Last week at The Game Awards 2015, Double Fine Productions Inc head Tim Schafer made a surprise announcement that his studio is finally working on a sequel its cult classic 3D platformer, Psychonauts, which was originally released in 2005.

To produce the new game, Double Fine is seeking a whopping $3.3 million in a crowdfunding campaign, but rather than turning to Kickstarter, Double Fine has instead launched its campaign on Fig, a relatively new platform that allows backers to actually invest in projects and receive equity in finished products. Schafer spoke about the decision to use Fig in a recent interview with GamesBeat.

“Fig is a whole different thing as far as crowdfunding goes,” Schafer said. “It enables, in the end, raising larger amounts. Even though crowdfunding great and people were doing it just to be supportive of an artistic project, there was always this question of, ‘Well, what if we got rich? What if we had a big hit? What if everyone raises the money for us to do it and then I get rich off that it?’ ”

“I asked if there was a way I could share royalties with backers and they said, ‘No, that’s illegal.’ It’s regulated by the SEC. You have to be an accredited investor, meaning you’ve got a million dollars in the bank. That’s sad, that we couldn’t share with our backers. But then the JOBS Act changed that, and Justin Bailey, our COO at the time, pointed out that this opened up a lot of doors for us. We could use unaccredited investors in combination with crowdfunding to create a whole new way of investing. That’s what I wanted. I wanted to be able to share royalties with people.”

“Justin left to start Fig. I’m on the advisory board along with Brian Fargo and Feargus Urquhart. We see this as the way of funding our games in the future, bigger games.”

Potential returns

So far, Psychonauts 2 has already raised over $1.9 million of its $3.3 million goal with over a month left in its campaign. Out of the current total funds, over $913,000 (approximately 48 percent) come from backers who are classified as investors in the project.

According to Double Fine’s investment information, Psychonauts 2 will need to sell close to 700,000 units for investors to break even. Meanwhile, if the sequel sells the same number of copies as the original game (around 1.7 million units), Double Fine estimates that an investment of $500 will see a return of $800.

You can find out more information on how to become an investor in Psychonauts 2, along with projected returns, on the investment section of game’s Fig campaign page. If you are interested in supporting the game as a normal backer, you can view the different reward bundles here.

Screenshot via DoubleFineProd | YouTube