Continue reading Nintendo brought these three Wii U videos to Sundance

Nintendo brought these three Wii U videos to Sundance originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 21 Jan 2013 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

You might be surprised to hear it, but Double Fine head Tim Schafer isn't feeling too much pressure after receiving over $3 million from fans for his upcoming adventure game. "I don't know if I could describe it ... it's kind of relaxing," he told a crowd of attendees at a New York University-hosted forum last evening, much to the crowd's delight. Answering seriously, Schafer said, "It hasn't really felt that way," referring to the stress. "It just felt like, the whole thing, all the backing just felt like a big wave of goodwill and support. It was very emotionally ... it was a big happy moment for the company."

Beyond his jokes about stress and receiving enormous piles of cash, Schafer said that he was "actually terrified of making a game for just $200,000." (The final Kickstarter aimed to raise $400,000.) He questioned whether he was still capable of producing a project for such scant resources, having spent the last decade making successively larger projects - at least until Brutal Legend launched. Thankfully, fans raised well over the original target, meaning Schafer, Ron Gilbert, and Double Fine "can actually put a real team on it now and have a whole year to make it." So there you have it, folks: expect that adventure game at some point in early 2013.

As for Kickstarter itself, Schafer spoke highly of the new avenue it provides game creators who want to self-publish. He stopped himself short of calling it anything beyond that, however. "I think it's a great new way to make things happen that couldn't happen before," he said. More specifically, he thinks of it - symbolically - like the Sundance Film Festival. "That changed the [movie] business a lot, but it didn't destroy all of it," he said. "It made Hollywood better. It made more diversity in the kind of movies getting made, what kind of actors were in them - it made the whole art form richer I think. I think a similar thing could happen in gaming."

Schafer: 'It's not that stressful to get a whole bunch of money all of a sudden' originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 23 Mar 2012 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Gallery: Indie Game: The Movie

Continue reading 'Everything's happening now:' Indie Game: The Movie at Sundance

'Everything's happening now:' Indie Game: The Movie at Sundance originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky's Indie Game: The Movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this weekend, and already it's gaining mainstream attention. High-profile producer Scott Rudin (The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and HBO have optioned for the rights to Indie Game: The Movie, with plans to develop it as a half-hour fictional series, with Rudin as executive producer, Deadline New York reports.

We picture Super Meat Boy's Edmund McMillen and FEZ's Phil Fish as a hilariously unfit buddy-cop duo patrolling the mean streets of Hoboken, New Jersey with an 8-bit-animated talking-dog sidekick. We picture that, but we really hope it's not the case -- the trailers for Indie Game: The Movie suggest a classier vibe, although if Trent Reznor signs on to compose the HBO series' soundtrack, we may expect to see a very different side indie development, indeed.

Update: Pajot and Swirsky have clarified the original report, which stated the possible HBO show would be a comedy series, and apparently the joke's on us. "HBO has optioned IGTM for the basis of a (fictional) series," Pajot and Swirsky write on the Indie Game: The Movie Facebook page. "It is NOT a comedy. It is NOT a sitcom." We're all sleeping better tonight.

Indie Game: The Movie: The HBO series, produced by Scott Rudin [Update] originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 22 Jan 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Indie Game: The Movie making its debut at the Sundance Film Festival originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 30 Nov 2011 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading 2008 Sundance short films on Xbox Video Marketplace

2008 Sundance short films on Xbox Video Marketplace originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 16 Jan 2008 14:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.