Double Fine crowdsources new game

Update:

Double Fine has now hit (and surpassed) its funding target, and broken Kickstarter records.

The company reached its target of US$400,000 late last night New Zealand time, less than eight hours after posting the project.

$300,000 of the funding was to go toward making the game, and the extra $100,000 was for making a documentary of the game.

However funding is now up to more than US$843,000. Double Fine's Tim Schafer said that the extra money will be spent on improving the game, including making it in more languages and porting it to more platforms.

The Double Fine Adventure project has now raised more money than any other Kickstarter project and has the largest number of backers the website has seen since its startup in 2009.

Original story:

Game developer Double Fine has been having trouble getting publishers to fund the company's games as of late, so it's pitching its newest project to the crowd. About an hour after posting the project on crowdsourced funding website Kickstarter, the company's fans had already raised more than US$45,000.

At the time of writing, the Californian developer had raised US$46,029 from 901 backers - meaning the average spend per person was a very respectable US$51.

The project, currently dubbed Double Fine Adventure, will be headed by game developing legends Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert, and will be a point-and-click adventure game released on Steam.

"If I were to go to a publisher right now and pitch an adventure game, they'd laugh in my face," Schafer said in a video about the project.

"And that's when it occurred to me: Kickstarter. We can use Kickstarter to make a fan-funded, old-school adventure game."

"It's perfect. We've got the perfect team here at Double Fine to make it, [and] we've got the inventor of the genre here, Ron Gilbert."

Those who fund the game - dubbed 'backers' - will receive different rewards for doing so, depending on how much they contribute.

The rewards start at a $15 donation for a copy of the finished game. For a mere US$10,000, one backer could get a lunch with Schafer and Gilbert, a tour of the studio, and all previous reward tiers.

For US$50,000, a backer can actually become a character in the game.

For a full list, check out the link above, and Double Fine's website.

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