You Tell Me | Double Fine Crowdfunding Fun

So this is awesome.

While I was asleep last night, the highly-held developers behind Psychonauts and Brutal Legend announced that they were seeking funding for an original point-and-click adventure, a la Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle, both of which Double Fine mastermind Tim Schafer had a huge hand in creating way back when.

They were aiming to raise $400,000 to bankroll the project. Through Kickstarter, of all things.

This of course came on the heels of a flurry of tweets yesterday between Schafer and Minecraft millionaire Notch, who had suggested he give Double Fine a bunch of money to make a sequel to Psychonauts. Very kind of him it was as well; I'd love to play one.

In any event, when I awoke this morning, I'd no sooner read the news and clicked through to the Kickstarter site to see how much money had been pledged in my absence than the project met, and then immediately exceeded, its $400,000 goal.

I went in for $20 anyway. And clearly I wasn't the only one, because at the time of this writing, there's already an additional $130k in Double Fine's point-and-click coffers, and the number keeps going up. Go us!

So I was saying: this is awesome. Agreed?

But it got me thinking, as awesome things often do, and my thinkings were along these lines: if genre readers could come together like these gamers have, in their tens of thousands to support of an author or a specific series instead of a studio like Double Fine, and a project like this forthcoming point-and-click, what would we want to spend our hard-earned on?

You tell me, ladies and gentleman: what's the sequel that you've always longed to read, if only it existed? What book would you put up a bit of your own money to see written?

For myself, I'd give, say... £100 if it'd help convince China Mieville to go back to Bas-Lag.

I love that series like no other, and as incredible as Mieville's original fiction has been since Iron Council - and it has been, make no mistake - every time a new book is announced, and I realise it's not about Bas-Lag, which I long to go back to, a little part of me laments.

That'd be my pick, in any event.

Bear in mind that this is a strictly theoretical question - I am certainly not about to kick-start a Kickstarter on China Mieville's behalf - so let's not stress about the real world impediments that might put a dampener on our imaginations. Never mind that a given author might not be interested in returning to such and such a world however much money we wave in his or her face. Never mind viability or profitability or any of those fun-sucking factors.

Saying that, no amount of money is going to bring a dead writer back to life, so let's not go beyond the pale here. If you've always wanted to read a fourth Lord of the Rings novel, sure, say so... but who would you want to write it?

Like the thing says: you tell me!