Tim Schafer – MMO Fallout

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Cliff Bleszinski, developer known for Unreal Tournament and Gears of War, is the latest big name to join crowdfunding platform Fig. Bleszinski joins Tim Schafer and Brian Fargo in heading up the platform that hopes to differentiate itself from the likes of Kickstarter and Indiegogo by offering backers the chance to actually invest in projects and receive money back if the game proves to be a success.

Despite its small library, Fig has seen the successful funding of numerous titles including Schafer’s own Psychonauts 2, Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob game, and Outer Wild. The platform was also host to the well-publicized failure of Rock Band to secure a PC port, pulling in just $792 thousand out of the $1.5 million it had asked for.

Fig hopes that its hands-on curation will create an environment that is welcoming to backers around the $20 mark who simply want a fun game all the way up to four-figure investors who want to see a return on their money. Fig’s current focus is on Consortium: The Tower, currently exceeding its funding goal.

(Source: Forbes)

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Psychonauts 2 raised more than $3 million in crowd funding using a new platform called Fig, one which Double Fine President Tim Schafer serves on the advisory board. More than twenty thousand people pooled their money together to make the sequel to 2005’s Psychonauts a reality, but did the success of a widely anticipated game bring lasting attention to the Fig platform? Judging from the followup campaigns, it doesn’t seem so.

And let’s be fair, Fig is still a very young platform, it still has a life ahead of it to blow up into a big platform for video game crowdfunding. For now, however, the platform is comprised of five campaigns overall. Psychonauts 2 and Outer Wilds were both successful in reaching their goal, however the latter only aimed for $125 grand and beat the mark by one thousand dollars. Anchors in the Drift, the third and last campaign to have ended, missed its goal by a wide margin: Just a fifth of the half a million for a free to play ARPG from the creators of Scribblenauts.

Fig’s other two remaining projects aren’t looking that great. The Rock Band 4 PC port, for which Harmonix wants $1.5 million up front, has ten days to go and just scratched half a million dollars. The other campaign, a video game based on the Jay & Silent Bob characters from film creator Kevin Smith, may see itself become the platform’s third successful campaign if it raises fifty grand in the next five days.

With the success of Kickstarter and Indiegogo, all sorts of third party groups are coming out of the woodwork with their own short-lived crowdfunding platforms, and if Fig wants to continue off of its early successes, it will need to keep the momentum going.