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[Zangi]

1. Throw up grand plans for awesome project.
2. Starts project with small amount of initial money.
3. Expects/hopes to get more money as they work on the project. 
4. Don't get enough money, can't pay wages of workers.
5. Stops work for a number of months.
6. Suddenly starts working on project again, as money trickles in.
7. Throws up advertising campaign with incentives.
8. Figures there is not enough interest/funds to complete initially planned project in the long run.
9. Throws the towel in, drastically reduces feature and scope of project, doing what they can with whatever funds they have left for the project.

I remember when Tim Schafer said, in the context of a conversation about/to Gamergate, 'Your [sic] attacking indies like me who have very little money'. It was one of the only times I ever literally laughed out loud from reading a tweet.

I wonder if the Broken Age Kickstarter still holds its record, or if that's been usurped yet.

Assuming that the kickstarter money for Broken Age is earmarked for Broken Age... rather then being spent on other side projects, what are you expecting?

[LASD]

I wonder how many people complaining about not ever buying Double Fine games again ever even bought DF-9 (or any other of their games) in the first place. *grumble grumble* Spacebase failed, end of story.

*raises hand*
Though I haven't exactly complained very hard, admittedly.  That said, has anyone heard anything on the second half of Broken Age?  Anyone?  Anything?

Yes, there is a documentary being shot about it with episodes coming out every few months or so (last one (#17) being literally a month ago) and the devs constantly update on the status of it. The writing is now completely done, VO has been recorded in the last few weeks and they are trying to get the game to beta by Christmas/January. It's a pretty tight schedule, but they are trying to pull it off.

Ah.  You see, that would be an amazing thing to put on their website.  Or, you know, their game's website.

Yeah, they probably should've probably made the documentary public, but it's currently a perk of being a backer. Actually, for backers, the site to check is the backer update site. The knowledge is free to be shared though, but there's no point writing any articles about it as what people want to hear from Double Fine is that they have another project going under/out of funds/Early Access/not ever coming out, which are not being written either as it's very unlikely they will be doing the same mistake again.

This ridiculous Double Fine hate mob built by TotalBiscuit

Or maybe people don't want to give their money over to 'early access' to game(s) by a publisher with a track record of not finishing their projects as originally promised?

Drop out Early Access and people shouldn't be buying anything from Valve.

I remember when Tim Schafer said, in the context of a conversation about/to Gamergate, 'Your [sic] attacking indies like me who have very little money'. It was one of the only times I ever literally laughed out loud from reading a tweet.

I wonder if the Broken Age Kickstarter still holds its record, or if that's been usurped yet.

3.3 million dollars seems like a massive amount of money to an individual and it feels like it will last forever. Employing dozens of people in a rented space in San Francisco costs quite a massive amount too. A million dollars gets you around 10 people working for a year. You can't build that big a game in that time. And yes, Double Fine definitely has little money for a company, when compared to EA or Valve or any of the big players in the gaming scene. And that quote definitely has a point, attacking Double Fine for Spacebase seems strange when no one really complains about the bribery and insane demands in regards to reviewing/showcasing Shadow of Mordor for example.

What put money in perspective for me was a student project I was in during the summer. We got 50 000€ of funding and it seemed like a huge amount, but at the end for example the salaries for the 9 of us working ended up being less than for a low-paid research assistant.

This Double Fine issue would probably need it's own thread, but oh well. So in conclusion, Massive Chalice is really good.

EDIT: Whoops, I remembered the Kickstarter sum was closer to 4 than 3 million.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Drop out Early Access and people shouldn't be buying anything from Valve.

That's up to the market to decide. :]

[Farce]

All this hate man.  All I'm saying is that they've had some weird budget problems and I got kinda hosed on DF-9.  The game looks good, but I'm being more cautious with my money because I've already had one of their games fall through on me.  I mean, I'm not exactly rolling in dough, you know.

Also I don't get the hate on Phil Fish.  He's an acerbic dude, but so what?  His game took a while and wasn't a big badass deal like Cave Story or anything, but I don't think he ever sold it as such, did he?  Is there anything to how disproportionately reviled he is other than 'he took a long time to make a game' and 'he is kinda coarse' other than just internet groupthink?

[a1s]

People don't want to give their money over to 'early access' to game(s) by a publisher with a track record of not finishing their projects as originally promised.

Drop out Early Access and people shouldn't be buying anything from Valve.

There's a difference between buying an overhyped game (I'm not sure what you mean here, but let's say Maxis' Spore as an example) which is a conscious choice for you as a consumer to lower your standards Vs.  buying a hyped game that isn't made, and having lowered standards (somewhat) unexpectedly forced upon you.

Ultimately, of course, it's up to the market. Kickstarter was never about games, it was about projects ("the journey, not the destination", if you like that cliche'.) And whether or not DF delivers games, it's hard to claim they don't go through with making them (unlike, say, ConEx.) Overall game making is advanced, new approaches are tired, new developers inspired, and maybe, in the long run, that's more important then specific games. (I don't actually think that's true- I like games now, but I can see that viewpoint)

[Virtz]

Also I don't get the hate on Phil Fish.  He's an acerbic dude, but so what?  His game took a while and wasn't a big badass deal like Cave Story or anything, but I don't think he ever sold it as such, did he?  Is there anything to how disproportionately reviled he is other than 'he took a long time to make a game' and 'he is kinda coarse' other than just internet groupthink?

Actually he kept harping on about how Fez won some 2 Best of Show rewards a couple years before it was even released. And then it turned out some of the judges were Polytron financers. He's kind of a dirtbag with an undeservedly over-inflated ego and an attitude befitting a teenager.

Personally I don't really care about the guy since his game has basically zero influence on the indie scene, because nobody in their right mind would go through the effort of reproducing the mechanics for gameplay that flaccid. Though the drama with him does provide some laughs.

[Levi]

I liked Fez.   

[nenjin]

Yes, and Phil Fish thinks you're stupid

[LASD]

attacking Double Fine for Spacebase seems strange when no one really complains about the bribery and insane demands in regards to reviewing/showcasing Shadow of Mordor for example.

TotalBiscuit (who you mentioned on the previous page as the one who built up this 'ridiculous Double Fine hate mob') was the one who actually broke the story about Shadows of Mordor, wasn't he? He blew the whistle on the deal and handed all the pertinent information to Jim Sterling. I personally saw a lot of anger about that whole Mordor situation on various other sites.

Oh, if so, awesome. But it seems like people are way more mad at Double Fine. I guess the second-hand manipulation doesn't feel as sleazy to people as a game being hurriedly finished when it ran out of funds.

I remember when Tim Schafer said, in the context of a conversation about/to Gamergate, 'Your [sic] attacking indies like me who have very little money'. It was one of the only times I ever literally laughed out loud from reading a tweet.

I wonder if the Broken Age Kickstarter still holds its record, or if that's been usurped yet.

4 million dollars seems like a massive amount of money to an individual and it feels like it will last forever. Employing dozens of people in a rented space in San Francisco costs quite a massive amount too. A million dollars gets you around 10 people working for a year. You can't build that big a game in that time. And yes, Double Fine definitely has little money for a company, when compared to EA or Valve or any of the big players in the gaming scene.

Then they should learn to manage their money better, and not plan extravagantly with funds they don't have. The Broken Age Kickstarter wildly overshot its goal (they made nearly 10x what they were asking for), and yet they still ended up in the position where they had to rely on Early Access/sales from the first part to fund development of the second. It's irresponsible. People funded a complete game. If sales had been low, would it have been acceptable for Schafer to say 'Sorry guys, we don't have the cash to make the second half of the game you paid for'? Perhaps for some, but not to me.

Double Fine have shown they're irresponsible with money, and have demonstrated a complete lack of humility regarding the whole situation. A mistake is forgivable, but when the person keeps on making the same/very similar mistakes (as with Spacebase), while preaching to others about their own supposed shortcomings (I'm talking about Schafer in particular here)?

I'm not quite sure if you can call them irresponsible with money, I think they just don't have that much of it. The news of them making decisions and compromises might not be them wasting all their money, it's a bit more likely that they just don't have as much money as they need. You never hear news about EA, Valve or Blizzard games running out of funds because it can't be a problem for them, they always have more money to throw. Double Fine has to find a way to get more and they are open about how they do it, which is turning out to be a bad PR move.

Also, "people funded a complete game". Well, they could've made a game that takes 2 hours. I'm sure the people would have been as angry about that "complete game" than this one. And I'm not sure what's the issue, people are getting a way bigger game later, than a smaller game right now. Why is it so important that the game had been made only with the Kickstarter funds?

And worse, when they do all the above and then throw a party for themselves (their 'Day of the devs' back at the start of this month), stream it, and get Phil 'Screw you guys, I'm not developing Fez 2 because all the people who enjoy my games are such stupid assholes' Fish to DJ for them?

This attitude is a bit strange. It sounds like the whole company should be grounded. "You'll stay in your room and will have no fun until you finish your vegetables game."

Also, the story of Fish is actually kind of sad. He's a really passionate guy that can't really holds his thoughts inside his head. He also takes all personal comments very seriously and emotionally. This made him every troll's favorite target. So the trolls followed him everywhere and after a few years of people suggesting him to commit suicide and him blowing at people for the horrible comments, he couldn't handle it anymore and left the industry.


The beautiful thing about the documentary of Broken Age is that shows the people working on the game outside the context of press releases, advertisement and industry events. And it turns out that they actually are... well, people. They are completely normal folks trying to do their best, not some robots in an evil corporation who are required to work on funny games on no pay and no fun if it comes to that. Also, the documentary shows all the meeting where they do these big decisions, so the frighteningly common internet of way absorbing information is not possible (reading a piece of news and then interpreting it in the most cynical way possible). You have all the facts and the reasons, so you can't really question the motives. Some people might think of it as some weird propaganda, but the tone is actually quite serious and melancholy at times. They are really not trying to show that everything's going absolutely smoothly, because it never does.

You can get a sense of what they are like by watching the Amnesia Fortnight documentaries. The Massive Chalice teamstreams are a bit different, but the human element is very much there too.

[a1s]

I'm not quite sure if you can call them irresponsible with money, I think they just don't have that much of it.

"Irresponsible" might be the the wrong term here. It's more that they "suck at planing expenses". Their projects are routinely overfunded (in the case of Broken Age, by an order of magnitude), and have so far all fallen behind. This isn't uncommon in the Software world, but you expect it from inexperienced teams, rather than pros with over 2 decades in the business. This causes a rather odd situation, where people are understandably angry that a project costs 10x what was planned (wouldn't you?), even though the cost to themselves has not risen (unless you calculate cost adjusted for risk, which is, at the very least, not an exact process).

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Also, "people funded a complete game". Well, they could've made a game that takes 2 hours.

That's actually about the gameplay length of DF-9. So yes, they did exactly that with an overfunded game. Like they have before with other projects that were overfunded and not delivered upon.

This is why people are avoiding their products. You can see this in the sea change of opinion directed at DF since the debacle of DF9. This is up to consumers to decide, and they have obviously decided they don't want to early access/fund/prepay for DF games anymore after the same company has burned multiple backers of multiple projects. But hey, you can keep telling people they should support a scummy company because you like them. Just telling you all the complaining about 'Totalbiscuits hate mob' isn't going to help them get good will and sales. Making the games they say they will might, though.

[Zangi]

I'm still not getting over the fact that people think the kickstarter money, raised specifically for Broken Age, should have been used for Spacebase....  or maybe think that just because Broken Age got 3.3million, now they have extra cash from wherethecarpistan for Spacebase...  (Spacebase was not funded by publishers or kickstarter.)

Lets be real here.  Broken Age got 3.3million.  Thats 55k sales of a triple A game at 60$.  165k sales at indie game value, 20$. 
Not even considering the fees from selling on steam or the discounts and stuff.  How many copies did Spacebase sell?  How many people got paid to work on the project?

I'm not quite sure if you can call them irresponsible with money, I think they just don't have that much of it.

"Irresponsible" might be the the wrong term here. It's more that they "suck at planing expenses". Their projects are routinely overfunded (in the case of Broken Age, by an order of magnitude), and have so far all fallen behind. This isn't uncommon in the Software world, but you expect it from inexperienced teams, rather than pros with over 2 decades in the business. This causes a rather odd situation, where people are understandably angry that a project costs 10x what was planned (wouldn't you?), even though the cost to themselves has not risen (unless you calculate cost adjusted for risk, which is, at the very least, not an exact process).

'Overfunded' may be the wrong term to use in relation with Spacebase, but then are we complaining about Broken Age instead now?  (I don't even know.)

~Coming from a person who really only knows some stuff about Spacebase, Broken Age and Massive Chalice from the Double Fine arsenal.

[Virtz]

I'm not quite sure if you can call them irresponsible with money, I think they just don't have that much of it. The news of them making decisions and compromises might not be them wasting all their money, it's a bit more likely that they just don't have as much money as they need. You never hear news about EA, Valve or Blizzard games running out of funds because it can't be a problem for them, they always have more money to throw. Double Fine has to find a way to get more and they are open about how they do it, which is turning out to be a bad PR move.

Also, "people funded a complete game". Well, they could've made a game that takes 2 hours. I'm sure the people would have been as angry about that "complete game" than this one. And I'm not sure what's the issue, people are getting a way bigger game later, than a smaller game right now. Why is it so important that the game had been made only with the Kickstarter funds?

They've received funding that exceeded their Kickstarter goals. If they couldn't make a game better than something someone with Adventure Game Studio could make for free despite getting 8 times the amount they asked for, then what the fuck would they have done with the exact amount? A 10 minute demo? Plus saying "company X will never run out of money" is kinda stupid. Nobody has unlimited amounts of money, they just plan out their budget according to what they have. Else you end up with Kingdoms of Amalur. You're supposed to plan out your expenses and go for cheaper solutions if you have a smaller budget. And they didn't do that. For example, with Broken Age Schafer got it in his head that he wanted art from some specific guy he liked the style of. And then that guy couldn't cope with the amount of art he had to do, so they hired on more artists that'd immitate that guy's style.

Also, a couple years ago, before all the Kickstarter crap, Kotick explained how Schafer couldn't plan finances for Brutal Legend and kept asking for more and more, all the while missing deadlines repeatedly, hence why Activision dropped it. At the time, nobody gave a shit what Kotick said, being who he is, but right now it doesn't seem far-fetched at all.

[LASD]

Also, "people funded a complete game". Well, they could've made a game that takes 2 hours.

That's actually about the gameplay length of DF-9. So yes, they did exactly that with an overfunded game. Like they have before with other projects that were overfunded and not delivered upon.

This is why people are avoiding their products. You can see this in the sea change of opinion directed at DF since the debacle of DF9. This is up to consumers to decide, and they have obviously decided they don't want to early access/fund/prepay for DF games anymore after the same company has burned multiple backers of multiple projects. But hey, you can keep telling people they should support a scummy company because you like them. Just telling you all the complaining about 'Totalbiscuits hate mob' isn't going to help them get good will and sales. Making the games they say they will might, though.

Yeah, you are probably right. I do get bit too riled up about this. I can only hope Double Fine will come out with more good games. They already have one that came out of Early Access (Hack n' Slash) and Massive Chalice looks like it can be another.

The documentaries make you also think that you actually know the people at Double Fine, so that's very much one reason why I end up defending them, but I still think that knowing that even game companies are made of real actual people is a good thing to remember. Especially when directly interacting with them.

[LASD]

I'm not quite sure if you can call them irresponsible with money, I think they just don't have that much of it.

"Irresponsible" might be the the wrong term here. It's more that they "suck at planing expenses". Their projects are routinely overfunded (in the case of Broken Age, by an order of magnitude), and have so far all fallen behind. This isn't uncommon in the Software world, but you expect it from inexperienced teams, rather than pros with over 2 decades in the business. This causes a rather odd situation, where people are understandably angry that a project costs 10x what was planned (wouldn't you?), even though the cost to themselves has not risen (unless you calculate cost adjusted for risk, which is, at the very least, not an exact process).

Actually, they scaled up the game a ton after they received the 10x funding. A way way bigger game that would come out on pretty much every platform instead of just PC. This required using a new engine that supports all of the possible platforms. They have very much not been building a 400 000 dollar game for 3,3 million dollars. They started building a 3.3 million dollar game that kept growing in development.

I hope the documentary comes out for free when the game is finished, so that people can see how the project actually went down.