Context: Psychonauts 2 was just announced as a legitimate surprise at The Game Awards.<p>Meta-Context: Double Fine has had terrible, terrible luck with crowdfunding and funds in their previous ventures (there is actually a <i>documentary</i> explicitly about that: <a href="http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/10/broken-ages-making-of-documentary-may-be-double-fines-most-enduring-legacy/" rel="nofollow">http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/10/broken-ages-making-of-...</a>), which may explain why they are trying an experimental crowdfunding platform.
Broken Age (the previous Kickstarter from Double Fine) was an horrible game (especially the second act - and it was super late and way over budget in the end) so it hardly proves that direct funding is a good idea in the first place.
I bought Hack n Slash because it was supposed to be some hackable, easily moddable adventure game, but it was terrible. To my knowledge, no one really modded it either. The in-game condition statement crystals were way more confusing than any if or for statement. Kind of left a bad taste in my mouth. Their latest games haven't been very good IMHO. Hope they don't destroy Psychonauts.
Way back when before the Broken Age Kickstarter and before Microsoft bought Minecraft Notch half-jokingly tweeted an offer to personally fund a sequel to Psychonaughts. In interviews Tim Schafer (head of Double Fine) mentioned that that wasn't very realistic as a proper sequel would cost around $13 million.<p>It's interesting that in the news reports about this latest announcement state that crowd funding will be used alongside outside private investment.<p>It makes me wonder if this fig campaign is mainly about generating buzz (for both fig and Psychonauts 2) and as a way to prove public interest in order to unlock the aforementioned outside investment.<p><a href="http://kotaku.com/5885525/bankrolling-psychonauts-2-was-just-a-semi-joke-says-notch" rel="nofollow">http://kotaku.com/5885525/bankrolling-psychonauts-2-was-just...</a>
It seems that this time around fig is taking unaccredited investments, which is interesting.<p>Double Fine is hit and miss, but at least they are trying to be original, and they have a good reputation in a pretty shady industry. I'll support them.