Double Fine Productions is proud and not freaked out at all to announce that this year the Amnesia Fortnight Project, its annual prototyping process, will be open to the public, and that there’s no reason to be absolutely, unbearably afraid of this.
This normally-secretive process is named “Amnesia” because the entire team at Double Fine forgets what they’re working on, and “Fortnight” because it lasts for two weeks. During this time the company is divided into smaller teams, and each team must make a game in those two weeks. This has been a very successful formula in the past, so changing it only makes sense.
For the first three Amnesia Fortnight Projects, the leaders of each team were hand-selected by Double Fine President and CEO, Tim Schafer. This year, the hopeful Project Leaders will be pitching their ideas directly to the public, who will then be able to vote for which games are selected for the prototype phase. Replacing Tim’s judgement and restraint with that of the internet is totally fine and really the same thing after all when you think about it!
After the winning projects are selected there will be two weeks of development. 2 Player Productions will be filming each team just as they have been with the acclaimed Double Fine Adventure documentary. This does not terrify anybody at Double Fine.
“It’s like walking through your high school naked,” said Double Fine’s Director of Product Development Isa Stamos, “It’s mostly just embarrassing the first time. And also, it’s the stuff of dreams!”
When the two weeks are up, the prototypes will be available for download from the Humble Bundle website. These unfinished, rough sketches of games will be handed over to the internet to be thoughtfully judged and respectfully seen in the appropriate context. HA HA HA! That’s my happy laugh and not manic!
When you purchase the bundle you will immediately receive two historical prototypes from past AF projects. Thanks to the generous cooperation of our partners at Autodesk, Firelight, Valve, and RAD Tools. From AF #2, the two week prototype of Costume Quest, and from AF #1, Happy Song-- an early prototype that was inspiration for Once Upon a Monster.These are very simple, unfinished mockups of the award-winning games they would someday become, and people’s judgement of them will surely be informed by that...oh god where is my paper bag for breathing?
No matter what happens, it’s okay, because you can chose what you pay, and how much goes to charity.
Everyone from Double Fine was invited to pitch a game. Twenty three of our bravest souls came forward, and you can see all of their pitches and vote for your favorites here: www.humblebundle.com/double-fine
Oh god, it’s starting.
wtf_man wrote on Nov 20, 2012, 20:16:
Yeah I saw the bit about Bagel... but I never heard of "the May release".
So, I'm guessing it was pushed back from October to May?
wtf_man wrote on Nov 20, 2012, 10:28:Not that I know of.. From the Episode updates, it sounds like they are just trying really hard to make the May release. They originally planned for Bagel to do most all the in-game artwork, but with the game being so much bigger they think it will take him too long to do it himself. It looks like he will instead be in charge of the art direction and have multiple artists under him to get the work done quicker.
Yeah... I don't logon to the forums much.
Any new ETA given? (More out of curiosity than wanting a hard date)
Dev wrote on Nov 20, 2012, 10:23:
Since they got way more than planned, that changed the scope and timing of the project.
This info and more is in the regular documentaries that they release, their forum posts, etc.
They don't post too many updates on KS. As they've said, they've moved mostly to their forum.
Suckage wrote on Nov 20, 2012, 00:40:They have been doing a main video update (Episode) about once a month and it hasn't been quite a month since the last one. It would be nice to see another sidequest video though..
So... that's why we haven't gotten any updates for the DF Action game in a while?
wtf_man wrote on Nov 20, 2012, 09:46:It was supposed to be in October when the plan was to have a few people at DF make a short adventure game with the ~$400k they were originally asking for. But once they saw how many backers supported them and the millions they gave for the project, Tim decided to get more DF folks to make a bigger and better adventure game which he said would take longer. If you look at the tiers added later, the delivery date for those show May 2013.
Honestly, I don't know what the hold up was... I thought the game was supposed to be out in October... but apparently it has been delayed.
Suckage wrote on Nov 20, 2012, 00:40:
So... that's why we haven't gotten any updates for the DF Action game in a while?