Double Fine caused headlines last week when its founder, legendary point and click game pioneer Tim Schafer, raised more than a million dollars in a day for a new adventure game via Kickstarter. Now, in an interview following his success, Schafer has let slip on some of the company’s mobile plans too.
In an interview with newly launched digital games website Hookshot Inc, Schafer talks about his reaction to raising a small fortune through Kickstarter for a new, nostalgic adventure game – $1,671,984 (£1.05m) at the time of writing. The former LucasArts creative force says he never saw it coming. “No! I guessed by the end of the first night we’d be at $2000.”
More intriguingly, this breakthrough seems to have given Schafer a new lease on experimenting with business models, and that extends to the platforms Double Fine’s games will be released on.
The Double Fine Effect: Classic and cancelled games that need a Kickstart
“We’ve been trying all these different projects, and it’s great – we have multiple teams and multiple leaders like Lee Petty, Brad Meer and Nathan Martz, people who are new, who can take on these projects. We’ll try out iOS devices, or maybe free-to-play, we’ll try licenses. We’re having a lot of fun doing it.”
Double Fine’s previous games have all been for desktop computers, Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, so switching to iPhone would be quite a change. “Double Fine Adventure”, as the new game is being dubbed for now, is listed on the company’s site as being for “For PC… Mac? Linux? iOS? etc?!?!”
Perhaps more intriguingly, Schafer’s suggestion of “free-to-play” games points to a possible Android release down the line: Google’s operating system has proven a popular platform on which to release “freemium” and ad-supported games: Rovio’s hit Angry Birds is a prime example, and has raked in a fortune for the Finnish firm.
The new Double Fine adventure on Android? Don’t rule it out…
