Topic: Double Fine starts up Kickstarter funding for adventure game

[Pugnate]

This is perfect:

Unpopular opinion time.

There's a little thing called 'restraint' that should've been used here...you got 3 million dollars instead of 400,000...now you need more? Really? There's alot of other Kickstarter projects that would KILL just to make 20,000 and you made 3 million.

That doesn't look so hot for your company to be honest...in putting in all this new shit can you at LEAST ensure that the game will be good?

Ah well, you're Tim Schafer, people will give you more money. So Good Luck again.

[Pugnate]

I respect the guy immensely for the beautiful games he has created for the industry, but he sounds like a big baby who doesn't understand the gravity of what happened:

“This was a huge wake-up call for all of us,” said Schafer. “If this were true, we weren’t going to have to cut the game in half, we were going to have to cut it down by 75%!

“What would be left? How would we even cut it down that far? Just polish up the rooms we had and ship those? Reboot the art style with a dramatically simpler look? Remove the Boy or Girl from the story? Yikes! Sad faces all around.”

Yikes? Sad faces all around? You have people who put so much faith in you that they paid nearly 10 times as much as you asked for, and now you are asking for even more money (apparently close to the level of some Call of Duty game), and you are saying 'Sad faces all around'?

I can tell this guy is an artist but he isn't good at being a leader. He probably needs someone to manage him.

That being said, the game does sound totally awesome.

Broken Age is a point-and-click adventure telling the stories of a young boy and girl leading parallel lives. The girl has been chosen by her village to be sacrificed to a terrible monster–but she decides to fight back. Meanwhile, a boy on a spaceship is living a solitary life under the care of a motherly computer, but he wants to break free to lead adventures and do good in the world. Adventures ensue.

[idolminds]

Again, all risks considered, they probably raised 10 times the amount of money projected to create this game

If they only raised the $400k we wouldn't be getting this game. We would be getting a completely different game. When they got more money, the design of the game changed. Yes, they overshot...that happens. Tim even said in the first backer video that...yeah, $400k...we could make a game for that. It would be a little flash game or something, but they could do it. I don't think after getting how much they got if they only followed through with a flash game that people would be too happy with it.

Keep in mind $3.4 million is still really low for a game budget. Plus, KS took a fee, Amazon took a fee, they had to make and ship tshirts and stuff, they have to pay the documentary guys. After that they were left with $2m.

I mean, yeah...the situation sucks and they really don't have anyone to blame but themselves. Keep in mind that Tims letter was meant for backers ONLY, but it got leaked. What didn't get leaked was the documentary episode that went with it. The letter is basically assuming you watched the video and tries to give some finer points on it. They had a camera in the meeting where this current plan was brought up. Tim was really torn on it, Greg Rice was against the idea, pretty much all of the things people are bitching about now were brought up. And maybe its because I backed so I've got some tinted goggles on, but after watching the episode I can see it working. It's not ideal, but it should work.

And you have to hand it to DF, they aren't asking for a handout. Any extra money they put into the game so far has been their own. They ran the humble bundle, did the amnesia fortnight thing, whatever. They have not run a second KS or something simply asking for money (which happened to some other project I'm forgetting the name of). They at least earned that money. And they are just going to be selling the first part of Broken Age. Buy it or don't. Backers get it already so the sales they get will be on the games own merits.

I dunno, I don't want to sound like a defensive fanboy or anything. I think some people are just looking for something they can shit on because they don't like Kickstarter to begin with. Some people want Broken Age to fail so they can say "See? I was right!" The initial pitch video Tim said you get to see development, warts and all. Well here we are.

I will say everything they have shown of the game in the videos, it is looking fantastic. I am really excited to play the final game. So if this helps them keep going with this level of quality, I think people will be really surprised with how well it turned out.

EDIT: Quick edit. One other thing to consider is they aren't screwing anyone over here. Backers that paid to get the game will get the game. That hasn't changed. Part 1 will be sold early, and Part 2 will be a free update a few months later. They are NOT splitting this into 2 games and charging for each one separately to make more money. So once part 2 is out then its just the full game, like before.

[PyroMenace]

Yea, I will admit that I can see why people are pissed but I'm fine with them making a game on a bigger scale. I wouldn't call it unprofessional since theres no real history or any sort of guidelines to go by for something like KS, this is all new grounds. Probably what bothers me most about all this is that apparently everybody is becoming a big shot game developer now that knows the ins and outs of game development costs and time budgeting more than Tim and Double Fine, chill dudes, seriously.

[idolminds]

The Banner Saga guys had something to say.

A CONVERSATION ABOUT KICKSTARTER
Lots of stuff has been going on in the Kickstarter community lately. I'm sure many of you have noticed Double Fine's announcement about splitting up their game into two parts. They've gotten some serious heat for this. Backers of Shadowrun have heard similar things about the content in that game, with the DLC being released much later.

First of all, I want to be clear that we do not intend to do something like this for The Banner Saga. When it releases it will be a complete product. We don't have plans for DLC at this time, and we will continue to support the multiplayer component. We also intend to continue on the sequels (chapter 2 and 3) just as planned.

I would also like to talk about my personal opinion on this, and I'd love to be open and talk like a normal person instead of a PR person in damage control mode. Can we do this? Without freaking out? You can disagree with me of course, just be nice about it.

This is hard. Like, way WAY hard. When we pitched the game we were hoping for enough money to get extra animations, maybe increase the length of the game. We thought we'd get, like, 2000 backers, not 20,000. A fine problem to have, right? Haha! Except that it's actually a huge problem. The hardest problem I've ever dealt with in my life. Now I know.

We thought now we could do everything we ever wanted for the game, and got too ambitious. We thought we could make the game in six months, and I'm still not sure what we were thinking. That was stupid. I wish I could take that back, all we needed to do was put a different date there and nobody would be complaining. Whoops. We ARE still doing everything we want, and it's taking a long time. I don't feel bad about that. That was the POINT, right? To dream as big as we could?

It's interesting to think of it from someone else's point of view. For many people, letting a dev shoot for the moon is NOT the point. For a lot of people the point is I BOUGHT A GAME, WHERE IS IT? They want the biggest, best game ever made, on time, for their $10 contribution. I can see that, too. I don't really agree... but I suppose it's a matter of perspective.

If nothing else, I think the gaming community is finally getting a good picture about real game development. What would really shock people is that there is nothing unusual about any of this, except that you are finally seeing it. This is every game development story that has ever existed, except instead of the publisher dealing with it, YOU are.

Budgets of 1 to 4 million are small-to-medium sized. Our budget of $650k (in actual funding) is relatively small, half a year of production for a small team. Budgets of kickstarter projects asking for $20k... that's not enough to make a game, that's just some content. Surprise! Games you've come to expect as "standard" like Call of Duty: maybe 150 million to make, rough guess. You know how much Old Republic cost? I'm not legally allowed to tell you, actually. It's that much. Now you know.

Games take 1 year to make... if it's a casual iOS game, or an annual sequel. Medium sized games take 2-3 years. Large games take 4-5 years. Believe it or not, lots of games fall in a nebulous space between AAA and "indie", whatever that means. The Old Republic took over 6 years. Yeah, you started hearing about it 1 year before it released. It started production five years before that. For five years hundreds of people toiled on it 12 hours a day and you had no idea! Now you know! Isn't knowing about production right from the start wonderful? No, it's not. It's annoying. It takes FOREVER. That's why you usually don't hear anything until it's almost ready to ship.

Delays, content cuts, pushed back dates, plans to make revenue sooner- this is how games are developed. Bioshock Infinite, the biggest game of 2013, got delayed for half a year, AFTER pre-orders were sold. Journey took 3 years to make a 3 hour game and had to go back for more funding from Sony TWICE. That's how game development goes. They didn't know they'd need to do it. Humans are not good at estimating creative endeavors, no matter how "professional" they are.

We released a truly free demo hoping to make some extra cash for development, and got brutalized for it. But without that income and development time our single-player game wouldn't be as good. Some people will never understand this.

I've worked in games for about a decade. Some companies I worked for had their stuff together better than others. Some were a huge, hundred-million dollar, extremely delayed nightmares. Every company had delays and went over-budget. You know what a release date is? A guess. We're just guessing.

Essentially, I hope people don't freak out too much about what's happening with Kickstarter right now. It's not deceitful or underhanded. It's not a conspiracy. It's normal stuff, whether you like it or not. If Broken Age wasn't a Kickstarter game the first time you would have heard about it would be a couple months from ship, and that it was a two-part adventure game. And you would have been fine with that.

Our game is coming along better than I could have imagined, even if delayed. BECAUSE it's delayed. I'm super happy with it. Other companies have way bigger problems, but that's game development. NOW YOU KNOW. I sincerely hope everything works out the best for them, and you should too. At the end of the day, they're nice guys trying to make good entertainment for you. I, personally, will cut them all the slack in the world.

So there you have it. The games industry! The aristocrats! Maybe it'll get better someday? For now, let's enjoy our time together! (I love you).

-Alex

[Xessive]

I can empathize with much of that. When I'm given a brief I have to estimate a turn-around time, which is for all intents and purposes an educated guess about when I can deliver my designs. I try to adhere to some ideals like "under-promise and over-deliver" but it's not always so easy to do.

The reason I might take issue with Double Fine's situation is that the original pitch is supposed to be an overshot. When you say you need $400,000 it should mean that the game actually requires less but you aim higher to give yourself a viable margin to work with. Add to it that they made well-beyond the target, and it wasn't like $50,000 more, it was more like $2.9M more, and I understand why people are confused.

Imagine a slightly different scenario:
Son: Hey Dad, how about I go get us some food from McDonald's?
Dad: Sure, son. How much do you need?
Son: Well, it's gonna be about $15 for both of us.
Dad: Alright, here's $100, get the meals and grab some sundaes too!
Son: Yeah.. So.. It's not enough for two meals.. I mean, I'll get you the fries in about 5 mins, but I'm gonna go ask Mom for some more cash so I can get you the burger too.
Dad: Son, hand over the weed. If $100 is not enough for McD's you'd better have some damn good weed.

[Pugnate]

haha... I like it..

I want to add something to your thing..

Son: Hey Dad, how about I go get us some food from McDonald's?
Dad: Sure, son. How much do you need?
Son: Well, it's gonna be about $15 for both of us.
Dad: Alright, here's $100, get the meals and grab some sundaes too!
Son: Well, Dad, I need more money. I need about $200 more.
Dad: Huh? Why?
Son: Well, I went and got a lobster dinner with the $100. It is fabulous, but I didn't have enough money. So I need about $200 more to feed all of us. But don't worry. We can still have half the meal now!
Dad: Ummm... didn't you just want $15 for a MCD meal?

OK so this is a bit much. Overall, I am excited for what Double Fine show us. I do think this guy, like a typical artist, has trouble balancing vision with practicality. I have worked with a lot of artists here on projects, and trust me... they lose practical sense. It is still exciting because they produce exciting work.

[idolminds]

Of course with how KS works...

Son: Hey Dad, how about I go get us some food from McDonald's?
Dad: Sure, son. How much do you need?
Son: Well, it's gonna be about $15 for both of us.
Dad: I only have $14.
Son: Aww, well maybe we can just forget the fries.
Dad: Nope, it's all or nothing.
Son: This sucks!
Dad: If you want to eat now you have to go whore yourself out to some rich guy, heed all his demands, and then he will let you eat. But probably not McDonalds, it'll be Arbys or something.
Son: I hate you!
Dad: You sound like your mother.

[Xessive]

Hahaha Kickstarter -> Kickstand