Tim Schafer opts to try out Kickstarter for his next game | Hacker News Reader

Tim Schafer opts to try out Kickstarter for his next game

icrontic.com

127 pointsprimesuspect25 comments

Save yourself the useless submission url, go directly to the verbose and interesting http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adv...

It didn't even mention that there are higher reward levels than the ones mentioned on the KS page. http://www.doublefine.com/news/comments/the_double_fine_adve...

Article doesn't go into detail about that, but for anyone that missed it - it may be not the only game from Tim Schafer that is funded by unconventional means.

In recent interview, he said that he'd love to make sequel to Psychonauts (game that was acclaimed by critics, has huge fanbase, but didn't sold well), he even pitched few publishers, but nobody would give him money to do it.

When notch (creator of Minecraft) read that article, he tweeted to Tim: 'Let’s make Psychonauts 2 happen'.[0] He later confirmed he was deadly serious - but of course neither him or Tim confirmed anything.

You can probably dig relevant tweets at [1] and [2].

[0] https://twitter.com/#!/notch/status/166838426207924224 [1] http://twitter.com/#!/timoflegend [2] http://twitter.com/#!/notch

current status: https://twitter.com/#!/TimOfLegend/status/167414243858202624

"These things take time to figure out--if they can be figured out--so please don’t expect any Psychonauts 2 announcements any time soon."

Notch was also the $10k donator on this kickstarter project.

https://twitter.com/#!/notch/status/167551424396394496

He isn't. Notch selected the paintings option (reference: https://twitter.com/#!/notch/status/167449996323586048 https://twitter.com/#!/notch/status/167450558259666944). You can pledge an amount and then select any reward below the value, so you can pledge $10k and only take the $15 reward if you like, only the person who selected the $10k reward (no matter their pledge value) will show as the $10k reward person.

They just hit the 400k target in 8-9 hours. For comparison the elevation iphone dock was at 375k after 7 full days.

I've been following it all evening and can't help but feel I just witnessed a landmark event.

$300,000 pledged in 6 hours. Maybe the article[1] earlier today about Kickstarter record being broken by The Elevation Dock was premature and it will be a shortly held record :-)

[1] http://pandodaily.com/2012/02/08/kickstarter-fundraising-rec...

Oh wow, I saw the kickstarter page say 13k backers and I read $13k pledged, at which point I went "I don't think they'll reach the goal, but there's still a month left". It's currently at $540k, $140k over their goal. I'm just amazed.

Man, Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert? I'm tempted to chip in just on the off chance that I'll someday own a device capable of running that game (since the odds of a Linux port are likely pretty dang small, despite the work of the Humble Bundle guys).

I hope they will consider supporting Linux if they raise way more than their goal (which looks likely). FAQ says that additional funds can go to "additional release platforms for the game".

I personally think it's a bit off that a crowdfunded project like this is offering a DRMed deliverable to its customers. I expect the choice of Steam is more due to convenience than a consideration of its DRM scheme, but I'd be much more comfortable funding this if supporters were given access to a unencumbered standalone release.

Steam is such a good, user-friendly platform nobody really cares that it wraps everything in DRM.

Even if the world ended and Valve had to shut down Steam I feel pretty comfortable in the assumption they would "do right" by their customers in the end times to get around the DRM issues.

It really is DRM done right, it now rarely breaks and the offline mode works. I rarely buy games other than on steam any more.

With the exception of, for some reason, Portal 2 which was an unreliable disaster of buggy DRM at first launch and still requires me to disable my anti-virus software in order to actually get it to pass the DRM check and start. (Also, if you're offline the first time you attempt to actually start Portal 2 and presumably other modern Steam DRM games it won't run.)

Steam is such a good, user-friendly platform

Until you piss the wrong person off(or fate strikes), they close your account and you lose everything you bought with them.

Be sure to watch the promotional video, it's hilarious.

The team's games are super hilarious too.

Thanks, it wasn't immediately obvious to me that there was any way to watch a video on the page.

I wasn't all that familiar with Tim Schafer, but now I can only think about what the collaborations for Brütal Legend with Jack Black must have been like. (I suppose that's what YouTube is for.)

I really hope this works. It'd be fantastic to see this become a reliable way to fund new adventure games, especially if they're from Tim Schafer.

My first backing on Kickstarter. Amazing. I hope this is landmark moment.

Mine too. I really hope this type of funding will become more and more common in the entertainment industries.

I hope so too. This is super exciting. (I'm an early investor in Kickstarter, so I was hoping this would happen. Exciting nonetheless.)

Doublefine just released Psychonauts for MacOS a few months ago. Strongly encourage anyone who hasn't experienced it yet to give it a try:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/psychonauts/id459476769?mt=12

I wonder what type of equity I would get in the company for my angel investment?

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