Double Fine's Massive Chalice Kickstarter Comes to a Close

[Sarah LeBoeuf]

Double Fine's Massive Chalice Kickstarter Comes to a Close

Three weeks after meeting its $725,000 goal, Massive Chalice is officially funded.

Double Fine's second Kickstarter campaign closed today, meaning that Massive Chalice is now officially funded. The campaign for the tactical strategy game from the developer behind Psychonauts and Brutal Legend began under a week [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/124478-Double-Fine-Turns-To-Kickstarter-To-Fund-Massive-Chalice]. More than 31,000 people contributed to the total of $1,229,015.

Tim Schafer's studio is no stranger to Kickstarter, of course, having used the service to successfully fund Broken Age (then called Double Fine Adventure) early last year. While that campaign was a Kickstarter [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115916-Double-Fine-Adventure-Kickstarter-Breaks-2-Million]'s FAQ, but there have been no promises.

It's easy to complain about well-known or established developers turning to Kickstarter to fund their projects, but for studios like Double Fine that have always struggled to make things work with publishers, it's a great opportunity to do something refreshing and different. Hopefully it pays off for Double Fine and its backers in the form of a great game.

Source: Destructoid [www.destructoid.com/double-fine-s-massive-chalice-is-officially-funded-257131.phtml]

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[Griffolion]

Well, Kickstarter is obviously working well for them. Best of luck to them in development.

 

[Itchi_da_killa]

I am totally keeping my eye on this game. I just checked out everything on its kickstarter and the concept sounds beast. The lineage bonus is where it's at.

 

[tautologico]

It could get more money, but I guess this is due to not being a nostalgic KS and instead trying for something new. It's also similar do Double Fine Adventure but different from most other Kickstarters in that there's no game to show yet, not even a prototype, because part of the deal is to get everything on film for the documentary.

 

[Nurb]

I'd love to play a long timeline with family lines and descendants that use relics your previous hero wore as gear.

Most games have you discover lost relics to fill the shoes of an amazing hero, but it'd be awesome to have a part in both roles. I'm glad it's funded.

 

[weirdee]

while people say that the money should be considered more for the smaller projects, i think at some point you have to ask yourself if this money wasn't ALREADY going to go to them if they made the game normally anyway, as if those smaller projects had any realistic chance of beating the big guys head on in the gaming budgets of their customers without having professional looking presentations of their own on kickstarter (among other issues that project proposals have when designing their funding campaigns)

at least this way, none of it ends up in the hands of callous, uncaring people who go through the motions for the sake of money rather than actually trying to get a decent shot at a game to market, opting to do what they think is safe when it is outdated, foolish, or just plain wrong

less famous groups will have to earn their recognition like anybody else, or seek out publicity in the community through generous amounts of interaction

 

[Issurru]

I backed this a few days ago, but meant to earlier. Seems like every kickstarter I pledge to I drop at least $100. Albeit I've only backed this, Stonehearth and Project Eternity so far, but damn do those games all look super great to me. I even get a bunch of copies of all those games too (I think). I hope people keep doing Kickstarters, it may be somewhat sketchy but I can't help but be psyched for it

 

[Terramax]

I just hope these games meet their fund-raiser's expectations. So many have paid towards their first kickstarter venture - it's amazing so many contributed to a second one, without having seen if the first one made good on its promises.

 

[RyQ_TMC]

Massive Chalice's total was just a humble $500,000 or so over the game's original goal.

I think a big part of that was that Brad decided not to go for stretch goals. They basically said "Here's the game we have in mind, if we get anything over the goal, it will be bigger". That didn't give people any incentive to keep kicking the ball. I remember when Tides of Numenera kickstarter was on, there were stretch goals every few hundred thousand bucks, so everyone was like "ooh, Pat Rothfuss! I hope it gets to that stretch goal! I'll publicize the game among my friends!... Ooh, player fortress! Maybe I'll increase my funding amount!" Massive Chalice, on the other hand, was more of a "looks cool, I'll back it" kind of affair. And the updates during the campaign were focusing on "why we are the right people for the job" (which you'd already accepted, if you decided to back) rather than "here's all the awesome stuff we can implement if we get moniez".

 

[Jandau]

Somehow, the cynical part of me read this article as "Double Fine Adventure's second Kickstarter comes to a close ; We need more money, but we can't Kickstart the same thing twice, says Schafer"...

 

[FogHornG36]

well lets hope they can finish a game before they chose to do another kickstarter for yet another game.

 

[Burnhardt]

well lets hope they can finish a game before they chose to do another kickstarter for yet another game.

Firstly, few developers work on only one game at a time.

Secondly, what the article doesn't say is that Double Fine's original Kickstarter for the Double Fine Adventure (know officially known as Broken Age), is only using about a third of the development staff at Double Fine.

This is going to be developed by a completely separate team from Broken Age's, with a different project lead, so there is unlikely to be any interference.

 

[lifeat24fps]

After the (U.S.) law was changed so that all these people could be micro-investors, I am disappointed they haven't made a step towards that model. I remember in the 90s reading about how Paul Hogan started a company on the Australian stock exchange to fund the making of Lightning Jack via selling shares. Given the legal status of these things now, that they are just looking for handouts instead of offering us a chance to fully participate financially.