Publishers beware: Can other game developers copy Double Fine’s Kickstarter millions?

For decades, there was one really successful financial model for making big, profitable games: a publisher providing project funding to a developer in exchange for a large share of any eventual profits. It’s a model that’s seen its share of disruptions in recent years, with direct game downloads and free-to-play, micro-transaction fueled games often succeeding without the need for a publishing middleman.

But the traditional model saw one of its biggest disruptions earlier this month, when developer Double Fine, sporting talent behind classic point-and-click adventure titles like Grim Fandango and The Secret of Monkey Island, managed to raise over $1 million of funding for a new adventure game project in under 24 hours, directly from tens of thousands of eager fans on Kickstarter.

The success of the project, which started as a way to get around risk-averse publishers and missed becoming Kickstarter’s first seven-figure fund by just a few hours, was a shock even to those behind the idea.

“One of the reasons we were nervous about being on Kickstarter was because a lot of the stuff we had seen before was [bringing in] $10 to $20,000,” Double Fine producer Greg Rice told Ars Technica. The team’s $400,000 initial funding goal, Rice said, was “lower than we would have ideally hoped for.” But it also “kind of paid off in that people came back to support it and we ended up making a lot more money than we planned.”

With the project now approaching $2 million in funding with 25 days to go, the industry faces an important question: was Double Fine’s funding success a one-time fluke, or the kind of thing other developers could easily replicate? Is this project just an anomaly, or does it represent a sea change moment where game developers finally move en masse to a player-funded model that gets around the publishing middlemen once and for all?

Success breeds success

In order to raise relatively huge amounts like Double Fine, I think really requires [having] a reputation for quality games going in

“We definitely had everything working in our favor on this project,” Rice admitted when asked if others could follow in Double Fine’s Kickstarter footsteps. “We had the right timing, and we were the first kind of project of this scope. We’ve got a lot of fans that have sort of been asking for this for a while. So I think it was a good combination of something people were asking for and offered in a way that was unique enough to appeal to people.”

The fact that Double Fine already had an unimpeachable reputation among adventure game fans certainly played a role in the project’s success, Rice said. “Not just because we have a good fanbase that was ready to give us money, but also because we have a lot of contacts in the press that we were able to leverage to get more attention than we would have otherwise.”

But Rice suggested that lesser-known studios could probably emulate the company’s model, as long as they had a strong game concept. “I think it’s about having the right idea and if there’s a game there that people get excited about they’re going to fund it regardless of who’s involved,” he said.

Others disagreed that a studio that wasn’t already a success would have such an easy time making money on the same scale, though. “Although people like to think that ideas are key, when it comes to funding, whether that’s traditional through publishers or non-traditional like crowdfunding, your ability to execute on an idea is far more important than the idea itself,” said Zeboyd Games founder Robert Boyd, the creator of offbeat indie RPG hits such as Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World. “Smaller companies with good ideas and well thought out pitches can have successful Kickstarters, but in order to raise relatively huge amounts like Double Fine, I think really requires [having] a reputation for quality games going in.”

Boyd, who’s used Kickstarter himself to raise over $6,000 for for an enhanced PC port of Cthulhu Saves the World, says his “generous fan base” could probably bring in anywhere from $10 to $50,000 for a new, original project. “However, if we were making a direct sequel to a popular old game (like we somehow got the rights to make a new Lunar or Grandia game), I bet the amount of funding we could get would be at least ten times that much,” he added. In other words, strong game branding can be worth even more than a strong developer reputation.

Not too big, not too small

Size Five Games co-founder Dan Marshall, known for point-and-click adventures like Ben There, Dan That and Time Gentlemen Please!, agreed that Double Fine’s situation is somewhat unique thanks to the company’s position in the industry. “I think an unknown indie would probably struggle to get a similar project funded, no matter how promising the art, animation and voice talent,” he said. “It’s all about the credentials, right?”

But even a big, well-known studio with great credentials could run in to problems with the Kickstarter funding route. “You have to have a lot of flexibility and provide a lot of transparency to do what we’re doing, which can be hard to do with some of the bigger companies,” Rice said.

Bigger studios also tend to make games whose budgets run significantly higher than the $2 or $3 million Double Fine will probably end up with. “Alright, so it’s [a few] million, but that’s only actually come from 50,000-or-so people,” Marshall pointed out. “That’s pretty small fry, right? That’s probably not really enough to justify the sort of expense game development traditionally chews through,” expenses that can top out around $100 million.

Despite his success bringing in money through Kickstarter, Rice says Double Fine isn’t giving up on going through traditional publishers down the road

“As far as game budgets go it’s not much,” Rice agreed.

So, to succeed on Kickstarter, you might need to fall into that sweet spot where you’re big enough to be well known, but not so large that the fans don’t feel a connection to your bloated mega-projects. Rice suggested someone like Minecraft developer Mojang or Braid maker Jonathan Blow might be a perfect candidate for this type of funding. Boyd pointed to an RPG maker like Obsidian, which could find favor for a turn-based RPG that bucked the industry trend towards action RPGs.

But one of Rice’s hypothetical funding suggestions ran quite a bit larger than those options. “I think people like Valve could probably make Half-Life without a publisher if they wanted to,” he said. “I don’t know about fan funding, that’s a hard thing to say at this point … [but] Half-Life fans are a very vocal crowd, and they want to see Half-Life 3 any way they can get it. If that meant putting up money, I’m sure they would do it.”

Publishers are safe… for now

Despite his success bringing in money through Kickstarter, Rice says Double Fine isn’t giving up on going through traditional publishers down the road. “There’s definitely a lot of strengths to having publishers, and there are plenty of games at the studio that we’re working on with publishers and there’s a lot of things they can offer that we won’t have on this project,” he said. “There’s definitely going to be a place for a publisher as long as there are people that want big, console, multimillion dollar games.”