The huge amount of money donated by fans has helped the studio keep its staff

Feb 14, 2012 20:31 GMT  ·  By

Famous games designer Tim Schafer has finally talked about the massive outpouring of love that was showcased by fans who donated a huge amount of money to fund the next game project coming from his own studio, Double Fine Productions.

Both Schafer and Double Fine have been all over the news in the recent week after the studio managed to raise over $1.7 million (€1.29 million) in funding right from people who donated through specialty website Kickstarter.

Now, Schafer has had a chance to talk about this epic turn of events and go into detail about the current situation at Double Fine.

According to the famous game designer, the studio had a new team working on a special project that recently got canceled. Instead of laying off some of that staff, Schafer decided to keep them employed, hoping that this new adventure game funded through Kickstarter would gather the estimated budget.

“It’s been really emotional for the whole team, I think, because we’ve had a roller coaster ride in the last couple of years,” Schafer told Giant Bomb about the Kickstarter success. “Just last month we had a project cancelled, and it was really hard on us, and we were like “Are we going to have to lay people off?””

“But instead, we decided to keep everyone together, and having that at a time when we’ve been struggling, to have this huge outpouring of love from the community and the fans and other developers...it’s just been something that reminded everyone at the company that what they’re doing is noticed by people and matters to people,” Schafer added.

The atmosphere at Double Fine is ecstatic, according to Schafer, who has yet to visit the studio because he was participated at the DICE summit in Last Vegas.

“I just wish I was at the office because every time I call the office, and I can tell from the emails, that everyone was just bouncing off the walls at Double Fine. They had champagne and they were refreshing the screen and they crashed Kickstarter [from] refreshing it so much, and they hit a million and they all started screaming,” Schafer said.

Double Fine’s adventure game project is still accepting donations, so you can help out by visiting its Kickstarter page at this link.