It’s been a kick-ass week for raising money on Kickstarter. The crowd-source funding site saw a new record set on Wednesday by the Elevation iPhone Dock, which raised over $1 million in less than two months and beat the previous all-time funding record of $942,000 (it’s now up to $1,035,214). Today, it looks like yet another record could be broken.
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On Wednesday night, San Francisco-based independent video game studio Double Fine Productions posted a new adventure game on the fundraising site with the goal of collecting $400,000, and watched the dollars start to pour in from fans. In just eight hours and 11 minutes, Double Fine had surpassed its goal. Less than eight hours later, they had doubled it. At time of publication, the total raised was over $900,000 and growing by tens of thousands of dollars every few minutes – with 33 days left to collect.
Owner Tim Schafer, who is known for popular adventure games like Full Throttle and The Secret of Monkey Island, says, although there’s huge interest from fans, he’s struggled to get any interest from big game publishers to do adventure games like this one. That’s when he turned to Kickstarter.
Kickstarter funders don’t receive any ownership of the project, and don’t see a return on their money, but many Kickstarter projects offer perks. Double Fine will give a copy of the game to anyone who gives $15 or more and a signed poster to those who give $250 or more. Donors who give $10,000 or more get lunch and a tour of the studio with Schafer and Ron Gilbert, another developer. One video game animator in Seattle, Will Christiansen, heard about it this morning and gave $100. “Everyone was passing the link around Facebook and Twitter,” he said. “As developers and gamers, we’d love to see this new model take off. It would mean a big shift in the game/publisher dynamic and could make games more interesting, innovative and independent.”