Double Fine Opens Prototyping Process to the Public

Today, the folks at Double Fine Productions (Psychonauts, Brutal Legend) announced that their annual Amnesia Fortnight Project would be open to the public this year. This prototyping process has given rise to complete consumer games like Costume Quest and Once Upon a Monster.

In the past, Amnesia Fortnight was held in private at Double Fine's San Francisco headquarters. During a two week period, the developers would split into smaller teams and each make a game during that time. "I wanted to have the company have other voices besides mine, making games," notes Double Fine President and CEO Tim Schafer in an interview with IGN.

Previously, the team leaders of these prototypes were selected by Schafer himself. This year, however, you can vote on your favorite pitch from the various teams and contribute to the project on the Humble Bundle website. You can pay whatever you want, and you can even divert some of your payment to charity.

If you're interested in time traveling bro brawlers, space station simulators, or physics-based blob puzzlers, this is a project you may want to look into.

Once the winning projects are selected, 2 Player Productions will document the development process for two weeks. Once Amnesia Fortnight ends, contributors (That's You!) will receive all the prototypes, as well as two historical prototypes for Costume Quest and Happy Song (which inspired Once Upon a Monster). And perhaps one of the prototypes will even evolve into a complete consumer product! But Double Fine can make no promises of that. "It could all crash and burn," Schafer warned us with a laugh.

When asked if the team would be interested in keeping this process open to the public in future years, Schafer simply mused "once we open the doors to the chocolate factory, it's really hard to close them again."

To contribute and vote on your favorite pitch, head over to the Humble Bundle website now.

Ryan Clements writes for IGN and finished Halo 4 yesterday. He was impressed. Follow him on Twitter at @PwamCider.

Source : ign[dot]com

Amnesia: The Dark Descent Sales Pass One Million

Frictional Games revealed today that nearly 1.4 million people have purchased Amnesia: The Dark Descent. According to a blog post from the developer, 710,000 copies of the game were sold directly, as well as sales from inclusions in the Humble Indie Bundle and Steam’s Potato Sack Reunion. Overall, the sales add up to 1,360,000 units in all.

“Despite that huge number of sales, what I think is more interesting is how good the monthly sales still are,” Frictional noted. “Not counting any discounts, the monthly full price sales lie at over 10,000 units. This means that less than every 5th minute someone in the world is buying a copy of Amnesia.”

Frictional also hinted at its next project, which is currently targeted for a 2014 release. “At Frictional Games our main concern is our new super secret project. We do not want to say much about this project yet, but we can disclose that it will be horror and that it will be first person,” the post reads. “One of the things I was most disappointed with in Amnesia was that it never really managed to deliver any deeper themes, but was more like a shallow fright-fest. For the new project we want to change that and really try and bring a certain theme to the front. Our hope is that this will create a very special experience, creating horror in a much more disturbing way.”

Frictional notes that “the game's current status is that we have pretty much all tech working, and have started to playtest the first parts. Still, a lot is up in the air and the current design is bound to change.”

Amnesia will continue with Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs later this year, which is in development by thechineseroom and produced by Frictional. For more on A Machine for Pigs, be sure to watch the debut trailer, and read all about Amnesia: Dark Descent in our list of the top 25 modern PC games.

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following him on Twitter or IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com