Double Fine and 2 Player Productions turn to Kickstarter to fund new adventure game and documentary

There was recently some talk that Minecraft creator, Markus "Notch" Persson, and Double Fine were teaming up to make Psychonauts 2 a reality. It seems that project isn't happening. Not right away at least. Earlier tonight Double Fine founder, Tim Shafer, announced on Twitter that his company will be starting a Kickstarter to raise money for a new adventure game. Along side it's development they will film a documentary series which will be handled by 2 Player Productions.

To bring it all back around, 2 Player Productions are currently filming a documentary on Minecraft creator, "Notch."

Kickstarter is a site designed for budding entrepreneurs to enlist the help of the end consumer to get their product to market. Pledging any amount will help the project and in most cases pledging a certain amount will get you the product they are raising money for.

Tim Schafer is a legend in the adventure game genre with titles like Grim Fandango, Full Throttle and The Secret of Monkey Island. Double Fine has recently been putting out great XBLA titles. Their latest, Happy Action Theater, is a Kinect game and just released on Xbox Live Arcade.

To my knowledge this is the first time a large, well known studio has taken to Kickstarted to fund a project. Schafer and his team's goal is to document the entire process, "warts and all." Backers of a certain amount will be able to give feedback on development and have access to the beta of the game on Steam. There are also some rewards for some extreme backers, $15,000+. Those include having dinner with Tim Schafer and some of the teams and for the bargain price of $35,000 you can get a "Undoctored picture of Ron Gilbert smiling."

Of course you don't have to pledge that much. You can pledge $1 and feel good about yourself or starting at $15 get the final copy of the game once it is done.

At the time of this post they're at $155,780 toward their goal of $400,000. I think this is a great idea and will certainly wake up some publishers who thought adventure games are dead.

Double Fine | Kickstarter

Update on Thu, February 9, 2012 by Mike

[UPDATE] The project is now fully funded and then some. At the time the project is up to $430,612. That is $30,612 over their goal. With still another 33 days to go could this project reach $1 million?