Adventures in Funding

Unless you had your head under a rock for the past week, you might have noticed that Double Fine made a little stir in the gaming community by using Kickstarter to fund a brand new point and click adventure game. They needed $400,000. They raised it in about eight hours. They then hit a million dollars in under 24 hours, and broke Kickstarter records. Four days from when they started, and they are currently sitting at $1.6 million, four times the initial amount. By the time their Kickstarter page closes in a months time, I wouldn't be surprised if they hit $2 million. Basically, Double Fine did something amazing.

A lot of people were commenting about how this might affect the industry. Some suggested that it might be the end of publishers. Others came back stating that the Kickstarter approach only really works for studios with an established studio such as Double Fine, which is true. But I think what is important about what DF have done is more the idea behind it.

Finally Fantasized

I always worry about writing too much on a single genre, because I fear it alienates my audience. Then I remember that this audience is almost entirely fictional, so it's all good again. Despite this, allow me to reassure you that this'll be my last post about Final Fantasy for a while. Maybe. I don't know, stop judging me.

NINE! IX! Yeah, it's going pretty well. My chocobo can fly now. Took basically forever, because the only way to get your golden chocobo is through a dumb-luck mini-game that is more than a tad frustrating. But hey, doesn't matter now, cause MY CHOCOBO CAN FLY! Getting to the stage where you have free roam of the map is something I've only really achieved in the original Final Fantasy, so I was super excited to be able to go everywhere.

Unfortunately, it turns out once you've got that far in the game, there's really shit all to do around the map. Yeah you can go to a flooded library, but there's not a huge amount to do there. It's fun to go back and explore old locales but it doesn't really add much to the game. I guess it's just that freedom of choice to be able to go anywhere you want. I just wished there was something to do when I got there.