In July this year, Double Fine Productions, the developer of Psychonauts 2, Keeper, and Wild Legend, was laid off by Xbox and returned to independence. After becoming independent, Double Fine announced its first new title, Thank You Bus Driver, in September.
In late August, Tim Schafer, head of Double Fine, announced that the studio's long-running game development challenge, "Amnesia Fortnight," would be revived, with plans to release a new game and a documentary.
Double Fine is once again using crowdfunding to finance the project, a tradition for the studio. Previously, they pioneered crowdfunding with Broken Age and Psychonauts 2, raising millions of dollars.
This new Kickstarter campaign invites fans to choose from 12 game concepts, four of which will be made into prototypes. Backers will then vote again to select the final prototype that will "become a (small) game."
The crowdfunding campaign went smoothly, reaching its full funding goal in just three days and hitting the $550,000 stretch goal on day 19. Subsequently, the next stretch goal was revealed: inviting voice actor Erika Ishii to provide voice work for the winning game.
Erika Ishii is known for roles such as the protagonist in Ghost of Yōtei, Valkyrie in Apex Legends, and Deathstrike in X-Men '97. However, as a DEI activist, her reputation in the gaming industry has long been tarnished.
So after Double Fine's Kickstarter campaign announced that she would be the voice actor for the winning game, some people stopped donating, and many requested refunds. The campaign surpassed $550,000 yesterday, but has seen little growth since, with the $600,000 stretch goal being Ishii's involvement in the project.
As of press time, the fundraising amount has dropped to less than $485,000. Double Fine has even disabled replies to this post and started moderating comments on Instagram.
Clearly, no players want DEI activist Erika Ishii to continue appearing in the video game industry...
Double Fine later explained that Erika Ishii had "volunteered her time to support this event and the studio's independent operations," implying that Ishii would not seek compensation. However, this statement has since been removed and can only be viewed via screenshots. Double Fine has not issued any further comments on the matter.
This controversy has cast a shadow over a crowdfunding campaign that could have spawned excellent indie games. The four finalists selected by backers are:
Architactics, a tactical city-building game where buildings can move and transform to fight
Bard Crawl, an online co-op dungeon exploration adventure game
Plot Armor, a combination of a turn-based RPG and a visual novel
Uprise, a high-speed kite-flying platformer
Notably, Double Fine also set an unrealistic $100 million goal for this crowdfunding campaign, which, if achieved, would kick off development of the long-awaited sequel to Night in the Woods. It seems this is destined to remain an unattainable dream.
