Double Fine Productions have had a rough time lately. After their 2008 heavy metal-themed real-time-strategy-hack-and-slash game, “Brutal Legend,” couldn’t find a publisher, they put out a few smaller, very successful arcade games. After “Brutal Legend” finally came out, it didn’t exactly break sale records and Double Fine became a risky investment. 

Meanwhile, old school adventure game fans have been somewhat forgotten. Adventure fan outcry became so loud that Tim Shafer, founder of Double Fine, got an idea.

Shafer announced in a YouTube video that he and Double Fine would love to make a game without all the pressure from publishers, so they started a cause on kickstarter.com asking $400,000 from the Internet to create a game just for adventure game fans. $300,000 of the donations would go to creating the game. Shafer said the rest of the money would be used to film the entire process of game creation in order to keep donors updated and involved. 

The video went live on Feb. 8.

By Feb. 9 donors had pledged close to one and a half million dollars and blew past two million after only 12 days.

Everyone was shocked and the Internet gave itself a big high-five. Since then, Shafer has announced that the game will now feature voice acting and will launch on PC, Mac, Linux, iPhone and select android phones.

It’s a big win for gamers and a bigger win for smaller game studios. 

Giving the fans the ability to get exactly what they want is a great idea, one I can see many people getting behind. 

I am very interested in seeing where this could lead. If there is one thing I hope comes from this endeavor, it’s better communication between studios and fans of the game. While most game companies are big boys and can handle themselves quite well, it would be beneficial for companies that have done nothing but disappoint in recent years; makers of “Silent Hill,” I’m looking at you.

This raises another problem, though. What do fans know about game design? I don’t think I’m qualified to properly tell a game developer how to do their job. Would increased fan input decrease creative freedoms? Would fan funded games basically be swapping one giant nagging publisher for thousands of smaller ones?

I honestly cannot see this model working for any other studio besides Double Fine and that’s because every gamer worth their salt is a fan of at least one Double Fine game.

You know what I’d like? A community funded film company that would adapt books, comics and games the right way. I’d honestly pay any amount of money to get a proper “Metal Gear Solid” movie made.