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Kickstarter's big moment: 2 projects earn $1 million on same dayFeb 10, 2012 (Los Angeles Times - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Not one, but two, projects posted on the crowd-sourced funding website broke the $1 million barrier on Thursday, kicking the previous record of $942,579 to the curb. And even crazier? One of those projects--a new game by game designer Tim Schafer and Double Fine Productions--earned $1 million in less than 24 hours. A minute-by-minute post on the Kickstarter blog describing Kickstarter's big day in giddy detail shows the whole Kickstarter staff staring at a large screen hovering above their office, thumbs placed on Champagne corks to pop the bubbly the second the million dollar pledge for Double Fine's game came in, which it did at 6:41 p.m. EST. In the words of the Kickstarter blogger, "YES!!!" The first project to cross the million-dollar barrier was the Elevation Dock for the iPhone, which was posted on the site in December by Elevation Lab of Portland. Elevation Lab originally asked for a pledge of $75,000 from the Kickstarter community to make its state of the art iPhone dock that improves sound, can be used with or without a case, and comes in a variety of finishes. As of this writing, the project had raised $1.167 million from 10,641 backers with 24 hours to go. As for the Double Fine project--the project met its stated goal of $400,000 just eight hours after turning to the Kickstarter community. As of this writing, it has raised $1.357 million from 37,467 backers with 38 days to go. There is something especially satisfying about the Double Fine funding--perhaps because the people at Double Fine Productions framed it as a battle between video game publishers and video game fans. "Publishers tell us that adventure games are dead. Our fans tell us they aren't," the company writes on its website. "Who is right? Well, I think it's about time we found out! Into the THUNDERDOME! And by THUNDERDOME, I mean KICKSTARTER!" ALSO: Google working on home entertainment device FBI: Steve Jobs not a communitst, didn't like gym Santorum isn't only candidate whose search results go negative ___ (c)2012 the Los Angeles Times Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |