They still can get their recognition through the rewards
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GitHub are really well positioned to provide a crowdfunding platform for FOSS projects.
I suspect that, with the success of Kickstarter and other similar sites, it's only a matter of time before someone makes the model work for commons-based stuff.
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That there is an oxymoron. There are no high-quality F/OSS games.
Freespace series? Search & Rescue series? FlightGear? None of those are high-quality?
(I was also just checking the progress on Vdrift, screenshots look good now, I'll have to give it a try.)
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Free and open source are always portrayed as the holy grail but they more often than not fall short of what the public actually wants. Look at open source graphics software. Yes Blender is powerful and can do what most of the big boys can yet hardly any pros use it and they are still willing to pay $3,000+ for software where as Blender is free. The interface is clunky making it slow and painful for most to work with damning it to the side lines. Gimp has fallen to a similar fate although is far more useful
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Most of the backers here basically prepaid for a copy of the game (There were some exceptions, like the ones mentioned who gave 10k). We went in giving what we thought was a decent price for a game from a proven developer. None of the backers expected to get access to the source, they're not being robbed of anything.
I missed the part where the Slashdot community signed up for a total open-source at all times stance on software licensing.
Great. Although... (Score:1)
The only problem I can see is that now that the precedent has been set, the result better be the gaming equal to the Second Coming, else the fickle "gamerz" out there will raise so much Internet fury that everyone will be too scared to attempt this again.
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I know who it is. But even the most epic game designers can have off-games. It's one thing to have a company breathing down your neck for "quality assurance," but to have MILLIONS of fans that have donated their hard-earned cash, directly funding your project?
That's some serious pressure.
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If this game is anything but perfect... (Score:1)
...he's gonna have some 'splaining to do.
Silly NPR! Gaming isn't just for kids! (Score:3)
Schafer plans to do just that and make a documentary about it, to demystify the process for kids who think that only big publishers can make games.
The 74,000 backers are obviously just buying the game for their kids.
Investment Market Development (Score:1)
We're returning to a model of creative production based on Renaissance "patronage," but with that patronage distributed throughout the population of individuals who will actually be using the pro
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Using the right online platform, you can turn your entire consumer base into a focus group that tells you exactly what they want
That might be OK for populist entertainment, but it's not a great basis for serious art.
At least in the past the rich patrons were cultured and expected to pay for the best, which would be judged by other cultured people. Now you'll just get lots of people demanding LOLcats and ponies.
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]
Erfworld kickstarter (Score:2)
and while we are on the topic, the Erfworld Kickstarter [kickstarter.com] has raised over $64000 with over 880 backers to fund a motion comic
Additional funds will go towards [partiallyclips.com] -
New Erfworld website [erfworld.com]
Free Erfworld book 1 for a variety of people
Funding a reprint of book 1
Funding to making Hamstard [hamstard.com] beanies
Funding for a make-your-own-Hamstard-comic tool
Funding f
Duke Nukem Forever? (Score:2)