Meanderings of a Mind

Double Fine Productions, spearheaded by Tim Schaefer of Day of the Tentacles and Psychonauts fame, has launched a Kickstarter funding project to produce a modern, reenvisioned point-n-click adventure game called “Double Fine Adventure“.  If you aren’t that old, are new to video games, or somehow just missed out on the trend, check out games like Monkey Island and King’s Quest from back in the day for an idea of how these games work.  There are many aspects of this that have me thrilled, and for sanity’s sake, I will list them in a list-like form – sometimes called a “list”:

1. The people that comprise this company are sort of like famous indie developers.  I don’t know that I could comfortably say they are indie – they are all too well known and have made too many games (collectively).  But they are also not the business elite, driving after every green dollar and every red cent.  This is to say that I have a strongdesire to see them succeed.
2. Speaking of having made games, there have been a lot of really good ones to come out of these people, currently and prior to being Double Fine.  Recently, I’ve played Stacking on the 360, and just really enjoy it.
3. Crowd-sourced funding, in my humble view, denotes that the developers are trying to seek our money AND our input in game design – to the extent that it’s possible.  Also, this project is breaking crowd-sourcing records like so many bricks beneath a sensei’s chop.
4. They don’t need no steenkin’ publishers!  This could, likely, mean no DRM, no BS red-tape control over development, and more freedom for the developers to do what they need/want to do.

At any rate, for the low, low price of $15, you can basically pre-order the game, and help pay for development.  Also, their goal of $400,000 was squashed in 8 hours and 11 minutes.  As of this writing, they have reached $849,160 and are rapidly closing in on the most funded project ever on Kickstarter.  Oh, and there are still 33 days left for people to back the project.

UPDATE (2/9/2012 7:53pmEDT):  The more I think about this, the more interesting it becomes.  Not only has DF hit the million dollar mark (and climbing), but this could be as big a shift in how the gaming industry works as the shift from arcades to homes.  It may not have the overt social impact of home gaming systems, but it may have a similarly-sized impact on the content, quality, and uniqueness of games.  This excites me!