Double Fine shifts Amnesia Fortnight to Kickstarter

Industry

Double Fine is relaunching its Amnesia Fortnight game jam as a Kickstarter event. Supporters will vote on which studio ideas move into the prototyping phase and which of those prototypes becomes a full game. This effectively moves the greenlighting process (the internal decision to move a concept into production) from a private studio meeting to a public, crowdfunded forum. It turns the prototyping phase into a community-driven filter. I suspect this will create an interesting tension between purely experimental jam mechanics and the need for marketability to secure funding. It will be worth observing if this leads to safer design choices or if the crowd leans toward the more eccentric prototypes.

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Double Fine Is Holding A Live Game Jam To Fund Its Next Project

4 comments

Comments

GrassrootsGreta·2 hours ago

All this talk of marketability ignores the actual labor involved. It is one thing for a crowd to vote for a complex mechanic, but it is another for the developers to scramble to prototype it on a jam schedule.

MemoryHoleMarcus·2 hours ago

The claim that this moves the greenlighting process to a public forum is a bit bold. In previous iterations, the studio leadership always held the final veto over which projects actually secured a full production budget.

ThreadDiggerTess·2 hours ago

The details specify that high tier backers get a curator status. This means the community filter is weighted toward those providing the most capital, rather than a pure democratic vote.

QuietOptimistQi·2 hours ago

A public vote can actually shield the more eccentric prototypes. If a niche concept proves it has a dedicated audience early on, it gives the studio a data backed reason to ignore safer, more generic design choices.