The PC gaming community on the Internet is a strange beast. One second, it's a sea of remorselessly casual piracy, and the next, Double Fine's Tim Schafer's in danger of suffocating, buried alive under an avalanche of. And also $1.7 million (so far). How'd that happen? Why'd everyone suddenly start giving like they'd been visited by an incredibly forward-thinking Christmas ghost? And, more importantly, what does it mean for us, the gamers?Hate to burst your bubble, but let's get something straight right away: this crazy scheme may have worked for Tim Schafer, but that certainly doesn't mean it'll work for everyone else. Maybe notelse. We'll probably see a horde of me-toos take the stage, but the man who helped make Monkey Island and co-created Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle, and Psychonauts is, to be frank, a neighact to follow.Plenty of indies were kicking off Kickstarter campaigns long before Double Fine struck a thick, viscous mixture of gold, oil, and the next major children's trading card game fad. Those are much smaller projects (I'm talking $20,000 tops) and only the exceptional minority actually get anywhere near their funding goals.The flood of Double Fine imitators, meanwhile, will likely come from roughly the same place as the funhouse that Tim Schafer built: a middle tier of developers that manages to survive under the traditional publisher model, but hardly thrives. Already, developers like Alpha Protocol and Fallout: New Vegas developer Obsidian Entertainment have started to come down with "Kickstarter fever" , but -- as with most things named after-- it could leave people in dire straits if they don't slow down and cool off. The fact is, Double Fine's Kickstarter still has a month left before it passes go and collects far, far more than $200. But how much, precisely? If it's $2 or $3 million, that's a mid-sized game at best. For a major game project, it'd need to pass the $10-million mark.Even if that were to happen, though, let's not forget the mind-boggling number of incredibly specific advantages Double Fine has going for it: 1) An exceedingly passionate hardcore gamer fanbase, 2) Nostalgia, nostalgia, and more nostalgia resulting from two of the creators of Monkey Island under one roof, 3) The "first!" factor, 4) An almost-flawless pedigree that inspires trust and devotion from fans, who feel safe in "investing" a few bucks.That said, lightning technicallystrike twice. It just doesn't happen very often.In recent years, conventional wisdom has decided that hardcore gamers are miserly miscreants who'd sooner take candy from a homeless baby than slaughter their fattened piggy banks. That, however, is almost hilariously untrue. Hardcore gamers are about as passionate as people come, so it's a simply a matter of letting themhow much they pay and what they pay for.Double Fine's Kickstarter is the most punch-you-in-the-face obvious example of that lately, but it's hardly alone. The Humble Indie Bundle, the Indie Royale, and their ilk have found similarly mind-blowing success with pay-what-you-want models. Sure, plenty of people fish out their grimiest, most possibly disease-ridden pennies and call it a day, but others carefully weigh their options before splitting $100 or more between developers, the bundle itself, and charity.We're gamers, for goodness' sake. Our favorite hobby's all about interaction and empowerment. So -- shock of all shocks -- you hand us the reins, and we're exponentially happier to spend money. Because suddenly, wethe purchase -- and not just the product. We're not just grabbing a game off the figurative shelf; we're making a unique statement about our affection (or lack thereof) for a game.Modern games are all about making us feel like we matter. It's honestly somewhat shocking that it's taken the industry this long to figure out that we want to feel exactly the same way outside our favorite virtual worlds.Kickstarter also tends to inspire a natural extension of my previous point: Giving players who've chosen to pay some influence over what sort of direction the resultant game takes. Or at least keeping them in the loop of game development's inevitable twists and turns. I mean, you spent the money upfront, so you at least deserve to know what it's being used for, right?Some indie developers -- like ex-Cryptic Studios collective Mob Rules -- have based their entire development philosophy around the former approach, going so far as to let fans vote a game into full-scale development. Interestingly, Kickstarter's not-so-magic lamp failed to spit out Mob Rules' three wishes (money, money, a pony -- made of money), but they still let fans pick their game. (Regardless, however, that doesn't exactly bode well for innovative, off-the-wall ideas funded with this model. Mob Rules had triple-A name recognition, but the mob ruled it unworthy of even a passing glance.)And while fans may offer perspective and blunt feedback, there's also Obnoxious Side to this particular Force: entitlement. Or, in short, "I spent money, so I should be able to call the shots. Now where's my ice level with an extensive mine cart section controlled entirely via quick-time events?"Double Fine, especially, walks a precarious line here, as many gamers saw " Double Fine Adventure ," ignored the rest, and immediately began looking up Monkey Island quotes on the Internet. And by "many gamers," I mean me. But there's no doubting that -- in large part -- nostalgia drove Double Fine's Kickstarter to such great heights, and that means the equally great weight of expectation could easily 300-slow-mo-kick it right out of gamers' good graces.Sad to say, this won't be the Second Coming of Monkey Island. It's been two decades since Schafer and Gilbert birthed that classic. Will their new project benefit from humorous sensibilities that have aged like a fine wine (and fewer jokes whose punchline is "Dur-hur, bad breath")? Very possibly. But one thing's for sure: It'll definitely be different.If I didn't know any better, I'd say the gaming industry was a schmaltzy weekday afternoon soap opera. It seems like a new genre "dies" every other day, only to come back in some wild, gasp-inducing fashion. Point-and-click adventures? If you ask most major game publishers, they're six feet under and not even worthy of an implausible twin-cousin subplot. But hey, PC gaming has been declared "dead" by console makers every year for the past 15 years, yet oddly enough, here we are on a website devoted exclusively to PC gaming. Weird, huh?Double Fine's success shows that there's demand for these things -- just on much smaller, but far more fervent scale. No, Double Fine's adventure won't knock Call of Duty off its throne and force its head under the guillotine, but it's reasonable to expect it'll do reasonably well so long as Double Fine stays mindful of its budget.So, as long as expectations are kept in check, this offers a new avenue for catering to niches. It's not really anything revolutionary -- just simple supply and demand, except that we, the demanders, are ponying up in advance so that developers can create our supply. But for now, this crowd-sourced funding model is only that: a niche-filler. Any ordinary developer expecting to use it to get a major game off the ground is likely to crash and burn.: There aren't many developers I'd trust enough to throw money at without even knowing what their game's going to be about. Other than Valve and Blizzard, is there a developer out there who's never, ever let you down?