The announcement of yet another Double Fine crowdfunding campaign for Psychonauts 2 has rubbed many up the wrong way, considering the development studio’s history with sourcing money for their games from their fans. With Broken Age having released way behind schedule, with its first act even being pushed through Early Access because the $3.3 million given to its creators wasn’t enough for Double Fine to finish the project, and Spacebase DF-9 being a complete mess that launched with a number of its promised features absent from the final game, many are rightfully questioning why we should be so keen to lend them a hand once again in their funding for a Psychonauts sequel.
Double Fine have chosen Fig, the crowd-funding platform founded by former Double Fine COO Justin Bailey, to launch their campaign for the game, and at the time of this writing it’s attracted over $1.8 million in funds with a hefty goal of $3.3 million. With such a large amount of money being required for Psychonauts 2 to achieve funding, it seems that Double Fine is using another one of its games as a dangling carrot, suggesting that the success of Psychonauts 2‘s Fig campaign will make the release of Brutal Legend 2 “more likely.”
The statement was made during a Q&A session on the game’s Fig page, with the full quote from Double Fine reading: “We’ve always said that we wanted to make sequels to both Psychonauts and Brutal Legend. We can’t make any promises but if Psychonauts is a success for us, then perhaps Brutal Legend 2 will be more possible?”
They also posted the following tweet:
@n7tank @dannyodwyer if our Psychonauts 2 campaign goes well, it would make a Brutal Legend sequel more possible, so maybe one day!
— Double Fine (@DoubleFine) December 5, 2015
The quote is a bit of a head-scratcher. Considering Double Fine has been reliant upon crowdfunding campaigns to launch many of their games, aside from their unique little low-budget titles such as Stacking, it’s imaginable that Brutal Legend 2 would go down this route, too. If that were to be the case, then why would Double Fine say that its creation would be reliant upon Psychonauts 2‘s success? If the developer is only going to tap the general public up for the money required to fund Brutal Legend 2, then how will this process be affected by their current crowdfunding campaign for a completely different game?
While it could certainly be cynically suggested that Double Fine is attempting to use the allure of a Brutal Legend 2 in order to convince more people to plump up the money for Psychonauts 2, it could also be likely that Double Fine would use the success of the Psychonauts 2 campaign to shop Brutal Legend 2 to investors for partial funding. Some crowdfunding campaigns also seek funding outside of the money they raise from backers, and if Brutal Legend 2 were to do this, then Psychonauts 2 achieving its lofty Fig goal would certainly make another Double Fine game appealing to potential investors.
But with that being said, it’s understandable why many would be skeptical of Double Fine’s motives given their continued use of crowdfunding despite their spotty history with the business model. Hopefully if Psychonauts 2 does reach its target, Double Fine will be able to deliver the game with minimal hiccups, and ensure that when they launch their next inevitable crowdfunding campaign fans of the developer can feel a lot more confident about it.
[Via Videogamer]
